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As an introverted, Colombia-born Unitedstatesian who has lived in five countries on three continents, and as an immigrant who grew up wanting to be a writer, it was so refreshing to stumble upon Yaldaz Sadakova’s work.

Though immigrants have different stories and come from diverse backgrounds, we are all related by the experience of taking up residence in a foreign land. Every Yaldaz long-form memoir I have read made me feel like she was in my own head—as if she was either a part of me or somehow knew me. Though we have never met in person, I now consider her a member of my own kin.

Yaldaz is the kind of complex character I grew up wanting to see on the screen and in literature; yet, she’s a real person. It is this person I want to introduce: the creator of one of my favorite immigration blogs (foreignish.net), author of the book The Wrong Passport: Memoir Stories About Immigration, and a human, all too human.

In this in-depth interview, we unpack the dreaded question “Where are you from?”, its limitations, how it’s a micro-aggression, and a better question to ask; Yaldaz speaks to how she found new emotional and intellectual anchors after leaving her birth country and how she found her creative voice in a foreign land; her feelings of shame and distress about forgetting her mother tongue; becoming estranged from her Turkish Muslim heritage; we interrogate our hesitation to correct people when they mispronounce our names; she elaborates as to why she’s convinced borders are a form of injustice; and much more.