An excellent collection from diverse voices examining the subjects of immigration, borders, family, and home(s).

First published anthology of writing from Catapult magazine.

Quotes

...immigration is not, ultimately, the story of laws or borders, but of people. (xiv)

War is not a cough, it is a cancer. (Jamila Osman, 17)

Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story....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. (Jamila Osman, 19)

Go or stay, either way, something is lost....
Surviving costs something. Returning costs something more. (Jamila Osman, 24)

Do you know how lucky you are? How virtue is bestowed upon you by your birth, by the land that owns you? ....Do you realize how the world belongs to you? (Deepti Kapoor, 29)

Violence comes from all sides, at any moment. No land is secure, and no border truly stable. (Deepti Kapoor, 38)

...this targeting...blurs the distinction between enemy and ethnic identity... (Lauren Alwan, 62)

For all the times [my grandmother has] thought of me and my future, I think I think about her and her past. (Sharine Taylor, 138)

There is nothing that prepares you for the pain of mourning, but when you've spent your life apart from a loved one, what prepares you for not knowing how to mourn? (Natalia Sylvester, 194)

This pursuit of passions...underpins the American dream. What the dream narrative leaves out is that even embarking on its pursuit requires privileges [...and the bedrock of privilege is invisibility]. (Bix Gabriel, 207)

Remind yourself that when the performance is honest two things happen: The essay will feel like it's killing you and the ending will not be what you thought it might be. (Porochista Khakpour, 222) ( )