Map Is Only One Story

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.

De la redescoperirea unui sat ancestral din China pana la experimentarea realitatilor vietii americane ca nigerian, cautarea apartenentei trece granitele si generatiile. Selectate din arhivele revistei Catapult, eseurile din A Map Is Only One Story evidentiaza latura umana a politicilor de imigratie si a retoricii polarizate, intrucat douazeci de scriitori impartasesc povesti personale provocatoare despre existenta dintre limbi si culturi. Victoria Blanco relateaza modul in care cei cu familia din atat El Paso, cat si Ciudad Juárez experimenteaza viata la granita.