The First-Generation Child

Sahaj Kaur Kohli founded Brown Girl Therapy and wrote But What Will People Say?, and her Substack is the continuation. It is about the mental health of children of immigrants: boundaries with parents, guilt, the pull between duty and self. She is a therapist and writes like one who has also been the daughter. The archive on caring for aging immigrant parents is the reason it is here.

An award-winning newsletter that centers immigrants and their children and refuses to treat mental illness as a family secret. Fiza Pirani writes and curates first-person stories from communities where the subject is not discussed. It is careful, well reported, and not clinical. Read it if your family has a word for what is wrong but no word for help.

Narratives from immigrants, refugees and their descendants, gathered by a journalist who is one. The pieces are short, personal and varied by country of origin, which is the point: the second-generation experience rhymes across cultures. Good for finding your own family in someone else's.

An interview podcast on immigrant and multigenerational identity, hosted by Saadia Khan. Guests talk about parents, language, faith and the quiet negotiations of living in two places at once. It is thoughtful rather than confessional. Listen on the drive to your parents' house.

A bilingual mental-health podcast built for the Latinx community, hosted by a therapist. Episodes take on family expectations, caregiving, grief and the stigma around asking for help, in the language the family actually speaks. It also runs a directory of Latinx therapists. Share it with a parent who will not listen to you but might listen to this.

A Substack on emotional intelligence written from inside the South Asian immigrant experience. The posts are about the feelings families do not name and the habits that pass down anyway. Smaller and more personal than the others here. Read it for the one essay that says what you have not been able to.