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A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home
From rediscovering an ancestral village in China to experiencing the realities of American life as a Nigerian, the search for belonging crosses borders and generations. Selected from the archives of Catapult magazine, the essays in A Map Is Only One Story highlight the human side of immigration policies and polarized rhetoric, as twenty writers share provocative personal stories of existing between languages and cultures.
Victoria Blanco relates how those with family in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez experience life on the border. Nina Li Coomes recalls the heroines of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and what they taught her about her bicultural identity. Nur Nasreen Ibrahim details her grandfather’s crossing of the India-Pakistan border sixty years after Partition. Krystal A. Sital writes of how undocumented status in the United States can impact love and relationships. Porochista Khakpour describes the challenges in writing (and rewriting) Iranian America. Through the power of personal narratives, as told by both emerging and established writers, A Map Is Only One Story offers a new definition of home in the twenty-first century.
Victoria Blanco relates how those with family in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez experience life on the border. Nina Li Coomes recalls the heroines of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and what they taught her about her bicultural identity. Nur Nasreen Ibrahim details her grandfather’s crossing of the India-Pakistan border sixty years after Partition. Krystal A. Sital writes of how undocumented status in the United States can impact love and relationships. Porochista Khakpour describes the challenges in writing (and rewriting) Iranian America. Through the power of personal narratives, as told by both emerging and established writers, A Map Is Only One Story offers a new definition of home in the twenty-first century.
252 pages, Paperback
First published February 11, 2020
106 people are currently reading
9,173 people want to read
About the author
Nicole Chung
7Ìýbooks959ÌýfollowersNicole Chung is the author of A Living Remedy (April 4, 2023) and the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know (2018). Named a Best Book of the Year by over twenty outlets, including NPR, The Washington Post, Time, and Library Journal, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and NAIBA Book of the Year, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Nicole is currently a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Time, The Guardian, Slate, and Vulture. Find her on Twitter, Mastodon, and Post at @nicolesjchung.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
February 5, 2020
Available in February 2020
My feelings about this collection of non-fiction essays is mixed. I have always been very invested in reading stories and talking to actual immigrants about their expectations and experiences prior to immigration, and their current perceptions once they have become citizens or residents of the U.S.
Three of my grandparents emigrated to the U.S. in the early 20th century from Europe, with the full Ellis Island Experience. Since I was the last child in the family, none of my grandparents were living, when I came on the scene. This gap created many questions for me at a very young age. I am naturally curious and so this has been a life long pursuit to understand the motivations and experiences of those moving their entire life behind and leaving those closest to them. My maternal grandfather, left Norway unmarried in his late 30's and settled in Baltimore. While my parents shared a few memories of their experiences being a child of immigrants, this was not entirely unusual in their childhood though it was for mine. Thus, I expected to hear more about adjustments experienced in a new society as many books, documentaries, movies and conversations have focused on over my fifty plus years. That is not what I got from reading the stories.
Several stories were filled with anger. Anger toward the reports from family members or friends who had left and returned telling what now seemed embellished tales of opportunity, that the author had not found and his circumstances not meeting expectations. A lot of that anger was also directed at Americans. Of course, many dreams are just that. Dreams are the stuff of fantasies and having to establish a new residence, learn new laws, find a suitable job and manage money is challenging for citizens born here, so it would be more so, when you adapt to a different way of living standard and resources are different. To be wholly honest, it sounded very immature (two stories stand out) and resentful. One compared his African homeland as being much better because the complexity of the living circumstances here and the high cost of living comparatively. I'll leave you to your on conclusions.
Many of the writers focused on their American experiences, the majority of the writers were from the continents of the Africa and Asia with a few from the Middle East. One story focused on the frustration of an Indian trying to move temporarily to another Asia country with great difficulty. Certain Asian countries have had challenges to their own infrastructure after allowing extremely wealthy Indian business persons to establish commercial enterprises, thus they are banned from establishing residents even as foreign nationals. Another woman raised in Pakistan, recounts her first visit to her grandfathers village in India. She recounts his experience to suddenly relocate when Partition happened in the late 1940's. It was very insightful and having read at least 40 books, many non-fiction about life in India and reading first hand accounts from Indians (I supported a charity located there for more than 30 years), this was fascinating to me. Likewise, I have been very focused on the African experience though books from the past are much harder to come by than the many that are not being released.
I had considered for more than a decade moving abroad and nearly did so, twenty years ago and a sudden change in circumstances stopped that from becoming a reality. Thus, this offered the emotional side of abruptly changing one's entire life. A few stories were also shared from the perspective of children of immigrants and the strain of navigating two cultures that are quite different. They challenge they face when seeing their parents seeming more loyal to their homeland while they have embraced more Western thought and ideals.
Overall, I enjoyed the many of the insights shared. The level of the writing was excellent. All the writers had a firm grasp of English and sentence structure so there was not a challenge in language or its style of delivery. However, the attitudes of a few of the authors were a little hard to stomach and I even debated finishing their essay. So, there is a bit of a hodge podge in the offerings.
I wouldn't tell someone not to read it, especially if they haven't met an immigrant or a few. Even as an individual living in an International city full of immigrants (the transition has been phenomenal over the past 25 years). I've met hundreds of people from all over the world and seek them out to make them feel welcome and less lonely. I have befriended quite a few, inviting them for a meal and an ear. I've also been romantically involved with "foreign" born individuals. So, I am glad I read it.
Though, overall, I think many believe the Hollywood version of America, which unfortunately motivates them to come only to see a very different reality. I don't know many American born people with unlimited income (I have found many, many immigrants think that Americans have much more money than many actually do, nor do they realize how many Americans are in the choke-hold of debt.). This unlimited resources expectation was confirmed in more than one essay I read. There was also a disconnect, with some having the expectation, that they were "owed" aid in establishing their new life by family/friends/acquaintances/citizens and when that was not provided, bitterness ensued. Again, as an adult, we are entirely responsible for our own well being, though I deeply believe we are also responsible for our neighbors especially when unexpected events occur. My perception is that those who are unhappy here, may have been just as unhappy before they came, because it is an internal issue. As I walked by an Immigration Attorney's office today, I saw a large family getting out of their vehicle heading for the building, they were laughing and teasing one another. It made me smile.
Wherever we are, we chose our attitude and how we respond to circumstances. One of my favorite sayings is, "Happiness is an Inside Job". I am totally empathetic with anyone who desires to embrace new adventures abroad, but managing expectations is critically important when encountering the new culture.
I have already recommended this book to a friend, who is of Indian/Pakistan Heritage. He is looking forward to this reading adventure.
