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.

Author: Nicole Chung
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 02/11/2020
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.60w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781948226783


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/21/2019
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2019
Booklist 12/15/2019 pg. 84
Library Journal 01/01/2020 pg. 92
Shelf Awareness 02/25/2020

About the Author
Nicole Chung is the author of All You Can Ever Know, a contributing writer and editor at The Atlantic, and Catapult's former digital editorial director.

Mensah Demary is a founding editor of Catapult magazine and an editor at Catapult books.