A Map Is Only One Story Quotes

“There is nothing easy about migration. It is a search for a better life, but in this way it is also a death. How easily would you choose to leave this life? How quickly, if the decision were made for you? It is a line you cannot uncross, whether you are lucky enough to visit every few years or if you left knowing you will never return. Everyone and everything you knew and loved are gone.”
― Nicole Chung, A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home

“Although many people identify as middle-of-the-road, middle-class, average Americans, there are differences between a working-class and a middle-class existence, and these differences can be far from subtle. If you grow up as I did and happen to be very fortunate, as I was, your family might sacrifice much so that you can go to college. You'll feel grateful for every subsequent opportunity you get, for the degrees and open doors and better-paying jobs (if you can find them), even as an unexpected, sometimes painful distance yawns between you and the place you came from--and many will expect you to express gratitude, using your story or your accomplishments to attack those who weren't so lucky. But in this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone with them.”
― Nicole Chung, A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home

“As for so many children of immigrants, their lives came to me in little fragments and echoes that I collected in my palm like rainwater.”
― Nicole Chung, A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home

“Sometimes it seems to me a miracle that so many worlds exist on the same planet and don't collapse into one another and collapse. How do we do it? Even more so in the age of social media, where everything exists all of the time. How can I lie in that hotel bed, the pillow fluffy and white, and see this happen, and not only not fall apart, but thrive, make my coffee, walk along a trail, sit in a meadow and revel in the glory of nature?”
― Nicole Chung, A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home

“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.”
― Nicole Chung, A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home