How we share home: common values, assumptions, and stories:

–Home as unstable, as a concept that is “always changing” as “the world around us always changes” (Zac Collins 2021). This idea of home is unanswerable; it is impossible to trace exactly its origins and its paths. As Aidan put it, home is “ambidextrous” (Aidan McConnell 2021). It is often impossible to say what “home” exactly is because the answer would vary so drastically depending upon one’s current state – where they are, what language they are speaking, what people they are surrounded by. My story is about this as well: my idea of home is highly unstable: I am from multiple places, but simultaneously not of any place.

-Home as defined by loved ones, friendships, and family.

-Home as a sense of one’s inner identity.

-Home as defined less by place(s) and more by sense and feel: Magdalena’s post was entirely concerned with the idea of being “at home” in various places – home with people rather than at places, each micro-story paragraph ending with the repetition of “and I was home,” with each home a hyperlink to a different definition of the word. Both Aidan and Zac’s concepts of home are also based on people as well as places. Mia’s post defines home as “the ability to stand in the same room with the people I valued the most, and simply breath” (Mia Nikoo 2021). Both she and Kyle Olsen titled their posts with the phrase “where the heart is.”

-Home as environmental, defined by the natural world and remembrances of landscapes: Grace Marshall writes of having grown up on an island, with the “ocean” having “always been an important part” of her image of home (Marshall 2021). She writes of the sounds of the waves, the comfort of the ocean. Aidan writes of the Coast Mountains as the greatest symbol of his idea of “home” in Vancouver (McConnell 2021), and Laura Metcalfe writes of how the mountains “know about me,” of how she knows “about the land” and the “old growth forest” (Metcalfe 2021). Samantha Stewart’s post is dedicated in part to the ocean – its breezes, its weather. This connection to the storytelling of the natural world is part of what place-based education is concerned with, an immersion into “local heritage, cultures, landscapes” (Promise of Place).

-Many of our stories spoke of childhood and of growing up: my own post was partly concerned with how I was born in Japan, but raised in Canada, thus splitting my identity between two places as a true “native” of Japan but culturally far more immersed in Canadian society. Zac writes of how “the home of my childhood really does feel like childhood,” writing of a “strange clashing of worlds” upon his return to his hometown (Collins 2021). Laura, Magdalena, Holly Rance with a photographic artifact of her childhood, Grace M., and Lenaya Sampson with her retelling of childhood stories and youthful memories, all seem to create a shared narrative of home as where one was a child; home as childhood memory.

There were, however, some differences between stories, some shared differences even. I noticed that not all stories shared the same sense of cultural (or political, even) uncertainty: I noticed that I was (perhaps) unique in my idea of home being about my being of two vastly different societies, two vastly different cultures. This speaks to the sociocultural/sociopolotical specificity of home as a product of nation-state building, citizenship, race, and colonialist (dominant/counter) narratives – as with British-Indian writer Nico Iyer’s talk examining the idea of “home” from a cultural and political perspective as a child of British parents, born in Britain, raised in California and England, and having lived in Japan for 25 years. So where is he from? What is home for him? Perhaps this is to say that my blog post focussed more on home as a sociopolitical entity whist many of my classmates considered home through a more emotional, spiritual, familial lens – though perhaps the two forms of consideration are more similar than different. For those who would wish to further examine the intricacies of borders as a means of dilineating home and identity I would recommend political anthropologist and Mohawk Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States, an examination of the struggles of the Mohawks to maintain “political sovereignity through centuries of settler colonialism” (Simpson 2014).

I also noticed a competing pull between home as unstable and always-changing (like my idea of it) and home as secure, what Cayla writes of as “a sense of security; of peace of mind; of relaxation” (Banman 2021). So there is home as relaxing, peaceful, and secure, vs. home as unstable, like sand through one’s fingers, or uncatcheable smoke. These answers are all correct; but to different people raised and living in vastly differing circumstances.

Works Cited

Collins, Zac. “Blog 2:2 :: Where the Heart Is.” UBC Blogs, 9 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/englitwithzac/2021/02/09/blog-22-where-the-heart-is/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

How, Magdalena. “Assignment 2:2 | When.. I was home.” Magdalena How’s Student Blog Engl 372 99C, 9 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372magdalenahow/2021/02/09/assignment-21-when-i-was-home/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Iyer, Pico. “Where is home?” TED, 2013, https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home/transcript?referrer=playlist-what_is_home#t-4311. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Marshall, Grace. “Homestead Stories (A2:2).” Reading Corner, 11 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/gracemarshall/2021/02/11/homestead-stories-a22/#. Accessed 15 February 2021.

McConnell, Aidan. “Assignment 2:2 – There’s No Place Like Home.” Canadian Literature Blog, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372aidan/2021/02/10/assignment-22-theres-no-place-like-home/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Nikoo, Mia. “Where the Heart Is.” Literary Traveller, 11 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mianikoo/2021/02/11/where-the-heart-is/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Olsen, Kyle. “2:2 Home is where the Heart is.” Kyle’s Blog, 10 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/kylesblog/2021/02/10/22-home-is-where-the-heart-is/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Rance, Holly. “Coming Home.” Rediscovering a Nation: A Study of the Power of Stories, 11 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/hollyrance/2021/02/11/coming-home/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Sampson, Lenaya. “2.2 Home Sweet Home.” Lenaya’s Blog: English 372 Oh Canada, 10 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/lenayasampsonengl372/2021/02/10/2-2-home-sweet-home/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Simpson, Audra. “Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States.” Duke University Press, May 2014, https://www.dukeupress.edu/mohawk-interruptus. Accessed 15 February 2021.

Stewart, Samantha. “Jumping Waves.” Rocks, Trees, Water, 10 Feb. 2021, https://blogs.ubc.ca/rockstreeswater/2021/02/10/jumping-waves/. Accessed 15 February 2021.

“What is Place-Based Education?” Promise of Place, https://promiseofplace.org/#:~:text=Place%2Dbased% 20education%20(PBE),other%20subjects%20across%20the%20curriculum. Accessed 15 February 2021.