Read at least 6 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of BOTH the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find and look for differences as well; look to see if you can find student peers who appear to have different values then yourself when it comes to the meaning of ‘home.’ Post this list on your blog and include commentary please.
Shared Assumptions, Values, and Stories
At first, when comparing several stories about home, I found myself with a very long list; it seemed like we all shared so many assumptions and values regarding our definition of “home”. However, upon closer inspection, I realized most of these ideas could fall into two general commonalities:
1) A Search for Home
One major commonality among us is the assumption that home is not a given- it is something that must be found. Many of us have spent much of our lives searching for “home” and questioning what home means to us. Initially, I thought this was because of the assignment. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case. There are many examples of us as children or teenagers, or young adults backpacking around the world, and even back then, it seems we were struggling to figure out our home. Many of us no longer live in the place where we spent our formative years, and have wrestled with the concept of “finding home”. Tamara Ensor writes of moving around when she was younger, feeling like she “never really belonged anywhere”. Kevin Hatch describes his search for home, referring to it as something that had “picked up and rumbled across the land”, and that it was up to him to pack up and follow”.
Lexis Mellish discusses her quest to find a community where she could “feel a part of something”.
2) Home is an Emotional Response
Despite a wide range of definitions for home, for the most part we agree on the idea that home is found inside us, and it is an emotional response. Home is not a house, a city, or even a country- it is a feeling. For some of us, it is a response to a relationship– home is with a partner, children, our parents, and/or our siblings. For some of us, it’s a response to our land. For others, it’s the way we feel when we are among a certain community. Because home is not a specific physical location, it can grow and shrink and move with us. Kevin Hatch puts it nicely when he writes that he prefers his home to be something he can take with him, “like a hermit crab”.
Differences: How are my values different from some of my peers’ values?
Most of the stories I read included a focus on heritage; for many, it seems, a part of identifying oneself and their home includes identifying their ancestors and the the lands from which their ancestors came. Many of the students in the class were raised with stories of their ancestry. I loved reading about my classmates’ heritages, but it made me realize that I did not discuss my heritage at all. I did not bring up my physical appearance, the language(s) that my family spoke, or where my parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were born.
And I found myself asking why not?
My father (born and raised in Montreal), since retiring, has become quite focused (I’m being generous here- “obsessed” might be a more accurate term) with exploring the “family history”. He has scoured the internet for photos and news articles and assorted tidbits related to his ancestors, most of whom come from England, Ireland, and Scotland. He constantly shares his findings with us, and one Christmas gave me and my siblings a USB key with all of his findings.
I must admit, I have not opened it.
I don’t have an interest in it.
Maybe I will one day, when I’m older. Maybe if all of the information on this USB key wasn’t related to a white, European, Catholic background- people whose history has been so prominent in mainstream education and culture that I already feel saturated- maybe then, I would have more interest.
But right now, for me, my exploration of home centers on my present life. The people and relationships I have in my life today. The communities in which I am a part of- or hope to be a part of- at this point in my life. The land in which I live on now, and the issues that we- as Canadians and as residents on this planet- face today.
Currently, I’m reading A.J. Jacobs’ It’s All Relative, a memoir around the author’s attempt to fully map out his family tree. In his book, he refers to a study which concludes that children who know their family’s history are more well-adjusted than those who are unaware of their heritage. Perhaps this knowledge helps individuals feel more “rooted”, more “at home”?
I’m curious to know what you think, after considering the intersection of heritage and home- do many of you believe that your “home” is inherently linked to your heritage, in one form or another?
Commentary
I will repeat what nearly all of us have said: home is very difficult to define, and it is going to be different for each and everyone of us. As a Canadian of European descent, it is especially difficult. The truth is, if I am to use the more general of definition of home (“the place where I come from”), I have to tell people that my home is a stolen land. I have my home because people stole it from others. I was not responsible for these actions, and growing up as a child who knew little of our country’s harsh past, I had no reason not to proudly say, “My home is Canada”, in the same way that a child riding in a car that was, unbeknownst to the child, stolen by her parents, would proudly say, “This is my car”. I did not choose my past. I did not choose the country in which I was born. But here I am. And now it is my responsibility to be an Indigenous ally and to make amends for the actions of those who came before me, so that I can make Canada a place that my children can say- with deserved pride- is their home.
Thanks to Kevin Hatch, Tamara Ensor, Lexis Mellish, Georgia Wilkins, Cassie Lumsden, and Maxwell McEachern for their blogs; I focused on these ones for this response, but my goal is to read everyone’s!
Works Cited
Deer, Jessica. “Montreal non-profit launches toolkit on how to be an Indigenous ally.” CBC. 23 Jan. 2019. Web. 30 Jan.2019.
Ensor, Tamara. “Home…” .Web blog post. UBC Blogs WordPress. Canadian Lit Eh. 29 Jan. 2019. Web. 30 Jan. 2019.
Hatch, Kevin. “Home is Where Your Rump Rests”. Web blog post. ENGL 470 99C Blog: Oh! Canada? UBC Blogs WordPress. 28 Jan. 2019. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.
Jacobs, A.J. It’s All Relative. New York: Simon & Shuster. 2017.
Marche, Stephen. “Canada’s Impossible Acknowledgement.” The New Yorker. 7 Sep. 2017. Web. 30 Jan. 2019.
Mellish, Lexis. “Re-shaping Home”. Web blog post. Swamp Mama. UBC Blogs WordPress. 28 Jan. 2019. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.
“National Air Cargo: We Deliver”. N.p., n.d. Specky Boy. Web image. 31 Jan. 2019.
Rollins, Judy. “The Power of Family History”. Pediatric Nursing 39 (2013). 113-114. Web. 30 January 2019.
Rough Trade Records. “Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes- Home (Official Video). YouTube. YouTube. 17 May 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.