#usa diaspora

[bsof-maarav]

Diversity win: this antisemitic mob is multicultural

[vintage-ukraine]

A poster for the Ukrainian Festival in New Jersey, USA, 1982

[aqlstar]

Can we all just give a round of applause to all the Jewish lawyers and lawyer adjacent types who donate their time and expertise to argue discrimination cases? Especially as a Jewish college student, it means a lot that there are Jewish professionals out there who are looking out for us.

[secular-jew]

[useless-catalanfacts]

Did you know that Audrey Hepburn danced two traditional Catalan songs?

It happened in the 1952 movie Secret People. The movie's music was composed by Robert Gerhard, a composer born in 1896 in Valls, Catalonia. He grew up in Catalonia and studied music in different parts of Europe, becoming a well-known composer and adviser to the Minister of Fine Arts of Catalonia's Government during the Republic. However, his life was struck with the defeat in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Like tens of thousands of Catalans more, his family had to go on exile after the fascists' victory in the war.

Until the death of the Spanish fascist dictator Franco (1975), after Robert Gerhard's own death in 1970, his music was not played in Spain and his motherland Catalonia. Meanwhile, he had become a very respected composer in the UK, France, the USA and other countries, and was awarded with prizes including being declared Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Cambridge and the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (a knighthood given by the British Monarchy to people who have contributed to society).

He always stayed close to his Catalan roots and composed Catalan music genres like sardana and spoke about his Catalan identity. In this clip of the movie Secret People, Audrey Hepburn dances to a song made of two traditional Catalan folk songs: El cant dels ocells and La mare de Déu quan era xiqueta. Here's the clip:

Here you can hear the original songs:

El cant dels ocells ("The Song of the Birds"):

La mare de Déu quan era xiqueta ("When Mary was a young girl"):

Can you recognise the melodies in the movie clip?

[psychopomp-recital]

Okay folks let’s talk-

So so tired of Non-Americans trying to erase the identities of Americans. In particular European-Americans (Americans with European heritage).

We are still here. Our cultures are still here. It is not a monolith. You can’t ignore YOUR history by invalidating ours. Your countries played a part in the colonization process of these lands. You are not blameless.

I linked below the entire post from @Therootcircle on Insta I think EVERYONE should be reading it. And read the comments too.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lisa Fazio (@therootcircle)

[anghraine]

There's something really strange and creepy about the self-appointed diaspora police who fixate on the exact breakdowns of strangers' ethnic backgrounds.

Yeah, I get the "I'm 1/32nd Cherokee princess" thing but "is your blood puuuuuure" is super gross as well, especially if the person doing it has nothing to do with the community in question.

[the-most-humble-blog]

Donald Juan Trumpington (DJT): The Deportation Demigod 🔥

The man, the myth, the orange-tinted terror who strikes fear into the undocumented and dreams of building walls taller than their hopes.

🌪 BACKSTORY 🌪

When the universe begged for chill, DJT delivered chaos on a platinum platter, trimmed with gold-leaf tacos no one could afford. A man with the finesse of a wrecking ball and the subtlety of a nuclear warhead, Donald Juan Trumpington didn’t just rise to power—he boot-stomped his way there, fake tan glowing like the goddamn sun.

His reign became a nightmare for anyone who even looked like they might not have a birth certificate on hand. If you were undocumented? Guess what: DJT knew. If your tamales tasted too good? He KNEW. If your cousin Pablo couldn’t stop posting party selfies on Facebook? Oh, he fucking KNEW.

🛑 THE GREAT DEPORTATION 🛑

DJT's pièce de résistance was The Great Deportation, an event so catastrophic even abuelas holding rosaries couldn’t pray fast enough to stop it. Entire families disappeared overnight:

The tias who made mole that healed your soul? GONE.

The primo who turned his garage into a second living room? GONE.

The drunk uncle who didn’t even have a passport? STILL GONE.

Even the tamales didn’t survive—steamed, wrapped, and shipped back faster than anyone could scream, “¡NO MAMES, GÜEY!”

