(Everything Is) Cells and Bodies: Ohio Migration Anthology, Volume Two

By Lynn Tramonte, Marina Manoukian and Gloria Kellon

"I am a man."

"Yo existo."

#BlackLivesMatter.

If you've never felt your humanity denied, you might not understand why some people have to declare their right to exist. We are all just "cells and bodies," after all. And that is a connection the Ohio Migration Anthology, in all of its volumes, is trying to highlight.

The s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anacaona
• Release date: Sep 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988862413

Marina Manoukian

Marina Manoukian is a writer of the Armenian diaspora.

Book preview

Dedication

To Black Mauritanians in search of a safe home

Contents

Dedication

Land and Ancestral Acknowledgment

Foreword

Introduction

Gloria Kellon

One Quilts and Word Pictures, A Necessary Retelling

Henry Arriaga

Two Una Pequeña Parte de Mi Vida!; A Small Part of My Life!

Judy Bateman, AKA Miz Jed

Three No Clue; True Grits

An Ode to Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy

Maretha Dellarosa

Four Budi’s Sticker Contest, Nastar, and Raising a Multicultural Child in Ohio

Varsha Prabu

Five Immigrant of Extraordinary Talent

Betsy Rose Ujvagi

Six I Was Raised by Refugees

Donna Willingham

Seven They Came Looking

Ray Danner

Eight Ανατολία (Anatolia)

Prepare Yourself To Board The Underground Railroad

Saidu Sow

Nine Anytime You Need to Know Something

Enock Sadiki

Ten The Most Essential Part of My Life

Running The Railroad: John P. Parker

Lidia Garcia

Eleven 2,453

Homayoon Amanullah

Twelve Inauspicious Morning; Refugees' and Immigrants' Education Challenges

Maya McOmie

Thirteen whetstone; Leaving Town; I've Stopped Counting the Times I've Been Asked

Milenko Budimir

Fourteen Au revoir, Yugoslavia; At the barbecue joint

Mory Keita

Fifteen Everybody Needs Somewhere To Be Safe

2014: When African Americans Were Top

Shirley Betzaida Lopez Sanchez

Sixteen Mi Triste Infancia; My Sad Childhood; A nchwinqlale ky’ixk’oj

Neema Bal and Katie Beck

Seventeen Three Countries, One Mother

Acknowledgments

Resources

Walk To Freedom

Land and Ancestral Acknowledgment

We offer this volume to the world, acknowledging that:

Because of colonialism and supremacy, Ohio’s Native people survive in the names of places and rivers, alone. The word Ohio is derived from the Seneca word Ohiyo, or beautiful river. Ohio was once the home of Erie, Kickapoo, and Shawnee people. Members of the Delaware, Miami, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Seneca (Mingo) tribes migrated to Ohio after white colonizers pushed them from their original homes. In the 1800s, all were sent west by the occupiers of stolen land.

While some of our ancestors came here voluntarily, others were forced to leave their places of origin. Houleye Thiam says, For Black Mauritanians, migration is not a vacation. It’s not a choice. Dictators are weapons of mass destruction. Slavery, apartheid, and genocide in Mauritania forces many to leave and make Ohio their home. Other ancestors came to the U.S. in chains (or not), to work in homes and fields, construct railroads, and build and care for this nation. Gloria Kellon's quilts illustrate these struggles and also the triumphs of Black Americans. 

Ohio will not be a free state until all people are truly free. Our history books proclaim Ohio was a free state in the 1800s. Stops along the Underground Railroad are treasured landmarks today. But descendants of slaves who migrated to Ohio still face a state culture of white supremacy and an official government that does not value their lives. Ohio is home to racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-immigrant groups and people, as well as the police officers who killed Tamir Rice, Andre Hill, and Jayland Walker, among many others.

Not everyone feels this way. But in order to move forward, Ohio must confront our past and present honestly, and recognize that we are all just cells and bodies—people—with equal worth and dreams.

Foreword

A Series of Movements

Migration itself may seem momentary, but what happens can last lifetimes. Movement is both the whole and part of the story—its effects seeping through bodies through cells through generations. There is no singularity to migration, neither in individuals nor communities. But despite the plurality with which people move across the world and end up in one place or another, our movements are not separate. Our intersections aren’t simply moments of crossing along independent paths.

Storytelling can be, as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes in her book, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back, a lens through which we can envision our way out of cognitive imperialism, where we can create models and mirrors where none existed, and where we can experience the spaces of freedom and justice. Storytelling becomes a space where we can escape the gaze and the cage of the Empire, even if it is just for a few minutes.