Thank you to Catapult for providing me the opportunity to learn more about immigration in the 21st century in sharing this gift. Thank you to the authors for sharing their feelings and experiences to their new neighbors. All opinions are my own and they were not influenced by the receipt of the book.
My feelings about this collection of non-fiction essays is mixed. I have always been very invested in reading stories and talking to actual immigrants about their expectations and experiences prior to immigration, and their current perceptions once they have become citizens or residents of the U.S.
Three of my grandparents emigrated to the U.S. in the early 20th century from Europe, with the full Ellis Island Experience. Since I was the last child in the family, none of my grandparents were living, when I came on the scene. This gap created many questions for me at a very young age. I am naturally curious and so this has been a life long pursuit to understand the motivations and experiences of those moving their entire life behind and leaving those closest to them. My maternal grandfather, left Norway unmarried in his late 30's and settled in Baltimore. While my parents shared a few memories of their experiences being a child of immigrants, this was not entirely unusual in their childhood though it was for mine. Thus, I expected to hear more about adjustments experienced in a new society as many books, documentaries, movies and conversations have focused on over my fifty plus years. That is not what I got from reading the stories.
Several stories were filled with anger. Anger toward the reports from family members or friends who had left and returned telling what now seemed embellished tales of opportunity, that the author had not found and his circumstances not meeting expectations. A lot of that anger was also directed at Americans. Of course, many dreams are just that. Dreams are the stuff of fantasies and having to establish a new residence, learn new laws, find a suitable job and manage money is challenging for citizens born here, so it would be more so, when you adapt to a different way of living standard and resources are different. To be wholly honest, it sounded very immature (two stories stand out) and resentful. One compared his African homeland as being much better because the complexity of the living circumstances here and the high cost of living comparatively. I'll leave you to your on conclusions.
Many of the writers focused on their American experiences, the majority of the writers were from the continents of the Africa and Asia with a few from the Middle East. One story focused on the frustration of an Indian trying to move temporarily to another Asia country with great difficulty. Certain Asian countries have had challenges to their own infrastructure after allowing extremely wealthy Indian business persons to establish commercial enterprises, thus they are banned from establishing residents even as foreign nationals. Another woman raised in Pakistan, recounts her first visit to her grandfathers village in India. She recounts his experience to suddenly relocate when Partition happened in the late 1940's. It was very insightful and having read at least 40 books, many non-fiction about life in India and reading first hand accounts from Indians (I supported a charity located there for more than 30 years), this was fascinating to me. Likewise, I have been very focused on the African experience though books from the past are much harder to come by than the many that are not being released.
I had considered for more than a decade moving abroad and nearly did so, twenty years ago and a sudden change in circumstances stopped that from becoming a reality. Thus, this offered the emotional side of abruptly changing one's entire life. A few stories were also shared from the perspective of children of immigrants and the strain of navigating two cultures that are quite different. They challenge they face when seeing their parents seeming more loyal to their homeland while they have embraced more Western thought and ideals.
Overall, I enjoyed the many of the insights shared. The level of the writing was excellent. All the writers had a firm grasp of English and sentence structure so there was not a challenge in language or its style of delivery. However, the attitudes of a few of the authors were a little hard to stomach and I even debated finishing their essay. So, there is a bit of a hodge podge in the offerings.
I wouldn't tell someone not to read it, especially if they haven't met an immigrant or a few. Even as an individual living in an International city full of immigrants (the transition has been phenomenal over the past 25 years). I've met hundreds of people from all over the world and seek them out to make them feel welcome and less lonely. I have befriended quite a few, inviting them for a meal and an ear. I've also been romantically involved with "foreign" born individuals. So, I am glad I read it.
Though, overall, I think many believe the Hollywood version of America, which unfortunately motivates them to come only to see a very different reality. I don't know many American born people with unlimited income (I have found many, many immigrants think that Americans have much more money than many actually do, nor do they realize how many Americans are in the choke-hold of debt.). This unlimited resources expectation was confirmed in more than one essay I read. There was also a disconnect, with some having the expectation, that they were "owed" aid in establishing their new life by family/friends/acquaintances/citizens and when that was not provided, bitterness ensued. Again, as an adult, we are entirely responsible for our own well being, though I deeply believe we are also responsible for our neighbors especially when unexpected events occur. My perception is that those who are unhappy here, may have been just as unhappy before they came, because it is an internal issue. As I walked by an Immigration Attorney's office today, I saw a large family getting out of their vehicle heading for the building, they were laughing and teasing one another. It made me smile.
Wherever we are, we chose our attitude and how we respond to circumstances. One of my favorite sayings is, "Happiness is an Inside Job". I am totally empathetic with anyone who desires to embrace new adventures abroad, but managing expectations is critically important when encountering the new culture.
I have already recommended this book to a friend, who is of Indian/Pakistan Heritage. He is looking forward to this reading adventure.
Thank you to Catapult for providing me the opportunity to learn more about immigration in the 21st century in sharing this gift. Thank you to the authors for sharing their feelings and experiences to their new neighbors. All opinions are my own and they were not influenced by the receipt of the book.
April 22, 2020
This essay collection was outstanding, and truly highlights why Catapult is the best of the best. These 20 essays are from a wide variety of writers and artists, each grappling with home/identity/family/borders in different ways. It struck me while reading - especially Victoria Blanco's essay on El Paso/Juarez border, and Nur Nasreen Ibrahim's essay on the partition between India and Pakistan - how arbitrary and oftentimes meaningless borders are, yet how they impact our lives, histories and relationships in such profound ways. This book achieves so much because it showed me how much I have to learn about countries all over the world, and also I felt myself profoundly relating to the emotions in this book - especially in Kamna Muddagouni's essay "How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren't Your Fault."
I couldn't recommend this collection more highly. Gorgeous essays to be deeply felt and discussed. We - particularly White America - have a long way to go as an American society in terms of honoring the true humanity of immigrants and refugees. "Necessary" is a word I tend to avoid in my reviews because it's so overused, but yes, this book is necessary.
I couldn't recommend this collection more highly. Gorgeous essays to be deeply felt and discussed. We - particularly White America - have a long way to go as an American society in terms of honoring the true humanity of immigrants and refugees. "Necessary" is a word I tend to avoid in my reviews because it's so overused, but yes, this book is necessary.
March 4, 2020
In the first published anthology of writing from Catapult magazine, twenty writers share stories of migration, family, the search for home and belonging, and what it means to exist between languages and cultures.
January 16, 2021
I would say this was a good cross section of stories told from many perspectives. The most unique thing about this collection was just that some of them were very dark and took the alternative route of the writers leaving the country. Unfortunately, some were brief and seemed geared towards a younger audience. I would say if you’re looking for a consistent collection on this topic, then The Good Immigrant (the U.S. edition) ed. by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman has a more elevated and gritty feel to it.
