Author and journalist Lauren Markham discussed her new book with Becca Andrews, journalism professor, on Friday afternoon in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium.
Markham has published two books with her third to be published in February 2025. Her most recent book, “A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belongings,” was published in February and explores issues surrounding migration, borders and social justice.
Markham’s work most often concerns issues related to youth, migration, the environment and her home state of California, according to Markham’s website. She has reported from places all around the world including Latin American countries, states in the U.S. and other countries like Greece and Thailand.
Markham said in her conversation with Andrews that there were two main narrative threads of the book.
“One is the story of the largest refugee camp in Europe, which burned down,” said Markham. “It was built to house 2500 people, and at its height, had over 20,000 people living in it. It was on the Greek island of Lesbos, and it burned down in 2020, in September of 2020, and within a few days, six young Afghans or Afgan refugees who’d been living there were figured for the crime. In spite of almost no evidence, no evidence against them, no credible evidence against them, they were locked up and tried in a kangaroo court and were put into prison.”
The second thread concerned Markham personally and her story as a journalist.
“And then there’s another main narrative thread, which is sort of me as a reporter, reckoning with what it means to tell these stories about migration and how to report on these stories,” Markham said. “And I’m also thinking of my own heritage, my own Greek American heritage, and sort of how my own family narrates this sense of belonging to this place that, until 2019, I’d never been to.”
In discussion with Markam, Andrews asked the author how she got to a place where she could be vulnerable enough to write about her family and heritage in a way that is “honest and theorized, but still with so much love.”
“I think that part of one of the mythologies of many that this book is probing is this kind of linear ascension narrative, kind of like the American Dream narrative,” Markham said.
“There’s also an interesting dynamic here within my own family’s stories … But I have tenderness toward this desire to believe in the simple story, the desire for my family to believe that there is this far away place, Greece. That even though we don’t speak the language and even though we’ve never been there, we somehow are afforded something long and fair, and we get to claim that as an origin story. I have tenderness toward that, because I believe there is a human desire to belong somewhere and let go of their past.”
An audience member asked Markham if she believed there was a lesson to take from Bowling Green’s success in being a resettlement center for refugees for several decades. Markham said she believed there was.
“This is all getting to the point of this notion of newcomers as drains isn’t just a morally problematic idea. It’s just false. It’s just wrong,” Markham said. “It’s not empirically true because places like Bowling Green could demonstrate this was a place that was doing fine, and then new people came and we’re also still doing fine.”
“This is a book that’s really trying to expose, on a granular level, the injustice and violence of borders and also their absurdity,” Markham continued.
Markham said in an interview with the Herald that she got a lot of feedback from people of European ancestry after her book was published.
“I’ve had a lot of people contact me about the ways this book helped them reflect on their desire to be from another place, and just seemingly being excited by the kind of ideas that this book is lifting up,” Markham said.
Markham said that one of the things this book challenges is the impact and purpose of journalism, and if it affects change. She concluded that journalism could make a direct change, but that change is typically “incremental,” and that journalism usually is only a small part of a bigger cause.
Understanding and interpreting dialect was also an “interesting challenge” for Markham while writing her book. She said she came to understand her thinking patterns better and how she approached certain situations in different countries.
“There have been many, a number of moments in reporting and writing this book where I find that the very systems that I am sort of critiquing and holding accountable have also kind of infected my brain, and thinking and default thinking,” Markham said.
It is her love of learning and the joy she finds in telling the stories of others that drives Markham in her work.
“I feel like that is such a thrilling feeling to be like I have a profession where I’m constantly learning things, and then my job is to take what I’ve learned and try to narrate it to others so that other people can learn it,” Markham said. “The best stories we write are the stories we really care about.”
Destiny Cater, a sophomore journalism major and attendee, asked Markham during the event about how she navigated her career as a journalist after deciding it as a career later in life. Cater chose journalism as a major this semester.
“Though she didn’t say it, she was basically implying when writing or trying to write a book to stay at your own pace,” Cater said. “That really kind of affected me for someone that, again, kind of chose journalism later.”
News Reporter Abigail Vickers can be contacted at [email protected].
