Unbordered Issue 02 Launch: Rebuilding

Stories and art grappling with what it means to rebuild while the world we left shakes our foundations

The second issue of Unbordered is here!

Issue 02: Rebuilding is now live on our website in digital flipbook format, offering a more visual, intentional way to experience the magazine as a whole.

If you’d prefer to read more gradually, you can also subscribe here to receive weekly featured pieces from the issue, shared over the coming weeks as part of our newsletter.

From the Editor’s Desk

When we, the Unbordered team, chose the theme for this issue, “Rebuilding,” we were interested in what life looked like on the other side of immigration. We wanted to see if we could move past the many and varied reasons for leaving the U.S., which are becoming more and more obvious with every passing day, in order to focus, instead, on what life looks like once you land.

But as we’ve been putting together this issue over the last few months, we have also been watching the ICE raids from a distance. We’ve watched democracy, which the U.S. has long claimed to hold fortified, wane in defeat. We’ve watched the reputation of the United States slowly disintegrate abroad. And we have watched the ones we left back home fret about how to leave. And for those of us who have already left, we have struggled to figure out how to cope. We question how much we should be involved. How much should we focus on building new lives v. defending our old ones. How far do we extend our resources?

We’ve started to ask: is it possible to rebuild a life when you still have one foot firmly planted back home? How much good can we do? Do we owe our attention and our voices to the ones that either could not or would not leave? Can we celebrate the small victories as Veronica Zora Kirin does in her piece, “Period.”? Or do we mourn the people and obligations we left behind like in “The Guilt Trip Abroad” by Meredith Burns? Will we be able to hopefully conceive of futures where we can cry with wonder as our children gather in multicultural celebration, as in “The International Assembly” by Cecily Stone?

What we’ve realized is that there is really no such thing as an “after.” Immigration is not divided into before you leave and after you’ve started your “new life.” There is only time, distorted by change and trauma and promise. And you carry all of it with you when you leave. Your life is not new, only your experiences. “How do we assemble the face we wish to show the world?” asks an Anonymous Artist.

This issue reflects that tension. In it, Jessica Wilde longs for the familiar in the unknown in her poems, “Home Depot” and “Banana Bread.” “JFC” by Debra Guckenheimer reminds us of the complexity of leaving both the fight and the judgement behind, and in “There and Back Again,” Erik West studies his own family’s immigration history in order to make his decision to leave.

In “Is Immigration ‘Ruining’ Albania?” Megan Reeves wrestles with what it means to be from a colonizing culture while trying to craft a life of respectful coexistence. And we continue to ask: will our new neighbors accept us as immigrants in our time of need when people from the U.S. have been responsible for so many of their own upheavals?

So all these questions remain: How can we stretch and expand and learn without causing damage to the places that, despite our history, have welcomed us into their homes? How do we bridge the past and the present to form a connected life? Do we dig down deep here in the places of our migration? Do we begin to take the roots that are being burned and replant them into safe soil? Do we let ourselves grow and spread like an uncontained wildfire?

We carry our foundations with us. We cannot choose to rid ourselves of them, only where to set them down. We can choose where we would like to build. The materials might be a little different this time around, maybe not what we’re used to. But it is my hope for each of us that we can build something beautiful.

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Amber Stewart is the founder of Unbordered as well as a queer essayist and poet. Originally from Nashville, she relocated in January 2024 to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she lives with her wife and their dog. Her current writing project, In the Garden, will be available later this year.