February 23, 2020
"A Map is Only One Story" needs to be integrated in history courses internationally. As a social studies teacher, I anxiously awaited this book for months prior to its release--this book exceeded my expectations because the diversity of voices represented throughout the essays are powerful representations of the immigrant experience. The editors selected diverse voices that will help readers move beyond a 'single story' of the immigrant experience--not all immigrants are the same culture, religion. or share the same origin! I can tell how mindful the the editors were in selecting the 20 voices for this particular collection. I hope this is the first of several more anthologies from the two editors--so many voices are missing from our history lessons and need to be brought to the forefront! I, for one, will share these stories with my students in hopes that they will understand that history and maps only tell one story--but we must seek to find the voices of those who have been silenced. Kudos to Nicole Chung and Mensah Demary for this powerful anthology; ultimately, it is through collections such as this that will change the rhetoric of our nation.
February 9, 2020
What I love most about essay collections is that they introduce me to many new writers I would not have otherwise come across. This anthology was well worth the read just for that. There actually quite a few essays by South Asian women in here too! Some of my favorite essays were, A Map of Lost Things by Jamila Osman, Return to Partition by Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, Undocumented Lovers in America by Krystal A. Sital, How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren't Your Fault by Kamna Muddagouni, The Wailing by Nadia Owusu and How to Write Iranian America; or The Last Essay by Porochista Khakpour.Ìý
May 3, 2021
Enjoyed this essay collection a lot! Hearing the stories of such a diverse group of writers really brought me around the world and into the homes and hearts of their families.
There were definitely mediocre to weak pieces in the book, but I felt engaged overall and generally reminded of my privilege. Favorites include Say It With Noodles, The Dress, My Indian Passport is a Bitch, and Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls.
There were definitely mediocre to weak pieces in the book, but I felt engaged overall and generally reminded of my privilege. Favorites include Say It With Noodles, The Dress, My Indian Passport is a Bitch, and Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls.
March 10, 2020
2.5 * rounded up
I am conflicted with this review. On one hand, it's important for diverse voices to be heard. Stories from immigrants, existing in liminal places, experiencing cultural schizophrenia, struggling to survive day to day. I appreciate their honesty and sincerity in conveying what they and their families have been through.
However, I can't shrug off that the quality of writing in this anthology is mediocre. Take 'A Map of Lost Things,' tied to the title of this anthology. Jamila Osman attempts to build an allegory between the salmon who return to spawn after swimming thousands of miles with her family's fate moving from Somalia to Alberta Canada to Portland America. The analogy doesn't work, the author signalled her tell from the start of the essay and instead of binding the piece, it just fell apart. There are shards of angst, bitterness and discontent suffusing the stories but most of the stories need to be more polished. Not cleaned up for public consumption, more attention paid to flow and the points they want to get across. Some of the essays descended into unedited unfocused ranting that things were not how they expected at the new place.
There is a lot of excellent literature dealing with the immigrant diaspora experience, the tragedies that occur with borders. The Partition in 1947 of India and Pakistan yields a rich well of material for the latter. I recommend 'An Unrestored Woman' by Shobha Rao for that. A Map is Only One Thing falls short unfortunately as these essayists need to work at honing their craft of writing. It doesn't negate their stories, just they need to be told better.
I am conflicted with this review. On one hand, it's important for diverse voices to be heard. Stories from immigrants, existing in liminal places, experiencing cultural schizophrenia, struggling to survive day to day. I appreciate their honesty and sincerity in conveying what they and their families have been through.
However, I can't shrug off that the quality of writing in this anthology is mediocre. Take 'A Map of Lost Things,' tied to the title of this anthology. Jamila Osman attempts to build an allegory between the salmon who return to spawn after swimming thousands of miles with her family's fate moving from Somalia to Alberta Canada to Portland America. The analogy doesn't work, the author signalled her tell from the start of the essay and instead of binding the piece, it just fell apart. There are shards of angst, bitterness and discontent suffusing the stories but most of the stories need to be more polished. Not cleaned up for public consumption, more attention paid to flow and the points they want to get across. Some of the essays descended into unedited unfocused ranting that things were not how they expected at the new place.
There is a lot of excellent literature dealing with the immigrant diaspora experience, the tragedies that occur with borders. The Partition in 1947 of India and Pakistan yields a rich well of material for the latter. I recommend 'An Unrestored Woman' by Shobha Rao for that. A Map is Only One Thing falls short unfortunately as these essayists need to work at honing their craft of writing. It doesn't negate their stories, just they need to be told better.
September 7, 2020
I feel bad giving this review but it was just mediocre! I really liked a couple of stories and also really didn’t like a couple, and the rest were meh
March 5, 2020
A MAP IS ONLY ONE STORY is an anthology collection of essays focused on immigration. This book features 20 writers and their unique stories that explore family, being caught between cultures, and what it truly means to be home. Told from a diverse set of voices from many backgrounds, this collection has many interesting perspectives that will resonate with many readers.
This recent release is something you won’t want to miss! I absolutely loved reading this collection, and I flew through it in a couple sittings. Most of the essays were ‪around 10-15� pages, and I kept finding myself saying, “Okay, just one more,� after each one. The essay that resonated with me the most was “What Miyazaki’s Heroines Taught Me About My Mixed-Race Identity� by Nina Li Coomes. The introduction of this book notes a couple essays including one that “recalls the heroines of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and what they taught her about her bicultural identity.� I immediately flipped to that essay first, and read it right away. As a biracial Japanese American woman who grew up watching all the Studio Ghibli films, this is one of the only things I’ve read in my life that really reflected my own personal experience. I’ve read many books about being Japanese, or being a biracial Asian American, or loving Japanese media like Ghibli films � but never all three at once. I’m sincerely thankful that this book features so many unique voices, and that it linked me to a writer whose works I will now be scouring the internet for. Overall, I highly recommend this collection and can’t wait to see what other anthologies Catapult publishes in the future!
Perfect for readers who love immigrant stories, or those who love diverse anthology collections.
[ I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review]
This recent release is something you won’t want to miss! I absolutely loved reading this collection, and I flew through it in a couple sittings. Most of the essays were ‪around 10-15� pages, and I kept finding myself saying, “Okay, just one more,� after each one. The essay that resonated with me the most was “What Miyazaki’s Heroines Taught Me About My Mixed-Race Identity� by Nina Li Coomes. The introduction of this book notes a couple essays including one that “recalls the heroines of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and what they taught her about her bicultural identity.� I immediately flipped to that essay first, and read it right away. As a biracial Japanese American woman who grew up watching all the Studio Ghibli films, this is one of the only things I’ve read in my life that really reflected my own personal experience. I’ve read many books about being Japanese, or being a biracial Asian American, or loving Japanese media like Ghibli films � but never all three at once. I’m sincerely thankful that this book features so many unique voices, and that it linked me to a writer whose works I will now be scouring the internet for. Overall, I highly recommend this collection and can’t wait to see what other anthologies Catapult publishes in the future!