And the cries? Oh, the cries were MAGNIFICENT: “I Black, I Black, plz no deport!” suddenly echoed from people who’d spent YEARS saying, “I’m Dominican, not Black.”

But guess what? The I.C.E. stormtroopers, mostly Black themselves, weren’t buying that bullshit. Years of fake accents and “I’m just visiting” weren’t cutting it anymore. Their collective mood: “Deuces, cabrones.”

💥 POWERS 💥

💀 Boot-to-Ass Syndrome: This man doesn’t just deport people—he sends their souls packing. DJT specializes in blunt-force deportation trauma with the precision of a bureaucratic surgeon.

🎯 Accent Radar: Fake a southern drawl? Claim you’re Canadian? DJT KNOWS. His finely tuned Accent Sense will sniff out lies faster than you can say, “Ay caramba!”

🏗 Wall Builder Supreme: Forget architects—DJT can summon walls faster than you can Google “cheap ladders.” His walls come preloaded with spikes, cameras, anti-rope tech, and a middle finger emoji.

📢 Twitter Sonic Attacks: DJT’s tweets aren’t just rants—they’re verbal frag grenades.

“Covfefe”? A nation stopped breathing.

“BUILD THAT WALL!”? Entire psyches shattered.

His social media is weaponized chaos.

❄️ Stormtrooper Deployment: DJT’s I.C.E. squads aren’t just enforcers—they’re goddamn hunters. They can sniff out an undocumented soul faster than your tia can find gossip at a baby shower.

🛡 WEAKNESS 🛡

NONE. 💀 When it comes to deportation, DJT is an unstoppable force of orange carnage.

Think you can hide? HA.

Hide in a cousin’s trailer park? Knocking on the door in 3 minutes.

Blend into the suburbs with some organic tortillas from Whole Foods? LOL, he’ll sniff out your salsa faster than a Karla sniffs out drama.

Even the Avengreros (The Avengers Undocumented Member Division) had to wave the white flag.

No tacos.

No nanas.

No hope. Even their heroic churro stand got dismantled.

🏆 LEGACY 🏆

Donald Juan Trumpington didn’t just deport people—he deported their dreams, hopes, and childhood memories.

His impact was so seismic that entire cultures became DIY YouTube tutorials. (“How to Make Tamales From Memory While Crying.”)

He is a hurricane of orange hair, loud ties, and unrelenting destruction. If you’re undocumented? Pray to whatever god you’ve got, because DJT IS COMING.

And he’s not just coming— HE’S TWEETING ABOUT IT WHILE DRINKING DIET COKE.

REBLOG OR BE DEPORTED (jk, probably) 🚨

🔥 Don’t let this masterpiece of unhinged chaos go unread. REBLOG NOW, or DJT’s Accent Radar might catch YOU next!

Tag your primos, your tias, or that one friend who thinks they’re safe because they took one semester of Duolingo Spanish.

💥 REBLOG THIS. DON’T BE A CABRÓN. 💥

[lgbtlunaverse]

The thing is: there's actually absolutely nothing wrong with modern/university/highschool or whatever AUs that take characters originally from japan or china or korea or any other country and plop them in america. There's a huge and varied disapora population in the us, and if the (usually usa) author wants to write about characters in a setting familiar to them that's perfectly normal and fine.

But what gets really jarring is when a fic clearly takes place in the united states but it doesn't know it takes place in the united states. Characters are just going to us-style schools and colleges and eating fluffy pancakes with maple syrup but they're also still using honorifics like -ge or -hyung or -kun and names are said last name – first name so you think ok they live in the usa but speak their native tongue around each other. That makes sense. Except it's never actually mentioned or talked about and no one ever switches to english in public, no one is relieved to have friends from the same ethnicity, no one has family that still lives overseas, no one talks about not being able to get certain ingredients at the grocery store to cook their favorite childhood dishes, and no one in general seems to be even be aware that they're diaspora. As if the fic isn't even meant to be in the us.

