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.
Contents:
Blanco, Victoria - Why we cross the border in El Paso
Osman, Jamila - Map of lost things
Kapoor, Deepti - My Indian passport is a bitch
Uzor, Kenechi - This hell not mine
Alwan, Lauren - Arab past, American present
Wong Ken, Steph - How to write about your ancestral village
Barnes, Cinelle - Carefree white girls, careful brown girls
Ibrahim, Nur Nasreen - Return to partition
Sital, Krystal A. - Undocumented lovers in America
Khor, Shing Yin - Say it with noodles
Taylor, Sharine - My grandmother's patois and other keys to survival
Membreno, Soraya - Dress
Coomes, Nina Li - What Miyazaki's heroines taught me
Muddagouni, Kamna - How to stop saying sorry when things aren't your fault
Owusu, Nadia - Wailing
Cheng, Jennifer S. - Writing letters to Mao
Pollari, Niina - Dead-guy shirts and motel kids
Sylvester, Natalia - Mourning my birthplace
Gabriel, Bix - Should I apply for citizenship?
Khakpour, Porochista - How to write Iranian America; or the last essay
Free print copies are available while they last at the library Reference Desk.
Check our catalog at the link here to access the ebook:
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Open Books--Open Minds is the Rhode Island College common book program. This initiative brings together first-year students early in their first semester at RIC, and links them with upper classmen, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and the greater Rhode Island community through book discussions and participation in a rich array of programs and activities.