Perfect for readers who love immigrant stories, or those who love diverse anthology collections.
[ I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review]
April 25, 2020
There are some outstanding essays in this volume from literary magazine Catapult. My Indian Passport is a Bitch by Deepti Kapoor is a cold-water bath of an essay in the best way - clean and clear and confronting (especially as Westerners contemplate having the privileges of travel removed). Jamila Osman's A Map of Lost Things is a gorgeously wistful piece of writing, and Return to Partition by Nur Nasreen Ibrahim is, well, possibly the best piece of writing I've read so far this year. I can still see Punjab in my mind, and it seems like I have a key to understanding the artificiality-made-material in a lens I didn't before. There's a variety of themes explored including the difficulties of undocumented life in America (Krystal Sital and Cinelle Barnes are standouts here), a life between cultures (Jennifer S. Cheng's explanation of how Mao helps her make sense of the world is fabulous here, also Lauren Alwen) and the pain of distance and change, including the wonderful Natalia Sylvester's Mourning my Birthplace: "
There is nothing easy about migration. It is a search for a better life but in this way, it is also a death."
There is nothing easy about migration. It is a search for a better life but in this way, it is also a death."
February 18, 2021
A must read. Too often diversity, equity, and inclusion are preached in theory, but the time is not taken to educate oneself on what diversity looks, feels, seems, and even tastes like.
There are so many identities and cultural impacts that can make up an individual. This anthology complied those voices and feelings into one long narrative on immigration, family, and the meaning of home and weaves in the changes and similarities between perspectives.i highly recommend.
There are so many identities and cultural impacts that can make up an individual. This anthology complied those voices and feelings into one long narrative on immigration, family, and the meaning of home and weaves in the changes and similarities between perspectives.i highly recommend.
October 18, 2020
Overall this book is very magazine-y and that's a disappointment given the topic.Ìý Yes, this anthology is from a magazine but "People" about immigration is a disservice.Ìý These stories are light--something for the beach or a plane ride, a situation where you don't have to think or feel much.Ìý (Later here, I name better alternatives.)
"Return to Partition" was very good on its own.Ìý And it's the best in this collection. "The Dress" was very affecting and a personal favorite.Ìý "Mourning My Birthplace" is poignant; I think this author is awesome.Ìý Of the more magazine-y set, I liked "Arab Past, American Present," and "Carefree White Girl, Careful Brown Girl".
A quote from "The Dress,"Ìý "....(T)hat weekend made clear the very thing I had been denying for the past four years.Ìý I was being subsumed by something else, going to a place where my family could not follow.Ìý I stood out like hell, a polka-dotted dress in a sea of white, but there I was, still in it. Still a part of it. And he could do no more than snap a picture."
And from the title story, a few quotes:
",,,Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story.Ìý They don't mark important things, like graves and genocides."
"When the colonists came, they committed our edges to paper; they tried to cage us with their borders. A country is impossible to contain; a people are impossible to boil to the silt of parchment. A map is only one story.Ìý It is not the most important story. The most important storyÌýis the one a people tell about themselves."Ìý
"...To love a thing is to steel yourself against its eventual absence. I am learning to mourn a thing before it is lost."
Considerably better collections on immigration include:Ìý The Good Immigrant (USA & UK versions) ed. by Nikesh Shukla;ÌýInk Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience ed. byÌýPatrice Vecchione; andÌýDisplaced ed. by Viet Thanh Nguyen.ÌýÌý
"Return to Partition" was very good on its own.Ìý And it's the best in this collection. "The Dress" was very affecting and a personal favorite.Ìý "Mourning My Birthplace" is poignant; I think this author is awesome.Ìý Of the more magazine-y set, I liked "Arab Past, American Present," and "Carefree White Girl, Careful Brown Girl".
A quote from "The Dress,"Ìý "....(T)hat weekend made clear the very thing I had been denying for the past four years.Ìý I was being subsumed by something else, going to a place where my family could not follow.Ìý I stood out like hell, a polka-dotted dress in a sea of white, but there I was, still in it. Still a part of it. And he could do no more than snap a picture."
And from the title story, a few quotes:
",,,Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story.Ìý They don't mark important things, like graves and genocides."
"When the colonists came, they committed our edges to paper; they tried to cage us with their borders. A country is impossible to contain; a people are impossible to boil to the silt of parchment. A map is only one story.Ìý It is not the most important story. The most important storyÌýis the one a people tell about themselves."Ìý
"...To love a thing is to steel yourself against its eventual absence. I am learning to mourn a thing before it is lost."
Considerably better collections on immigration include:Ìý The Good Immigrant (USA & UK versions) ed. by Nikesh Shukla;ÌýInk Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience ed. byÌýPatrice Vecchione; andÌýDisplaced ed. by Viet Thanh Nguyen.ÌýÌý
January 15, 2024
Though I enjoyed some essays more than others (to be expected when every essay is written by a different author with a different writing style), I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and appreciate the diverse representation of immigrant experiences it represents.
To those who rated this book poorly because the experiences presented did not match the experience of your white relatives� immigration, to those who imply that immigrants are not allowed to express complex feelings, to those that wholly blame immigrants for their dissatisfaction with life in America � you have entirely missed the point.
To those who rated this book poorly because the experiences presented did not match the experience of your white relatives� immigration, to those who imply that immigrants are not allowed to express complex feelings, to those that wholly blame immigrants for their dissatisfaction with life in America � you have entirely missed the point.
April 16, 2020
Wonderful and important collection of essays. Looking forward to reading more of these authors' work.
March 31, 2020
average rating: 3.35
This collection contains 20 stories of writers from a variety of backgrounds who have migrated from their home country. Themes include: the feeling of being stuck between two cultures, not fitting in, having a specific idea of what it means to be a citizen of a certain place, being separated from family, language barriers, and much more.
As in any collection, I was drawn to some pieces more than others. Favorites include: "A Map of Lost Things" by Jamila Osman, "This Hell Not Mine" by Kenechi Uzor, "Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls" by Cinelle Brown, "What Miyazaki's Heroines Taught Me" by Nina Li Coomes, "How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren't Your Fault" by Kamna Muddagouni, and "How to Write Iranian America; Or, The Last Essay" by Porochista Khakpour.