It's like the reverse of ace attorney's japanifornia, instead of a los angeles with an incredible amount of japanese cultural influence they live in a japan where everything just happens to be usamerican.

[luvmesumus]

[gregor-samsung]

" Quando è scoppiata la prima guerra del Golfo, in Iraq, ho vomitato. In bagno. Da sola. Tutto quello che avevo in pancia. Tutto quello che il Jirro mi ordinava di fare. Quella guerra del gennaio del 1991, che ha seguito di poche settimane l’inizio della guerra somala, per me ancora oggi, dopo tanti anni, ha lo stesso colore verde del mio vomito. Era la prima volta che in televisione si vedeva un bombardamento di quella portata. E noi spettatori passivi e impauriti. Il verde era dappertutto. Non solo nel mio cesso. Squarciava il cielo tetro di Baghdad come nei vecchi videogame degli anni ottanta, colorandolo delle scie luminose di missili centauri che correvano dritti verso l’obiettivo.

La prima guerra del Golfo era in gestazione dall’agosto del 1990. Un attimo prima delle tensioni nel Golfo persico hooyo era partita per la Somalia e Diego Armando Maradona aveva perso la sua coppa del mondo allo stadio Olimpico contro la Germania di Rudi Völler. Il 2 agosto invece Saddam Hussein, padre padrone dell’Iraq, aveva invaso il vicino Kuwait come ritorsione all’estrazione di petrolio da pozzi a ridosso del suo confine. Nei mesi successivi accadde di tutto: movimento di truppe, mezzi corazzati, giornalisti con l’elmetto sparpagliati lungo il confine, caos organizzato, diplomazie alacremente al lavoro. E poi l’attesa estenuante della deflagrazione che avrebbe frantumato la breve illusione di pace che dopo la caduta del muro di Berlino nel 1989 avevamo coltivato un po’ tutti. Deflagrazione che puntualmente arrivò allo scoccare del 15 gennaio 1991, ovvero il termine ultimo dato dall’ONU al baffuto ex amico dell’Occidente Saddam Hussein (foraggiato per anni, anni e anni di armi e via dicendo e poi trasformato in nemico pubblico numero uno) per il ritiro delle truppe dal Kuwait. Da lì fu guerra. Gli Stati Uniti in testa e poi i loro alleati fecero piovere su Baghdad e su tutto l’Iraq una pioggia di fuoco e fulmini che ci incollò davanti agli schermi televisivi per giorni. Non ricordo se fu proprio la prima sera di quei bombardamenti o una delle sere successive. So solo che mi chiusi in bagno a vomitare. "

Igiaba Scego, Cassandra a Mogadiscio, Bompiani (collana Narratori Italiani), 2023¹; pp. 92-93.

[bsof-maarav]

Will they ever begin to wonder why the only Jews in their circles are Jews who feel no social obligations to any specific Jewish community; Jews who lack even the most fundamental knowledge of their own history, let alone the history of Jews from other parts of the diaspora; Jews who recoil from the thought of belonging to any Jewish collective that is not just a grouping of tokens but is fundamentally Jewish in its nature; Jews whose stake in being Jewish goes no deeper than some vague "cultural" reference to humor or bagels or buffoonish stereotypes; Jews who have never demonstrated a degree of solidarity with other Jews that is remotely commensurate with the loyalty that is demanded of them on the basis of whatever their non-Jewish circle claims to value; Jews who allow themselves to be externally defined;

Jews who preemptively disavow their own culture, traditions, history, and/or country to make others comfortable with them; Jews who do their utmost to reduce the friction between their culture and everyone else's, who are quiet about any ways in which they deviate from the group norm; who are quick to say that the only value in something Jewish is as an object lesson to be universalized and used in the service of someone else's liberation...

