I’m the daughter of two immigrants who navigated a system built against them to come to the U.S. Neither ever knew that they wanted to leave their home country, but they always wanted for both of them to have the best life they could.

Touria El Jaoual, my mom, grew up in Rabat, one of Morocco's four imperial cities. As a descendent of Moulay Idrissi, a late king of Morocco, she spent the early years of her life living in the palace in Dar al-Makhzen.

Although I claim to be more knowledgeable about Sri Lanka than my younger sister, becauseI was born in Sri Lanka and she was born in the U.S., most of my so-called experience comes through the eyes of my parents. Fondly referring to our homeland as the pearl of the Indian ocean, both my parents spent the majority of their lives across the globe, later moving to the U.S. in 2006, just two years after I was born. 

While I’ve lived in American suburbs my whole life, my parents grew up in rural parts of the Zhejiang province in China. My dad’s father was a government employee and worked in the next town over.