This collection contains 20 stories of writers from a variety of backgrounds who have migrated from their home country. Themes include: the feeling of being stuck between two cultures, not fitting in, having a specific idea of what it means to be a citizen of a certain place, being separated from family, language barriers, and much more.
As in any collection, I was drawn to some pieces more than others. Favorites include: "A Map of Lost Things" by Jamila Osman, "This Hell Not Mine" by Kenechi Uzor, "Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls" by Cinelle Brown, "What Miyazaki's Heroines Taught Me" by Nina Li Coomes, "How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren't Your Fault" by Kamna Muddagouni, and "How to Write Iranian America; Or, The Last Essay" by Porochista Khakpour.
April 8, 2020
Being bilingual and having migrated to a country across the world myself, I immediately gravitated towards this anthology from Catapult magazine. It features 20 essays on experiences living between two cultures, existing in two languages, and carrying your home inside your heart, often across continents.
Some of the essays were better than others, some made me cry, some made me think, and some gave me that aching sort of recognition that makes your heart sing � yes, there are other people out there who feel and think the same way I do! I’m not crazy!
My favourites were ‘This Hell Is Not Mine�, looking at the American dream through a Nigerian lense and how we often seek heaven to find hell; ‘How to Write Iranian America�, a witty yet bitter look at “writing what you know�; and ‘Mourning My Birthplace�, which has these deliciously sad last lines “They are the life we could have lived together, and the ones we lived apart. They are a family carrying their same blood to separate lands. They are two ends of a phone call, coiled and stretched thousands of miles, longing to be close enough to whisper.�
If you are a migrant yourself, and even if you’re not, you should give this a read!
Some of the essays were better than others, some made me cry, some made me think, and some gave me that aching sort of recognition that makes your heart sing � yes, there are other people out there who feel and think the same way I do! I’m not crazy!
My favourites were ‘This Hell Is Not Mine�, looking at the American dream through a Nigerian lense and how we often seek heaven to find hell; ‘How to Write Iranian America�, a witty yet bitter look at “writing what you know�; and ‘Mourning My Birthplace�, which has these deliciously sad last lines “They are the life we could have lived together, and the ones we lived apart. They are a family carrying their same blood to separate lands. They are two ends of a phone call, coiled and stretched thousands of miles, longing to be close enough to whisper.�
If you are a migrant yourself, and even if you’re not, you should give this a read!
March 9, 2020
"Where are you from? People stilll ask me, but the answer is not simple. I am from a place beyond the scope of any map or road atlas. I am from a house of borrowed things, a land of irreconcilable and devastating losses, a terrain marked by grief. I am from nomads who moved in search of water, carving a home wherever they ended up, like water carves itsnshape into rock. I am from wild hope, a blinding courage, a blur and madness uncharted by any cartographer. I am from a land unmapped and entirely my own."
"A map does not proclaim that the United States in Indian country, occupied land. On a map, someone can trace a finger from one Anglicized city name to another and forget these lands were and are known by other names. Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story. They don't mark important things, like graves or genocides."
"When the colonists came, they committed out edges to paper; they tried to cage us with their borders. A country is impossible to contain; a people are impossible to boil to the silt of parchment. A map is only one story. It is not the most important story. The most important story is the one a people tell about themselves."
"To love a thing is to steel yourself against its eventual absence. I am learning to mourn a thing before it is lost."
"I remember my brother sobbing in our mom's embrace, and my ghostlike sadness, tears I mimicked but didn't comprehend, because I hadn't yet learned that life gone never comes back."
"Indigenous and mestizomen and women, who once lived from the land, stand in assembly lines for double shifts, fitting a handle, a lid, a chip, a screw with the kind of orecision that causes their necks and backs to strain."
"El Paso and Juarez depend on each other economically, but even more important, families cross back and forth every day to visit one another. We knew the fence was a violence to our binational culture. We knew the fence would create a distance between us and our family in Juarez, when what we wanted was for all of us to live peacefully."
"Nobody leaves home thinking they will never be able to return. I wonder what my parents would have taken with them when they left their home in Somalia in the late '80s. Who might they have made amends with, what old haunts would they have visited one last time if they knew they would never be back?"
"I had already learned that to be part of a disaspora was to live freely, to make no promises. In phone calls to faraway relatives my parents always swore they would return, but distance and time make liars of us all."
"My father knew how to get everywhere; it was what we always admired most about him. But even he who could name the capitals of countries all over the world could never figure out how to get back home."
"Hope makes children of us all, foolish, and reckless, and devout."
"We are a roving tribe of wanderers, scattered siblings, lost youth, reluctant expatriates, victims of impossible and auspicious circumstances. Everyone looks at us like we are lost. They ask us what we have come to find. We have no answers. A body always returns to the place that shaped it. A body always returns to its ghosts."
"I might blend in with these people on the surface, but they are nothing like me. Though I sit patiently, I want to shake them, say: Do you know how lucky you are? How virtue is bestowed upon you by your birth, by the land that owns you? Do you see that you can dress in rags while I must watch how I present myself at all times, knowing what the sight of my passport will do? I want to ask: How many Indian backpackers have you met? No students, not immigrants, but backpackers, freely exploring the world? Do you realize how the world belongs to you? Do you know how long other people have to wait for something as simple as a passport?"
"Humans in an exodus: trudging, lurching, flinging, themselves toward the European Union, drowning in the sea, living in tents, in the woods, in shelters, in strange cities far away, on the edge, neither here nor there, but desperate to live all the same. Paperless, homeless, failed by institutions, by leaders, by neighbors. Clinging to humanity all the same."
"Sometimes it seems to me a miracle that so many worlds exist on the same planet and don't collapse into one another and collapse."
"No land is secure, and no border trylu stable. History creeps, and it breaks."
"Adults with responsibilities seldom wake up at dawn adorned with joy. I am fine. I guess I am fine. But America kicked harder with those questions that open archways to depression: meaning of life; now what and what next; thoughts of time missing by; of luck and determinism; the pointless of all things; doomsday. What's so wrong with suicide? We wrote on this and forgot in philosophy classes at the Uniersity of Benin. At first, I thought it was a change-of-scene syndrome that would pass. Then I was sure it was a depression caused by the twilight of America clashing against my home country. The offending news bites I thought would be easy to nix: mute, block, unfollow, unsubscribe."
"It is impossible to avoid the flames of America...In America, apocalypse ticked minutes away. Here, suicide, homicide, and wrong sides blindside millions. Misery climbed out of the news to hug you close..."
"I have yet to learn the dangers of the American inferno. How do I learn to feel black? How do I not treat Black lives Matter like All Lives Matter? When the American blacks rage about their black experience, do I have any right to speak? How do I remember to react when a white person uses the n-word in my presence? When is a white person just doing their job, or having a bad day, or just being drunk and not being racist? When are whites just being kind? How do I know that my failures and denials have nothing to do with my skin color? Would I need pills to shoulder the knowledge of these answers?"
