I think I’ve read everyone’s story of home (of those posted by this afternoon). But here I’ll concentrate on four blogs (I’ll name them because I’ll refer to specific details) – @Cat’s, @Deanna’s, @Edward’s and @Greta’s. There might be some selection bias here (relative to my own post; but these were the ones with elements that really stood out for me.
There are (not surprisingly, and similar to many of the other stories), common elements of proximity (in terms of space or mind) to loved ones, and of impermanence (difficult to define, not static).
Most interesting, Cat’s, Deanna’s and Edward’s all revolved to some extent around loss, either as a beginning or an end to the story or plot (the mother, the siblings, the parents and buildings). There is a sense of something being destroyed or shattered (a previous life, a family, an entire town).
There are also elements of leaving and returning (to a hometown/place of painful memories, daily returns of a family, to a changed place).
The themes of loss and leaving/returning struck me, but I don’t think Greta’s had these same elements (at least not as centrally, because there is an element of each student having left some other place to come to Singapore). Thinking of why Greta’s story struck me in much the same way the others’ did, I think it’s because all four have an element of recognition in them, either of recognizing something (the heat, familiar breakfast plates) or being recognized (by family/friends, for who you are – that is, not just for ‘being cute’). In Greta’s story this recognizing something and being recognized were one and the same – a mutual recognition of a shared situation, that of being seemingly without a home (in the teacher’s restrictive definition).
As an aside, I think Greta’s story also contains an element of the process of creating ‘home’, in the dialogue among the students in trying to create a conception of home, variously (and never incorrectly) defining home as the school, a space around which their family is, a familiar place/place of recognition, nowhere and everywhere.
Hi Jamie – a most insightful reflection on the themes of home. I am most intrigued with your central theme of recognition, which is also a part of leaving and returning: if one is recognized. Your analyses does an excellent job of inviting in “others’ – those who recognize us, or enable us to recognize ourselves. Thanks again.
I would agree, @erikapaterson, that recognition is part of leaving and returning. We can come and go, but this act (of returning, say) doesn’t mean anything if no one recognizes that we have returned. But thinking of Robinson’s story of the White Twin’s descendants returning to the home of the Black Twin, must the Black Twin’s descendants recognize the former’s return? This might be a moot point, because how can They not recognize this return? But the reverse is probably more complicated, if we ask whether We must recognize Their return (return to discourse, not to the land/home, etc.) in order to make it ‘real’. Can They (the Other, the subaltern) unilaterally return in this sense, regardless of whether they are heard (listened to)?