“I don't hold onto Haiti the way people expect. I left at 13 and had to survive alone by 16, so home became something I rebuilt in myself, not a place I could return to. What I keep is Creole, my mother's courage, and the refusal to let this country make me ashamed of where I started.”

“I do not hold onto where I came from as a place I need to return to. I hold it as one of the two countries editing me at the same time. My accent still maps where I started, but the person who learned when not to swear in an American office is just as real.”

“I left India as a kid with a divorced mother and a stepfather I consider my real father; we burned the balance sheet so he could go to Cornell in his mid-40s and start over. Holding onto where you're from, for me, has never been about a place: it is about the chip on your shoulder that asks whether you are good enough, and the gratitude that the country that took the chance deserves your loyalty back.”

“I was born in Bangladesh, studied in Hong Kong, then Cornell, and spent 263 days in Ottawa while my wife was in Ithaca because immigration paperwork said so. That distance taught me that holding onto where you’re from is not nostalgia; it is a daily calibration of what you actually have.”

“I don’t hold onto where I’m from as a place. I hold onto the feeling of losing it: at 16 I left my country, my friends, my identity, and watched my parents rebuild from nothing. That loss became my engine. I still feel it when I’m making a hard decision, and I want it there. It reminds me what we survived and what I’m building now.”

“I was born in the U.S. to Mexican parents and spent years feeling ni de aquí ni de allá, until I realized I never had to choose. Now I build my life between both places, and that in-between is not a gap, it is the whole point.”

“I grew up in Kathmandu, and when I moved west for school I kept finding myself introduced as the traveler from the Himalayas at powwows, classrooms, and airport exhibits. For me, holding onto where you're from is not nostalgia; it is a living practice you carry forward, whether through a plate of kwati, a Denver airport exhibit, or a conversation that lets your heritage belong in the room.”

“I waited two years to bring my wife and daughter to the U.S., and when the date finally came, I felt scared more than relieved. Holding onto where you're from is not nostalgia. It is the weight of knowing someone you love is leaving their whole world behind so you can build one together.”

“I left Argentina at seventeen, slept in a synagogue basement in New York, and ate potatoes on a twenty-dollar weekly budget. I miss the ranchadas with my friends, but I go back to remember, not to stay: the barrio gave me my code, not my ceiling.”