"Her story as I gleaned it was one of a repeated breach between the known and unkown worlds, a separation from people and things she knew that cycled over the course of her life. A conflict of near and far, known and unkown, remembered and forgotten."
"I was furious at you now, or I was furious at the idea of you, of who you represented: white women everywhere who could, like you taught me how to slip on and off the board, fluidly slip in and out of spaces, toy with danger, give danger a name, call it a gig, a job, a lifestyle."
"You had told me what it was like you to be you, and I had told you what it was like to be me. We couldn't have traded places even if we wanted to. We were born into the skin we were in, destined for each of our circumstances. I can only guess that there was guilt on your part, an underow of disdain on mine. But still, I think of you, and I think of how I like you just fine, K.L. I even want to be you, live through you. I want you to keep surfing, to live dangerously, to be cool. I would like you even if you committed crime again, if you dared to go back to living so close to the edge. Why would it matter? You'd get away with it. Not me. I'm brown, an immigrant. I'm forever clean. But you'd get away with danger. Fot both of us. For those parts of you and me that are just underneath, that are brewing, coming to a swell, like rip current backwashing from the shore, pulling to the deep."
"Partition holds a strange place in our memory. On the one hand, it was a tragedy, a tearing asunder, a rejection of religious coexistence. On the other hand, it led to the creation of Pakistan, a nation for the persecuted Muslim minority, as I was taught in school. It created my home. I was taught pride in belonging to a country of underdogs. We prevailed against British imperialism and Hindu nationalism, or so we believed."
"I understood now that my santuary lay in the messy sheaf of handwritten and typed sheets splayed across its surface, and also within the pages of my modest collection of used books."
"There was no first-generation orientation for commencement weekend; no one to prepare me for the jarring collision of the home my dad brought with him and the bubble I'd spent four years building; no instructions for the day I learned, suddenly and grotesquely, that the American ideal of upward mobility is a solo mission."
"As the questions about what I am and what I represent emerge, I often find myself silenced, unable to give a concise answer."
"As a child, unable to name and parse the complex traumas of diasporic life, I found meaning in apologizing. But in doing so, I lost the language to express my own discomfort and to give myself space to grieve."
"Thinking of apologizing in my home language has allowed me to understand the act of apologizing as inherently connected to asking for forgiveness. It reminds me that I do not need to blame myself for others' pain. I can empathize with it without the need to offer language to take personal responsibility."
"I counted my losses and waited for the cold ise of them to melt into tears, but they hardened even more. They frosted and stuck to each other, heavy in my chest. The heaviness made me keep that vow to my mother for ten years, despite her attempts to reconcile. It made me slow to love people and quick to leave them, to hurt them before they could hurt me."
"We didn't know how to live without him. But, if we maintained the world exactly the way he built it, perhaps we could survive."
"In these long blocks of lyrical prose, I was following an instinct I didn't fully comprehend. I felt each address open up a wide field that could contain all the disparate yet overlapping emotions, atmospheres, and histories I had been wanting to hold in one hand. It was like drawing a boundry around a grouping of stars or cupping some water from the sea. The blocks of text didn't try to parse the entanglements; they allowed the tension between sentences to carry all the absences, ambiguities, and silences I could never before say-how knowledge in an immigrant household so often comes in tides that approach and recede, how there are always gaps and missing ghosts, how all the fear and protection and silence and love comes so mixed together it would be a falsehood to separate them."
"At some point I decided that either my parents didn't know much of their family narratives-a lineage misplaced among the turbulence-or they didn't have the language, linguistically or emotionally, to communicate with me about it. As for so many children of immigrants, their lives came to me in little fragments and echoes that I collected in my palm like rainwater."
"...to be wary of strangers and unfamiliar situations; to keep myself and carry out my work invisibly; that a home is something one leaves over and over."
"All writers in some way compose love letters to their obsessions. A letter can be a document of deep ambivalences, contradictions, and silences, submerged in the complexities of shared and unshared histories. Or: a longing to locate two disparate points in an expanse of sky."
"To choose a way you want to define yourself and then dress deliberately toward fulfilling that vision was magic to me. It was a clean talent. I didn't know how to make other people see me, but I wanted to."
"There is nothing easy about migration. It is a search for a better life, but in this way it is also a death. How easily would you choose to leave this life? How quickly, if the decision were made for you? It is a line you cannot uncross, whether you are lucky enough to visit every few years or if you left knowing you will never return. Everyone and everything you knew and loved are gone."
"This pursuit of passions-not for a better life or to avert poverty, nor to provide for family, nor, well, to live-underpins the American dream. What the dream narrative leaves out is that even embarking on its pursuit requires privileges. When Trump upholds immigration as a privilege, he is upholding privileged as a preexisting condition, and with it, the bedrock of privilege-its invisibility."
"My immigration has been one of choice, self-determination, of debt, and of privilege. Yet before I fill out the application for citizenship, fear reveals what is as invisible as privilege: that there is a point where self-determination confronts power and authority. Ask anyone who applies for a credit card, or a home loan, or a job. Ask most poor and/or Black or immigrant folk. Exercising your choice doesn't always result in getting what you want. This is the unspoken fallacy that determines who lives the American dream, and who doesn't."
"Let your truth cme out hard and fast and untranslatable because no one else will see it anyway."
"A map does not proclaim that the United States in Indian country, occupied land. On a map, someone can trace a finger from one Anglicized city name to another and forget these lands were and are known by other names. Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story. They don't mark important things, like graves or genocides."
"When the colonists came, they committed out edges to paper; they tried to cage us with their borders. A country is impossible to contain; a people are impossible to boil to the silt of parchment. A map is only one story. It is not the most important story. The most important story is the one a people tell about themselves."
"To love a thing is to steel yourself against its eventual absence. I am learning to mourn a thing before it is lost."
"I remember my brother sobbing in our mom's embrace, and my ghostlike sadness, tears I mimicked but didn't comprehend, because I hadn't yet learned that life gone never comes back."
"Indigenous and mestizomen and women, who once lived from the land, stand in assembly lines for double shifts, fitting a handle, a lid, a chip, a screw with the kind of orecision that causes their necks and backs to strain."
"El Paso and Juarez depend on each other economically, but even more important, families cross back and forth every day to visit one another. We knew the fence was a violence to our binational culture. We knew the fence would create a distance between us and our family in Juarez, when what we wanted was for all of us to live peacefully."
"Nobody leaves home thinking they will never be able to return. I wonder what my parents would have taken with them when they left their home in Somalia in the late '80s. Who might they have made amends with, what old haunts would they have visited one last time if they knew they would never be back?"
