What Do You Mean, Reinvent Yourself?
On the question someone asked me that I needed a week to answer, and what Issue 04 is really about.
The fourth issue of Unbordered is here!
Issue 04: Reinvention 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
A few weeks ago, I made a TikTok video talking about some of the difficulties people encounter when moving abroad. In it, I mention that, “You will need to redefine almost everything about yourself–what you like, who you are, what your values are.” Someone commented “What do you mean you have to redefine what you like and who you are?” I never responded because I wanted to take a beat. What did I mean?
Now that I’ve had a little bit of time to think about it, I think any time our context changes, we are not only encouraged to reevaluate our understanding of ourselves, but we are almost forced to. Think about it–if you were raised in a world where everything is blue, you would wear blue. You would speak blue. You would put things in a hierarchy based on how blue they were. But what happens when you are dropped into a world that is green? You could continue to remain the same, but it might be difficult to make green-world friends or build green-world tastes. Can you learn to speak the language of green when your mind still conceives of everything in blue?
Let’s bring these questions into the real world: What foods do you like to cook when the spices you used to depend on aren’t available? Does your sense of gender change in a place where men kiss each other as a greeting? Do you still pray for healing in a place with universal healthcare?
When we chose the theme of “Reinvention” for this issue, we were thinking about it in two ways. The first was the sort of fresh start that can only come with uprooting everything you’ve ever known and starting from scratch. You get to ask yourself a question most people never will: who do I want to be in this new life? But for the second, we were thinking of the longer, more hidden process of reinventing yourself because the world around you changed. And we have no choice but to evolve, for better or worse.
So in this issue, SN Corvin writes from a possible future the story of the “Watchers,” and their (our?) role in remembering, Hannah Dilday writes poems about her changing relationship to grief, and Antonia Peplinski writes about how her marriage continues to evolve in light of her immigration. Emily Austen writes about her queer awakening, and Summer Riffaud reminds us we are an amalgamation of our experiences.
And, of course, our artists help us see the world differently, as artists tend to do. Kenneth Kesner gives us a peek at Western Asia and Rachel Mims shows us how to get to know our new environment through urban sketching.
I hope this issue delivers a sense of camaraderie for this strange space we each find ourselves in. And I look forward to meeting you all where you are while we grow together in community.
Amber Stewart is a writer, editor, and founder of Unbordered Magazine, a literary publication documenting the stories of Americans living outside the United States. She lives in Montevideo, Uruguay with her wife, Jamie, and their dog, Libby. Amber is the author of In the Garden: An Almanac for Uprooting.