Paperwork and Borders: A Marriage traces the author's relationship in academia and her many international moves – from Arkansas to Seattle to Boston to Montreal to Germany – related to it. Told in three sparse vignettes, the memoirs-in-novella detail a ten-year struggle trying to find support at her many universities; within these institutional critiques, she narrates her experiences at the borders, filling out redundant paperwork, and the instability of her visas, all of which reveal the story behind her name and her reluctance to get married.