"I had already learned that to be part of a disaspora was to live freely, to make no promises. In phone calls to faraway relatives my parents always swore they would return, but distance and time make liars of us all."
"My father knew how to get everywhere; it was what we always admired most about him. But even he who could name the capitals of countries all over the world could never figure out how to get back home."
"Hope makes children of us all, foolish, and reckless, and devout."
"We are a roving tribe of wanderers, scattered siblings, lost youth, reluctant expatriates, victims of impossible and auspicious circumstances. Everyone looks at us like we are lost. They ask us what we have come to find. We have no answers. A body always returns to the place that shaped it. A body always returns to its ghosts."
"I might blend in with these people on the surface, but they are nothing like me. Though I sit patiently, I want to shake them, say: Do you know how lucky you are? How virtue is bestowed upon you by your birth, by the land that owns you? Do you see that you can dress in rags while I must watch how I present myself at all times, knowing what the sight of my passport will do? I want to ask: How many Indian backpackers have you met? No students, not immigrants, but backpackers, freely exploring the world? Do you realize how the world belongs to you? Do you know how long other people have to wait for something as simple as a passport?"
"Humans in an exodus: trudging, lurching, flinging, themselves toward the European Union, drowning in the sea, living in tents, in the woods, in shelters, in strange cities far away, on the edge, neither here nor there, but desperate to live all the same. Paperless, homeless, failed by institutions, by leaders, by neighbors. Clinging to humanity all the same."
"Sometimes it seems to me a miracle that so many worlds exist on the same planet and don't collapse into one another and collapse."
"No land is secure, and no border trylu stable. History creeps, and it breaks."
"Adults with responsibilities seldom wake up at dawn adorned with joy. I am fine. I guess I am fine. But America kicked harder with those questions that open archways to depression: meaning of life; now what and what next; thoughts of time missing by; of luck and determinism; the pointless of all things; doomsday. What's so wrong with suicide? We wrote on this and forgot in philosophy classes at the Uniersity of Benin. At first, I thought it was a change-of-scene syndrome that would pass. Then I was sure it was a depression caused by the twilight of America clashing against my home country. The offending news bites I thought would be easy to nix: mute, block, unfollow, unsubscribe."
"It is impossible to avoid the flames of America...In America, apocalypse ticked minutes away. Here, suicide, homicide, and wrong sides blindside millions. Misery climbed out of the news to hug you close..."
"I have yet to learn the dangers of the American inferno. How do I learn to feel black? How do I not treat Black lives Matter like All Lives Matter? When the American blacks rage about their black experience, do I have any right to speak? How do I remember to react when a white person uses the n-word in my presence? When is a white person just doing their job, or having a bad day, or just being drunk and not being racist? When are whites just being kind? How do I know that my failures and denials have nothing to do with my skin color? Would I need pills to shoulder the knowledge of these answers?"
"Her story as I gleaned it was one of a repeated breach between the known and unkown worlds, a separation from people and things she knew that cycled over the course of her life. A conflict of near and far, known and unkown, remembered and forgotten."
"I was furious at you now, or I was furious at the idea of you, of who you represented: white women everywhere who could, like you taught me how to slip on and off the board, fluidly slip in and out of spaces, toy with danger, give danger a name, call it a gig, a job, a lifestyle."
"You had told me what it was like you to be you, and I had told you what it was like to be me. We couldn't have traded places even if we wanted to. We were born into the skin we were in, destined for each of our circumstances. I can only guess that there was guilt on your part, an underow of disdain on mine. But still, I think of you, and I think of how I like you just fine, K.L. I even want to be you, live through you. I want you to keep surfing, to live dangerously, to be cool. I would like you even if you committed crime again, if you dared to go back to living so close to the edge. Why would it matter? You'd get away with it. Not me. I'm brown, an immigrant. I'm forever clean. But you'd get away with danger. Fot both of us. For those parts of you and me that are just underneath, that are brewing, coming to a swell, like rip current backwashing from the shore, pulling to the deep."
"Partition holds a strange place in our memory. On the one hand, it was a tragedy, a tearing asunder, a rejection of religious coexistence. On the other hand, it led to the creation of Pakistan, a nation for the persecuted Muslim minority, as I was taught in school. It created my home. I was taught pride in belonging to a country of underdogs. We prevailed against British imperialism and Hindu nationalism, or so we believed."
"I understood now that my santuary lay in the messy sheaf of handwritten and typed sheets splayed across its surface, and also within the pages of my modest collection of used books."
"There was no first-generation orientation for commencement weekend; no one to prepare me for the jarring collision of the home my dad brought with him and the bubble I'd spent four years building; no instructions for the day I learned, suddenly and grotesquely, that the American ideal of upward mobility is a solo mission."
"As the questions about what I am and what I represent emerge, I often find myself silenced, unable to give a concise answer."
"As a child, unable to name and parse the complex traumas of diasporic life, I found meaning in apologizing. But in doing so, I lost the language to express my own discomfort and to give myself space to grieve."
"Thinking of apologizing in my home language has allowed me to understand the act of apologizing as inherently connected to asking for forgiveness. It reminds me that I do not need to blame myself for others' pain. I can empathize with it without the need to offer language to take personal responsibility."
"I counted my losses and waited for the cold ise of them to melt into tears, but they hardened even more. They frosted and stuck to each other, heavy in my chest. The heaviness made me keep that vow to my mother for ten years, despite her attempts to reconcile. It made me slow to love people and quick to leave them, to hurt them before they could hurt me."
"We didn't know how to live without him. But, if we maintained the world exactly the way he built it, perhaps we could survive."
"In these long blocks of lyrical prose, I was following an instinct I didn't fully comprehend. I felt each address open up a wide field that could contain all the disparate yet overlapping emotions, atmospheres, and histories I had been wanting to hold in one hand. It was like drawing a boundry around a grouping of stars or cupping some water from the sea. The blocks of text didn't try to parse the entanglements; they allowed the tension between sentences to carry all the absences, ambiguities, and silences I could never before say-how knowledge in an immigrant household so often comes in tides that approach and recede, how there are always gaps and missing ghosts, how all the fear and protection and silence and love comes so mixed together it would be a falsehood to separate them."
"At some point I decided that either my parents didn't know much of their family narratives-a lineage misplaced among the turbulence-or they didn't have the language, linguistically or emotionally, to communicate with me about it. As for so many children of immigrants, their lives came to me in little fragments and echoes that I collected in my palm like rainwater."
"...to be wary of strangers and unfamiliar situations; to keep myself and carry out my work invisibly; that a home is something one leaves over and over."
