Read at least 3 students’ blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog with some commentary about what you discovered.

A couple of years ago, I was writing about this feeling of being foreign in your own skin’s country. I didn’t address this issue directly in my story about my home, but it’s still there, like an empty gap. I am aware of it but in a sense it’s a part of my identity that feels replaced, almost, but not to the extent of a forced assimilation. But when I speak English back to a cashier who spoke Chinese, sometimes, I feel a little ashamed.

Imagine the rest of your family tree, scattered in another place across the ocean. Imagine sending an email to your maternal grandfather, using Google Translate and the audio button as some sort of way to understand what you are writing. English was my second language as a child, but where I am now, I guess I’m just really bad with cultural integration. Enough about my story, though.

Here were two excerpts I enjoyed and was inspired by from reading others’ blogs:

“The concept of cultural values and a geographical home are just things that I have learned to lose now.  I feel that it is something I will develop in the future, after I have learned my life lessons, and settled into a home I will call my own.  For now, I am happy to be roaming.  I cannot relate to those who have had something they’ve known their whole lives – land, lifestyle, and family – and have it taken away from them by a people they have never seen before.  I can only try my best to empathize and understand.  In all honesty, however, I have nothing to explain how I value a home I never had, or a culture that I am learning.” – Jessica Lee.

“Yet, I then start to wonder if my conception of home in this sense is contributing to the displacement of others, to the myth of terra nullius, and to the ongoing colonialism that underlies much of society. I wonder if I can ever truly belong to a place that my ancestors didn’t belong to, and if my own stories contribute to the erasure of the story and home of others.” – Kaylie Higgs.

A few similarities I’ve found in browsing others’ blogs was that the metaphor “Home is where the Heart is” is mentioned a few times. I suppose it describes how a general shared assumption or learned value is that when it comes to the complex concept of our homes, there aren’t any physical boundaries. What makes us different is how we connect to the places that 1) we’ve lived in for quite a while or 2) our cultural identities make such more complex, and may have us challenge our values quite often in terms of where home is. (In my case and a few others, the struggle is similar in which we are unsure how we can compensate; I can live in my parents’ house, speak Chinglish, but I would not feel at home in China). And sometimes we find solace in another person or significant other, and I would say that the idea of a future with them is like its own sort of home.

On that note, I think it transitions well to add this scene as an opening to my next point. When we think about it, memory serves as a constant re-acknowledgment and re-evaluation of who we are now, based on our current experiences, and how we perceive through them. In the 500 Days of Summer cut-scenes, albeit more extreme, it is Tom’s current relations that change his perspective on Summer. She was initially a woman he idealizes to someone he cannot stand because his expectations didn’t fit the reality of things.

Our memory changes a lot depending on our perspective, which also affects how we think of our home. We are constantly transforming and making our mark on our own stories with each milestone we encounter. Consider Robinson’s book title: “Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory.” Even in Robinson’s stories, there were incorporations within all themes that Wickwire found, even those that weren’t recorded (mainly because the recorders weren’t interested in detailing them). “Knowing about large birds that could carry humans, lake creatures that could swallow horses, and grizzly bears that could shelter travelers in distress would show people that the world around them consisted of many different forms and layers of life” (Robinson, 29). Likewise, we are always retelling the narrative of our own identity from discovering future values or from digging in the past. We are always learning, but this learning comes from beginning with a question.

Hall argues that “the very process of identification, through which we project ourselves into our cultural identities, has become more open-ended, variable, and problematic” (277). On a side-note, this last page describes an interesting example of which complicates the politics of cultural identities. Yet, is Canada, as a country that identifies itself as multicultural, serving its people well, and are there any displacements or erasures that have affected some cultures? Have we appreciated culturally diverse customs without our own preconceptions largely disabling us from doing so? In what way can/do we identify as Canadians? Is Canada an open doored home to everyone?

I think about a history bleached and rewritten ‘firmly’ with the universally dominant, ultimate colonized language: English. I think about Coyote meeting the King of England. The ‘Black and White.’ The process of decolonization. Do I despise English? No. I am thankful that I can express myself in words, and that I have others who will listen to what I have to say. I can only say in truth, that I have the intention of relearning my own family’s language, so that I can order confidently in Asian restaurants, for my own good.

Emilang. “500 Days of Summer – I Love the Way She..” Youtube. Youtube, August 7, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOrfYQPZF6k.

Hall, Stuart et al. “Chapter 1: Introduction: Identity in Question.” The Question of Cultural Identity, Sage Publications, 1996, pp. 274–280.

Higgs, Kaylie. “Is This Home?” Creating Connections, 27 September 2016, https://blogs.ubc.ca/kaylieandautumn2016/2016/09/27/is-this-home/.

Lee, Jessica. “Assignment 2:2 – My Story.” Blog Lee, 28 September 2016, https://blogs.ubc.ca/bloglee/2016/09/28/assignment-22-my-story/.

Lu, Jenny. “Nayyirah’s Immigrant Poem.” 2016. JPEG file.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver, Talon Books, 2005.