America Calling: A Reboot
and what's next
When I launched my newsletter, America Calling: A Take on Education, Culture and Migration four years ago, I imagined it as a place to think aloud about the ideas that animated my work and writing: education, immigration, culture, belonging, and the experience of crossing borders.
As I move this newsletter to Substack, I’ve been reflecting on what should stay the same and what might evolve.
Inspired by my book, at its heart America Calling will continue to explore the intersections of education, culture, and migration. I remain fascinated by movement in all its forms: how we move, why we move, what we carry with us and what we choose to leave behind, and who we ultimately become along the way. These questions have shaped my professional life in international education, but they have also shaped my life as a writer, immigrant, traveler, and observer of the world.
Looking back through decades of journals, essays, and books, I realized that I was writing about movement long before I entered the field of international education. You can read one of my earliest pieces below, where 26 years ago, I reflected on the geographic and metaphorical distance between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Delhi while waiting for a train at the Kalamazoo station. My first nonfiction book, The Raj on the Move: Story of the Dak Bungalow, was also part-travelogue. Whether navigating actual geographies, writing about global migration, or chronicling personal journeys of belonging and identity, I have always been drawn to the spaces between places, cultures, and ways of being.
That broader idea of movement will guide this next chapter of the newsletter.
You can expect essays and reflections on international education and migration, of course. But I will also occasionally write about the lessons I am learning as I build an independent practice after decades in the nonprofit world; about culture broadly defined—books, music, films, and ideas that have captured my attention; and about the natural world, which has become an increasingly important source of perspective and meaning.
In recent years, I have come to appreciate that not all journeys require crossing oceans or borders. One of my favorite nature writers, Janisse Ray, calls this to “journey in place.” A crowded international education conference and a flock of geese moving across an autumn sky can both teach us something about migration, belonging, and change.
So while America Calling may be evolving, its purpose remains the same: to explore what we learn through our outer and inner journeys.
I hope you’ll continue the journey with me.