"All writers in some way compose love letters to their obsessions. A letter can be a document of deep ambivalences, contradictions, and silences, submerged in the complexities of shared and unshared histories. Or: a longing to locate two disparate points in an expanse of sky."
"To choose a way you want to define yourself and then dress deliberately toward fulfilling that vision was magic to me. It was a clean talent. I didn't know how to make other people see me, but I wanted to."
"There is nothing easy about migration. It is a search for a better life, but in this way it is also a death. How easily would you choose to leave this life? How quickly, if the decision were made for you? It is a line you cannot uncross, whether you are lucky enough to visit every few years or if you left knowing you will never return. Everyone and everything you knew and loved are gone."
"This pursuit of passions-not for a better life or to avert poverty, nor to provide for family, nor, well, to live-underpins the American dream. What the dream narrative leaves out is that even embarking on its pursuit requires privileges. When Trump upholds immigration as a privilege, he is upholding privileged as a preexisting condition, and with it, the bedrock of privilege-its invisibility."
"My immigration has been one of choice, self-determination, of debt, and of privilege. Yet before I fill out the application for citizenship, fear reveals what is as invisible as privilege: that there is a point where self-determination confronts power and authority. Ask anyone who applies for a credit card, or a home loan, or a job. Ask most poor and/or Black or immigrant folk. Exercising your choice doesn't always result in getting what you want. This is the unspoken fallacy that determines who lives the American dream, and who doesn't."
"Let your truth cme out hard and fast and untranslatable because no one else will see it anyway."
March 3, 2020
Important read! Some of the essays were more powerful than others, but overall a 5 for its cultural and political significance.
November 21, 2021
"A map is only one story. It is not the most important story. The most important story is the one a people tell about themselves." In this collection of 20 essays initially featured in Catapult, the editors focus on essays that tell stories of immigration and identity -and the way one impacts the other. I appreciated the wide variety of experiences relayed in this collection. From people who are living as an undocumented immigrant to those whose family has been in the country for several generations, the essays in here explore the impact of the decision (or lack of the option of a decision) to leave one place for another. Most of what I have read on immigration previously has been focused on immigration to the US or the UK. I appreciated that this collection encompassed a wider range as it added a lot of dimension to the collection.
August 3, 2020
This is an essay collection from twenty writers around the theme of immigration. It is fantastic. The different essays highlight writers from different countries, different generation of immigrants, immigration status, etc. The cities of Juarez and El Paso, twin cities just across the border where people go across the border all the time, and families are split between two countries. The definition of home is explored. Another essay looks at how culture is acknowledged and understood over multiple generations in one family. One particular essay that stuck with me was How To Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren't Your Fault which is something that I think a lot of people, especially women deal with. What's lovely is how she gets out of the habit of saying sorry is thinking about how Hindi doesn't have a word for "sorry", just for "please forgive me". The author uses that as a guide on when saying sorry is actually appropriate. Truly a lovely collection.
August 4, 2020
Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story.
A fantastic collection of essays that highlight the struggles and the lessons from immigration. Essays touch on things like having passports that are notoriously restricting in your travels, essays about being away from your family; and then struggling to say goodbye to them when you didn't really know them. There are poignant essays about how the dream of a new country doesn't turn out to the the utopia you thought; it's actually a new kind of hell.
Each and every one of these essays has an important and very relevant theme; the feeling of belonging; the feeling of otherness. The overarching theme is one of home; where is it; and how does one find it?
This book is a fantastic anthology, and should be read by anyone who wants to read farther outside their comfort zone.
A fantastic collection of essays that highlight the struggles and the lessons from immigration. Essays touch on things like having passports that are notoriously restricting in your travels, essays about being away from your family; and then struggling to say goodbye to them when you didn't really know them. There are poignant essays about how the dream of a new country doesn't turn out to the the utopia you thought; it's actually a new kind of hell.
Each and every one of these essays has an important and very relevant theme; the feeling of belonging; the feeling of otherness. The overarching theme is one of home; where is it; and how does one find it?
This book is a fantastic anthology, and should be read by anyone who wants to read farther outside their comfort zone.
August 22, 2021
As an immigrant I seek out other immigrant experiences and compare mine to those. The one common denominator in all such stories is a longing for home that we have left behind. Each immigrant's experience is unique, each individual processes these experiences in their own way but there is some common thread in each that I can relate to. In this collection of essays written by different authors who write about their immigrant experiences, one can not but feel that strain of yearning, and that search for a path home. Or the question where is truly home. I suggest this collection to those who are interested in reading about immigrant stories.
August 18, 2020
After reading this book of 20 short stories, I feel like I’ve just completed a trip around the world of diversity. The book is a compilation of mostly women authors reflecting on their culture, their heritage, ancestry, immigration, race, and how this all intersects with the world at large. Each essay is unique and personal. The reader has the opportunity to visit all six inhabited main continents. The stories relate to current times and ongoing conversations. Their stories are intriguing, entertaining, and simply, human.
February 7, 2021
A well curated and compelling collection of essays highlighting the writers' unique experiences with immigration, family and home. I appreciated the honest and heartfelt nature of the stories, and that each writer came from a different country and/or cultural background.
Certainly recommend this one to anyone interested in learning more about the immigrant experience from #ownvoices writers.
Certainly recommend this one to anyone interested in learning more about the immigrant experience from #ownvoices writers.
August 14, 2020
Each of these essays are so eloquently put � I literally could not stop myself from flipping to the next one!
December 23, 2020
Interesting to hear what immigrants experience in America. Many different focuses and styles of communication.
April 20, 2020
Maybe 4.5 just because there were some essays I didn’t love as much as others, but that always happens with essay/story collections.
Fascinating range of perspectives and stories. Lots of raw emotion and harsh reality.
Favorites included: My Indian Passport Is a Bitch; Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls; Say It with Noodles; The Dress; How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren’t Your Fault. But I think pretty much every piece had something I could appreciate.
Fascinating range of perspectives and stories. Lots of raw emotion and harsh reality.
Favorites included: My Indian Passport Is a Bitch; Carefree White Girls, Careful Brown Girls; Say It with Noodles; The Dress; How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren’t Your Fault. But I think pretty much every piece had something I could appreciate.
May 31, 2021
The first half was nice. The second half, story to story kept hitting closer to a common home that I didn’t know was there. The amount of shared sorrow, joy and sisterhood I’ve felt through this book was too real, painful and beautiful.
August 5, 2020
Definitely some stronger essays than others, the usual hazard of anthologies. One absolute clunker in the bunch, and several head-scratchers, but an engaging read overall. Loved “A Map of Lost Things� by Jamila Osman and “What Miyazaki’s Heroines Taught Me� by Nina Li Coomes in particular.
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