In my review of Volume One of the Ohio Migration Anthology, I asked what comes out of reading such a variety of experiences centered around movement. To read about the movement of others isn’t about preparing for the inevitable—it’s about finding the intersections that inevitably remake us all, I wrote. While our intersections inevitably do remake us, it’s just as important to remember that we aren’t as disconnected as we may think. 

In this volume of the Ohio Migration Anthology series, stories of movement are once again highlighted against the backdrop of a mutual destination.

Not because survival is guaranteed, but because if someone is writing, it means that something has survived. Even the search for stories is a story of survival and remembrance. Meanwhile, forced migration is often a forced forgetting.

Maretha Dellarosa’s pieces about raising her children while trying to maintain a connection to Indonesian culture and Javanese language echoes the ancestral connection sought after in Ray Danner’s story Ανατολία (Anatolia). Betsy Rose Ujvagi’s poem I Was Raised by Refugees similarly reflects on how movements and migration lingers through the generations. Whether in the form of a poem, quilt, interview, illustration, or something else entirely, this anthology brings together multitudes of expression. 

Some stories span generations. Others wait to see what comes next. But stories rarely end with momentary movement—at every destination the story continues, even if buried within our cells' memories. Sometimes stories may pass over you, while other times they’ll run through your deepest parts, hearing whispers of a story we may have once told as well.

Reading and engaging with these stories will not necessarily change anything. But while the existence of this anthology doesn’t necessitate change, it does open up the possibility. Nothing is purely one-directional, despite what some of the laws of the universe might suggest. Even though circumstances may push in one direction, that doesn’t mean there will never be a return. Not necessarily a retracing but instead, a circular folding, spiraling into infinity.

There are a number of global power structures that have forced migration and movement for many of those who contributed to this anthology. In the play Three Countries, One Mother from Neema Bal and Katie Beck, the forced eviction of Lhotshampa people from Bhutan is told through the story of a Tamang family. Forcibly resettled to one country after another, all of the previous moments come together to make more—without any certainty of being. But whether or not movement is forced or chosen, the story will find roots in a new location.

In the two years since the first volume of the Ohio Migration Anthology was published, the Biden administration expelled over 450,000 people from the United States. Meanwhile, over 30,000 people of all ages continue to be detained in immigrant detention centers, and over a dozen adults and children have died while being detained.

The United States isn’t the only country that practices border imperialism. Across the globe, thousands are forced to leave while thousands more are subsequently told that they can’t stay. And as more and more people are forced to flee their homes due to climate emergencies, safe passage and stay cannot be accomplished at the expense of Indigenous, Native, First Nation, and Aboriginal people, whose lands were stolen and who continue to be exploited while they experience firsthand the effects of the ongoing climate emergency. 

The stories brought together in this anthology aren’t only brought together by virtue of their destination. These stories are brought together by a global system that seeks to control the right of movement. While some are able to make the choice to move or stay more freely than others, none of our choices are truly independent.

I hope these stories inspire many more thoughts than just those described above. One of the beauties of language is the plurality of its interpretations. In this century, more people have the chance to engage with one others’ stories than ever before, so let us embrace this opportunity.

Marina Manoukian, August 2023

Marina Manoukian is a writer of the Armenian diaspora, reader, and collage artist. Her work has been published with The Baffler, Full Stop Review, Lit Hub, among others. marinamanoukian.com

Introduction

I am a man.

Yo existo.

#BlackLivesMatter

If you've never felt your humanity denied, you may not understand why some people have to declare their right to exist. We are all just cells and bodies, after all. And that is a connection the Ohio Migration Anthology, in all of its volumes, is trying to highlight.

Volume Two includes representation from the United States (African Americans whose families came north during the Great Migration); Canada; Côte d'Ivoire; Guinea-Conakry; Guatemala; Greece; Hungary; India; Indonesia; Japan; Mauritania; Mexico; Serbia; Singapore; Slovakia; Turkey; Uganda; and Yugoslavia—as well as simultaneously Columbus, Toledo, Akron, Cleveland, Parma, Columbus, and Cincinnati.

Many of the stories, artwork, poems, and interviews in Volume Two grapple with belonging, identity, and dignity. Maya McOmie's work inspired the title of this collection, (Everything Is) Cells and Bodies. In I've Stopped Counting the Times I've Been Asked, she writes:

This echoes Houleye Thiam's My Accent from Volume One—poetizing everyday interactions experienced by multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual people. Interrogators of Thiam's accent and McOmie's lack of accent—despite identifying as biracial and bicultural—are actually reinforcing otherness, even if the questioner thinks they are just being curious or interested. 

Volume Two continues our tradition of publishing work from young writers and artists, following Skye Nguyen's loving biography