Borders and Belonging: Geography, Identity, and Transformation

Memoirists Georgine Hodgkinson, Ebony Walden, and Bridey Thelen-Heidel share their author journeys, exploring how race, class, and family shape whose stories are told as reinvention — and whose are marked by loss.

What does it mean to cross a border — and who gets to be transformed by the crossing?

This panel brings together memoirists whose work explores the intimate relationship between physical place and personal identity. From the colonial ambiguity of Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory that is neither fully inside nor outside the American story — to the charged terrain of racial and cultural crossing, to a childhood spent hauling life in black trash bags between Alaska and California, these writers examine how geography shapes not just where we live, but who we are allowed to become.

Not all border crossings are chosen: sometimes place is imposed, movement is survival, and the only border that finally matters is the one you draw around yourself. Together, these memoirists will explore how race, class, and family dynamics determine whose crossings are celebrated as reinvention and whose are marked by suspicion, loss, or the long work of escape — and how, in each case, the journey outward ultimately becomes a journey toward self.