[vintage-ukraine]

Ukrainian girl painting a pysanka for Easter in Minneapolis, USA, 1941

[indigowriting]

what’s your favorite thing to write about? :0

i love love love writing characters who, for one reason or another, are WILDLY out of their depth (yxy in r&r/[REDACTED] wip getting sent ~300 years further into the past than intended, bai hua who just has no idea about genre conventions, what the original plot was, etc, while Also being 1000+ years in the past), and also women ^^ all of my novels are from the pov of women* (and all of them are lesbians as well! most of the women in my novels are lesbians or unlabelled but not interested in men, unless explicitly stated otherwise). oh and time travel i guess, since that features in 2/3 of my novels, can’t believe i forgot about that

[secular-jew]

Even if I convert I’ll never really be accepted as Jewish in America because I’m black. Even though my country has ruins of synagogues :(.

I’m really sad, but I will still convert anyway!🩷

Your observation is absurd and glad you're going through with it, IF IT'S WHAT YOU WANT.

Judaism doesn't seek or force conversions on anyone. It is not a proselytizing conversion ideology like Christianity or Islam. So it's entirely up to you.

As for the issue of acceptance. First, I'm glad you don't care what other people think. Are you converting for you, or for someone else? Never worry bout what someone else might think, it's a waste of brain power and causes useless anxiety.

No one really cares about skin color, except politicians who use this and any excuse to divide along racial, ethnic, and gender lines. The leftists, 'sexiste and Democrats are professionals at doing this.

There are entire entities of black Jews from the MENA, and if you're looking for black Jewish role models in the U.S., Sammy Davis Jr was a well know converted Jew who was accepted as such anywhere and everywhere. Other black American Jews include Drake, Rashida Jones (daughter of Quincy Jones), musician Lenny Kravitz, SNL star and actress Maya Rudolph, actress Kat Graham, musician Ben Harper, Tracee Ellis Ross (daughter of legend Diana Ross), actress Lisa Bonet, Nell Carter, Daveed Diggs, Rain Pryor (daughter of Richard Pryor). I could go on and on.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Did you know that the Catalan vault can be found in many buildings of the United States of America?

Here's some examples:

Grand Central Terminal, New York City. Photo from Getty.

Boston Public Library. Photo by Michael Freeman/Boston Public Library.

Ellis Island Registry Room, New York. Photo by Mike Ward on Flickr.

City Hall station of the New York subway. Photo by Michael Freeman.

The Catalan vault is a brick arch that is widely used in traditional Catalan architecture. It's also present in other parts of the Mediterranean, but not as common. Its main characteristic is that it's built with the longest side of the brick facing down (usually, ceilings are made with the shortest side facing down) and with a very gentle curve, resulting in a strong self-supporting vault that allows covering a whole room without needing columns or pillars in a way that would be impossible with other kinds of masonry, and also makes it possible to build it quickly and without needing centering (the wooden structure used to support the vault or arch while it's being built, and which is removed once it's made).

So how did it make its way to the USA?

It was brought by the Valencian architect Rafael Guastavino i Moreno (1842-1908). He had already designed important industrial buildings in Catalonia, including the factory that later became the Industrial School in Barcelona and La Massa theatre in Vilassar de Dalt, among others. At the time, in Catalonia, the Catalan vault was being widely used to cover ceilings in factories.

In 1881, Guastavino moved to New York City (USA), where he used the Catalan vault to cover big ceilings, which made him gain some fame for it. He patented the vault in the USA with the name "Guastavino system".

At the time, Americans were very worried about buildings catching fire, because it often happened and had caused a huge destruction in the Chicago 1871 fire. As a response, in 1883 Guastavino bought a patch of land in Connecticut, built two houses in it using the Catalan vault, and set them on fire. He took photos of the whole process to document it and prove how this architecture style is efficient in the case of fire. He wrote about it in the magazine Decorator and Furnisher and soon won the contest to design the Progress Club's building in New York City, which made him famous among architects in the area.

He created his own company (Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company) which was focused on building the Catalan vault. He was hired for many buildings and this architectural element spread. Most churches with stone vaults built between 1890 and 1940 in the USA were designed by Guastavino's firm, as well as many other buildings across the country, particularly New York and Massachusetts.

He's buried in the St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville (North Carolina, USA), a building he designed.