As 2023 comes to a close, we also say goodbye to this here publication. After seven years of operation and almost 250 pieces published, we are bringing the curtain down on our dear be:longing for now and taking a moment (a month, a year, a decade, who knows?) to pause, reflect and appreciate everything that has been since we started back in 2016.
Seven and a half years ago, a couple of fresh-faced would-be Chief Editors came together around a simple idea: creating an online space where migrants, people from migrant backgrounds, refugees and cross-cultural individuals could express their thoughts, tell their stories and bear witness to the intricate, complex, multilayered and often emotional nature of life as a human being who lives between and amongst multiple cultures.
Inspired by years of conversations with our respective siblings, families, friends, and indeed each other, we – Dunja and Jasmine – began planning a platform that could house myriad stories from multiple contributors in (almost) any mode of expression they wished! A few months later, in December 2016, be:longing was born. The website you have in front of you as you read this tells the story of what has been since then.
This is a collection we’re immensely proud of and grateful for, and it is bittersweet (to say the least!) to be bringing it to a close for now. But all good things must come to an end sooner or later, and today is that day for this iteration of be:longing.
Before we close this chapter for good, though – and in line with our yearly tradition – we want to reflect on 2023 and all the pieces that made this year so special for our publication. So here it is – our last end-of-year reflection.
* * *
We published 38 pieces in 2023. Whether they explored navigating the pressures of arbitrary, black-and-white categories of identity or celebrated the many areas of comforting grey, we learned again the breadth of cross-cultural experiences and saw some of our own captured vividly.
Migration and displacement leave lasting impressions. There are the memories and stories of the journeys themselves that we come back to time and again, to make sense of what has shifted. Luck showed us that the shift might be so big as to brand early memories on our minds; to make early memories in the new place vivid, right down to small details. It might be multiple journeys that we’ve embarked on, like we read in The belonging journey: To and from, that call on us to make peace with rolling reflections – a continual journey. They might be one fateful journey – one passed down to the next generation like in Sour cherry, or even shared with strangers or acquaintances if the recollection hits in unexpected moments, like we read in A story from a park bench and The secret concerto.
Our contributors reflected on the poignancy of the relationships we carry with us wherever we go. In Mamá, a mother’s resistance became her child’s motivation to take hold of the baton and carry it on for them both. An immortal hug and Checkpoints remembered loved ones who are no longer with us – through the people, the love and the memories tied to them. In Kelinci these ties expanded to relationships with childhood carers – it pondered the economic forces that compel migration and the lasting impressions and impacts those time-bounded migrations make.
The memories of the places, languages and ways of life we leave when we move were also front-of-mind for our contributors. Before and A piece of Moldova reminded us of what we can transport with us and build into our lives elsewhere. Arabic showed us how to enjoy every little piece we manage to keep or find, even when it is challenging to nurture it more fully in a new place. Mother tongue and Letters home captured the push and pull of holding onto these pieces, and also explored what we chase after no matter how distant those bits of our identities have become – whether that is a language or a country. Suitcase magic recalled that sharing whatever we bring along – or back – with us sets off a new wave of experiences, allowing us to create new memories and forge new connections while holding on from either end to the places that shape us. And The elements, Cyprus breakfast, Nicosia and Desert Songs /أغاني الصحراء explored how we start to uncover some essence, perhaps the fundamentals, of human experience in our journeys through food, or through connecting with ourselves in silence and solitude.
Finding that place of peace and celebration of your identity takes a lot of introspection. It takes recognising that your identity has undergone a level of destabilisation with a move, like we heard in Reject and project. It takes re-examining what has been normalised and reinforced in your upbringing and in your day-to-day, like we heard in #2. The rising showed us that it takes accepting that new reality you uncover, and New worlds showed us that it then takes hope and creativity to re-imagine your future. Ultimately, it takes persistent resistance to hold onto – and live – the identity you claim through all of these efforts, as we heard in I see you/me.
Claiming an identity is often something we do in spite of challenges to it, too – the endeavour is active and iterative. Lost and found described the process as limitless – a continual journey of finding, misplacing, discarding, and finding again. The complexity of cross-cultural identities – the honouring of the mix, and resisting being boxed in – is one of the themes we’ve seen navigated time and again by our contributors. In #3, we saw how this can be achieved through living the complexity of your identity without explanation.
We also saw the active challenging of these assumptions in More than refugees, a piece that also highlighted the significant barriers refugees come up against in the countries where they resettle: barriers to acceptance and barriers to employment. Together with Irvine, it also examined the practical realities of making a career out of an arts practice as people of refugee and migrant backgrounds. Extending this translation of introspection and critical reflection into broader action, With open arms: The COAR community described some of the efforts cross-cultural people are taking to honour and champion diversity – in this instance, through building anti-racism into our communities and institutions.
While the work of building societies that are accepting of difference goes on, we do our best to find compromises. Like we heard in One of us, one of us!, we try to fit ourselves in somewhere, even if those places we commit to don’t fully accept us. We find ourselves chased by that spectre of a question that follows us around with all its implications – Where are you from? – and find numerous ways to answer it or not, like we heard in #1. We try to internalise and emulate cultural scripts and norms to varying degrees of success, like The right way and Plunging down under showed us. But that lack of acceptance is often insidious, especially when it cuts across other layers of rejection. Taaf / طاف showed us how it can make us hostile to ourselves, and I envy the tree that is always a cedar described a longing to stand proudly in your identity rather than forcing a change to make yourself fit.
The poignancy of be:longing has been in the sharing of these stories – of finding kindred spirits and making space for these stories that mean so much to all of us. We were lucky to meet with some of these kindred spirits in person a few times this year. Early in 2023, we hosted a sketch and poetry soiree – Summer sketches and a life of poetry – alongside Bobby Graham and Vesna Cvjetićanin at the Serbian Embassy in Canberra. In the middle of the year, we visited the ‘Settled/Unsettled’ exhibition, and got to see how others in Canberra and beyond were engaging with migration, refugeehood and belonging. Then, in November, we held our very last Poetry and Story Share event – something that had become a staple for us outside of the COVID-lockdown years. It was a chance to share once more in the warmth and generosity of our wonderful contributors and readership – to have the company of some of the people who have made be:longing the wonder it has been to us.
* * *
These seven years in which be:longing has operated have been immensely gratifying for us. It is almost surreal to see what the publication is today, and how much it has grown since 2016. Though we acted on a spark and cared for the flame that took hold, turning a small idea into what we consider to be a roaring flame over the years – the lion’s share of credit for what this publication has become goes to our contributors. Each one entrusted us with a slice of their life story. So many of these stories were, we are sure, not easy to write down. We are so thankful for the trust put in us. Of course, many stories remain to be told. Many chapters, events, interactions, exchanges, navigations, jokes, heartbreaks, disappointments and elations. We will keep our eyes and ears peeled for their new works as they pop up in other publications and media.
To our contributors – thank you. be:longing would be nothing without you.
To our readers – thank you. We are so glad to have shared this space with you. Your support and time have meant so much to us.
To our editors, past and present – thank you. Your efforts have helped keep this ship afloat and sailing.
And last but not least, to our visual muse, Dušica Milutinović, whose images adorn many, many of the pieces on our site – thank you. You are a star.
We will miss you all.
© Dunja Kaczmarek and Jasmine Soukieh, 2023
Featured image © Dušica Milutinović, 2019
be:longing 