ABSTRACT
This is a memoir chapter about my relationship to walking, to my grandmother, Biji, and to movement and travel. It is a meditation on how walking was and is such an important part of my writing life. I engage the notion that in walking we traverse multiple—literal and figurative—landscapes, maps, histories, and memories. Ultimately, this is a chapter about learning to think and listen in rhythm with my body’s movements. It links my own migration to the United States, to my Biji’s refugee identity in ways that would have seemed impossible had I not composed this story about walking. A story that emerged in fits and starts as I walked with a small notebook on side roads and main roads of the small U.S. college-town where I live. Thinking, creating, composing, remembering—in walking.
