“Believe me, I never wanted to go to Masala Chaat House. I passed it every day, a cramped one-room restaurant sandwiched between two printing shops on Kampala's bustling Nasser Road.”

“In 2017, I visited Fukushima on a travel grant from Columbia University’s MFA program to research why, six years after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami ravaged the eastern coast of Japan, 35,000 individuals continued to live in temporary housing. The small, prefabricated houses spread across the greater Fukushima Prefecture were quickly deteriorating. Tens of thousands of Japanese were in limbo, news sources insisted.”

“One thing to know about me is that I am an enthusiastic but terrible driver; I really only drive on assignment. On the Texas interstate that day in late 2020, heading north, my mind was filled with concerns over the rules of the road. I was filled, too, with a sense of nervous anticipation for what I would find in Killeen, who I might call once I made it there, and what I might learn from them and, if I got lucky, about myself. So I wasn’t paying much attention to the sloping landscape outside the rental car window, the flatlands that became rolling hills, the non-descript chaparral that flanked the lonely highway I was driving on.“

“I was born into Christianity as I was born into America. In my childhood, there was the church and the diaspora, and I could not imagine one without the other.”

“The essence of design is just to express who you are, or express a view you have of the world. For me, it’s also about the sense for craftsmanship.”

“When she tasted a Cuban banana, her eyes widened, her mouth puckered, she cocked her head and looked at the bowl, the tree, my face, back to the bowl and to the banana inside of it.”

I fell in love with the thin country, but what I didn’t say is that I also fell in love with a Chilean.