With this blog, I really wanted to pick at random at the stories I would read. I tried to pick people that I thought I didn’t know much about yet. Even with this diverse group of people, I found many similarities to my own story as well. Here’s my list:
1. Transnational identities
2. Home as represented by the family
3. Or familial-relationships
4. Non-physical entity
When starting this assignment I found it a little intimidating. I didn’t feel as though I could interpret values from people’s stories without explicit referencing. As I had said prior, I chose my list quite randomly. Upon reading the first story, I felt lost. Given our last task of writing a short story, I realized that we all must’ve had such different reference points to how we might approach such a task. Clearly, I managed to find common assumptions through the stories I’ve chosen. I think the most imminent one was transnational identities, since that’s truly something we likely all possess to some extent. I also say “transnational identities” https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/scl/article/view/20989/24189 as opposed to something like multicultural identities, because I feel like there is significance in these stories about crossing a state/boundary of some sort. I think a lot of what it means to have a transnational identity, and what it means to have ties to different countries. What it means to cross a boundary-construct or what it means to hold a different citizenship than the place you want to call home. I would also say that many of us feel strongly rooted by our transnational identities. It’s quite interesting to read, as it manifests differently with all of us.
I wrote familial-relationships as separate from family, because I was able to see family represented in a historical and cultural context. This idea of family relates closer to the first point of transnational identity actually. I would say that what I found about familial-relationships is that can be represented through different networks of relationships, whether it be a significant other, friends, groups, etc. When people talk about these networks, they talk about it with significance to their personal identity and how they relate them like family.
When it came to the non-physical entity, that was something that I also touched upon in my own post. It’s something that I think about often and it’s something that I have issues with myself. I’ve often felt that home was embodied by something physical. Whether it’s a roof over our heads or all the stuff you own. As a couple of other people mentioned that they don’t feel like their current “housing” defines their idea of home, I want to continue to challenge my instinctive idea of physical belongings defining my home.
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