What's your port of entry?
Tell me what you’ve crossed to get here. Tell me what you still carry.
On the very first morning of this year, I hurried past the Freedom Tower, the former World Trade Center site, toward a moment that felt impossible just half a generation ago: the inauguration of New York City’s first Muslim mayor. Like every Muslim New Yorker, I feel a sharp dread whenever 9/11 is mentioned in the same breath as Muslims—it is an ache that has shaped decades of our lives, our policies, our fears. But there I was, on January 1st, walking past that horrific memory and into something new.
Thousands of New Yorkers stood in line for the inauguration block party. I was lucky enough to be invited to the ceremony. As I entered, an iconic 90s Bollywood track, Chaiya Chaiya, blasted through the speakers, and I cheesed hard. Our first South Asian mayor greeting us in the language of our joy, of our diaspora, felt like a fever dream. And then Sean Paul came on— and who could stop me from being even more cringe with my millennial stank face. Because if there is a soundtrack to being a millennial New Yorker from the boroughs, it’s a combination of Bollywood and dancehall, between Queens and Kingston, between the homes we came from and the ones we built here.
I scanned the crowd and saw faces that built this moment. Activists. Elected officials. Journalists. Organizers. Friends. People I reported on early in my career—the first Bangladeshi Muslim woman City Council member from Brooklyn, Shahana Hanif. Naureen Akhter, who once served as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district leader. Activists from organizations that helped Zohran understand the immigrant communities of this city (DRUM, CAAAV, and Chhaya). People who, for decades, have held neighborhoods together, advocated for families, demanded dignity, and helped shape the city we live in. So many of them immigrants, so many of them Muslim and South Asian. We aren’t only visible—we are centered. Not as a threat. Not as a statistic. But as changemakers of this momentous city our parents survived so we could thrive.
And then Zohran said this at his inauguration, and I immediately texted my sister because he had described our childhood:
“Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox on a Sunday?
Where else indeed.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams was sworn in to office for the third time, and yet he looked renewed. He said, he could now move forward and not just focus on pushing back.
When he spoke, he broke down in tears.
“Little Black boy, you are worth it, and you always were. Without any titles, you were enough. You deserve love. You deserve protection. And I am honored to help create a city worthy of you.”
For a city that prides itself on toughness, tenderness like this felt revolutionary.
Amadou Ly, who swore Jumaane in, was once a Senegalese kid in New York facing deportation even as his high school robotics team beat elite private schools. His brilliance couldn’t cross borders. His body could barely stay in the country. And now here he was, helping swear in the leadership of the greatest city in the world.
Zohran is not the first Muslim mayor in our region. The state of New Jersey has had at least ten. But New York—the city of immigrants, of myth, of grit and music and language and impossible dreams—has never reflected itself accurately in power. Until now. It especially matters in 2025, when immigrants once again feel under siege.
This year, New York chose something radical: it chose unity without erasure. It chose a story that belongs to all of us.
And maybe that’s why this moment feels personal. Last year, I left my marriage with a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I moved back in with my parents—yes, right in Zohran’s former Assembly district. I faced grief, fear, and exhaustion I never imagined. But I also chose myself. I chose my children. I chose to continue pursuing the career that has always felt like my calling—storytelling and journalism with kamona—the stubborn, relentless desire to live fully, as we say in Bangla.
And that brings me back to why this newsletter exists. Why I called it Port of Entry. Because all of us, whether immigrant, child of immigrants, refugee, or simply someone who has crossed invisible borders of identity, class, faith, love, memory—we all have an entry point into who we are.
I want to know what your PORT OF ENTRY is.
What histories did your family leave behind?
What new futures are you building?
What city, moment, loss, joy, migration, revolution, heartbreak, or stubborn hope brought you into the life you have now?
Hit reply and tell me.
Here’s to crossing into something braver. Here’s to belonging. Here’s to what we build next.
With love and solidarity,
Jennifer
This piece is breathtaking. It weaves personal memory, political history, and cultural texture into one narrative that feels both intimate and collective. The way you layered music - Chaiya Chaiya and Sean Paul with faces of activists, organisers, and elected officials makes the moment feel alive, rooted in diaspora joy and decades of struggle.
That line about creating a city worthy of the little Black boy hit different for me. Representation isn't just about seeing someone who looks like you in power, it's about fundamentally reshaping what power is supposed to serve in the first place. The way you describe that moment at the innauguration with Bollywood and Sean Paul playing is perfect because it shows how identity isn't this clean, singular thing but a messy collision of all the places and sounds and memories we carry. My own port of entry was realizing that belonging doesn't mean erasure, and this piece captures that tension beautifully.