Immigration and Contingency: Choose Your Own Adventure

Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Called branching-path narratives or gamebooks, these were meant for readers ages 9–12. They are improvisations in which the reader determines what happens next. They sold more than 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998, when they were superseded by electronic games. They still sell a million copies annually.

We think of ourselves as possessing an authentic identity which shapes the choices we make. The Choose books acknowledge that we possess multiple selves, each authentic in their own way, in the moment that they possess us.