“You are here, you are home”

Spring Here I hear it all the time: Healing is not linear. In particular, when it’s not just your individual healing, but that of the collective. Being Palestinian, severed from ancestral land means being a refugee of place and of the heart. Our land is our life, one in the same. Trauma compounds when you’ve …

Gains and Losses

As an ESL teacher, I think a lot about the stages of language acquisition, my immigrant and refugee students and their families, and what we often lose along the way. I remember my mother remarking how relieved she felt when she was able to pull some strings at the education office and placed me in …

Covid Teaching Reflections: What Makes a Good Teacher?

 I've been teaching middle and high school for 13 years and needless to say this past year has been really tough. I currently teach at an inner city high school with limited resources and not the best technology. We started getting waves of students slowly coming back to in-person learning recently and it has been …

New interview!

Happy Spring Y'all! Check out my recent interview for Woman's History Month with Cambridge Common Writers! As a reminder, you can find me on Instagram @nadasamihwrites

Coloratura

 In high school chorus class, a white classmate called me Brillo head. In-between our Doh-Ray-Me warm ups he caused the line of Altos to chuckle as he asserted his preferences over brands of dish soap. The widening eye of adult scorn feel upon the entire Soprano section when our chorus director noticed the smirks. He …

Publication News!

Check out my first published nonfiction piece "Here" featured in Gulf Steam Magazine! Woman in Blue by Sam Aleks

Exhale 2020

My childhood had a clear delineation between before and after: pre-trauma and post ( or continued smaller) traumas. I cant help it but sometimes it takes me by surprise tinged with wonder that my children's lives have not mirrored my experiences and that to me is evolution... These past four years with Trump triggered so …

Mercy: Bilingual Writing Prompt

I thought it was about time to shout out my fellow bilingual peeps out there. This creative writing prompt is for you: choose a word in your first language (or any language if you acquired more than one language around the same age) and look up the etymology (the history)… write your thoughts on the …

Headlines Be Clunky: Finding Words Amidst Chaos

This time last year, we took our first family trip out west. My husband, a community organizer, got the opportunity to attend a conference in Olympia, Washington, a place he called home for four years as a college student at the Evergreen State College. I had never been out west before and my eagerness to …

Long Distance Love Before WIFI: a true story

Ive kept a journal most my life. I remember my first journal was a gift from my aunt when I was in the second grade. It was one of those themed journals, in this case it was from The Secret Garden. It was fully illustrated and included short quotes from the book alongside broad blank …