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A review by gfruzsi
A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home by
4.0
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!