Neither the pervasiveness of writing in everyday life nor the movement of people across international borders is abating. Global migration has increased 33% since 2000, leaving millions of people negotiating family, politics, and money across borders. Likewise, according to Deborah Brandt's recent book, "The Rise of Writing," more people are writing in more aspects of their lives, with as yet unknown emotional, cognitive, and civic consequences. Driving both trends are the familiar characters of our rapidly globalizing age--state politics, changing technologies, and economic neoliberalism. How precisely do such macrosocial forces act on both writing and migration? How do they pressure the ways these two widespread experiences act on each other? What do these intricate relationships mean for the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people, who are increasingly moving and writing across borders? Such questions, in the author's view, are at the heart of transnational composition studies today. In this piece, the author makes a brief case for one way we might begin to answer them. Specifically, the author details the utility of a data collection method that can help researchers trace how larger historical currents are enmeshed in transnational literacy: the literacy history interview (LHI).