The Four Words for Home (2014)

978-0-9897357-4-2

$19.95

Angie Chuang takes on an assignment to “find the human face of the country we’re about to bomb” weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Her five year journey into the lives of the Shirzai family transports her far beyond journalism. As she is drawn ever deeper into the Shirzais’s lives, Chuang confronts unknown territory closer to home. Her own immigrant family from Taiwan is falling apart. Mental illness, divorce, and deeply rooted cultural taboos have shattered her family’s American Dream.

Ultimately, she finds the two families are more similar than she had imagined. It is in journeying far away from her own home that she is drawn back to her roots—and to confront the hard truth and broken places that lie at the heart of so many stories of migration. Angie Chuang is a writer and educator based in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Asian American Literary Review, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Jentel, and Ragdale. She was on the Journalism faculty of American University’s School of Communication

 “This serious and lovely experiment from Angie Chuang deserves your attention. If you are serious about reading news about kinship, the rigors of family, the by-blows of war, the way to making peace piecemeal (the only way for most of us), this is a book you need.”

—Alan Cheuse, Fall Out of Heaven: An Autobiographical Journey, National Public Radio

“As Angie Chuang journeys from Portland to Kabul to Taoyuan and back again, first as witness, then as family, she paints a deft and moving portrait of the walls we erect and shows us how they crumble in the face human complexity and enduring love.”

 —Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning

“Chuang takes us on a compelling journey where the discovery of identity and place reveals the complexity of family, belonging, and home. This intertwining of two stories captures the imagination and brings us to a new vision of the way borders blur and become fluid.”

—Pauline Kaldas, Letters from Cairo, and Judge, Willow Books Literature Awards

About the Author

Angie Chuang is a writer and educator based in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Asian American Literary Review, and multiple editions of The Best Women’s Travel Writing. She has received fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale, Jentel, and others. She was an Associate Professor of Journalism at American University’s School of Communication.