I have come to realize that home is more than a place where I live or a place where I feel most comfortable. It is not just where my friends and family are or where I leave all my stuff. Home can mean all these things but it can also mean something much, much more. Throughout the course of the semester, we have learned what home has meant in many different contexts. In the six books we have read and studied, home has developed into more than I had originally thought. I have come to realize that home inevitably defines a person. Home is identity, where an individual can express his or her identity to the fullest.
In The Namesake, Gogol struggles with finding a feeling of home. In the house where he grows up, surrounded by his parents and sister, he does not ever feel like he truly belongs. He enters into identity confusion. He begins living in various places, but these never truly become home for him. In college, he attempts to be someone separate from the person he was growing up. He adopts a new name, believing that with this he will assume a separate identity in his supposedly new ‘home.’ In New York, he continues this name in a new ‘home,’ but depends on another person to define his identity. Indicative of this dependence is his occupancy of her home. Still, he does not fully commit to living there, as he attempts to hold on to whatever he believes to be his identity. When he marries, Gogol shares a home with his wife. He shares part of himself with her and believes that she is doing the same with him. Eventually, she realizes that she is not happy with who she is in this home and leaves him. Gogol does not seem to break from this identity confusion until the end of the novel. He no longer shares a home with anyone, which can be interpreted as his independence from other people. He has come to accept his own identity, separate from anyone else’s. It is then that he finally has found this home in himself.
In The Gangster We are all Looking For, the narrator wishes to leave the place that she calls home. She is a refugee from Vietnam who has left her homeland to come to America. She is forced to leave who she is in Vietnam. Her life and identity are affected when she arrives in America. This begins her struggle to feel at home in this new land. The arrival of her mother triggers conflict within the home of her family. Her parents fight almost continuously. She wants to flee from this negativity to find a better home. Her development is hindered by this instability within her home. When she is older, she escapes and runs away, finding refuge far from home. However, she feels that she is finally ready to accept who she is and returns home.
In America is in the Heart, Carlos Bulosan travels from the Philippines to the United States to discover who he is. He believes that home is where his family is in the Philippines. He inevitably leaves this home for America, where he hopes to establish himself and find a better life. What he finds is corruption and unwelcoming. He struggles to feel at home in a land where he is not accepted because of his immigrant background. All of his dreams of America and the person he could be begin to die away. However, he meets people who affect how he views himself and America. He discovers that ultimately he himself must define what this America means, where his home will be, and what role he will play in this place. He must look inside himself to define his home.
In A Gesture Life, Doc Hata builds a life that is seemingly perfect. He is respected in his perfect little town. He has the perfect daughter. And he owns the perfect house. Yet his home life is not as perfect as it seems. His daughter does not feel at home in this life that he has made for her. She tells him that it is because none of it is genuine. This life is a life full of gestures, actions and behaviors that are for the benefit of other people’s positive opinion. In addition, Hata is confused about what his true nationality is. He claims that Japan is his homeland, but, in actuality, it is Korea. This adds to this conflict in establishing a true home. Hata has this home and life that he believes to be one thing but is actually a façade. In the end, when he decides to sell his house is when he realizes that this place is not the home he wishes to have. He is not the person he wishes to be.
In My Country Versus Me, Wen Ho Lee establishes himself as a ‘true American.’ He raises his family the ‘American way.’ His position at a national lab is done to protect this country that he calls home. Though he believes this country to be his home, it rejects him. Lee is accused of not really belonging to this country, to being a traitor. He is seen as a perpetual foreigner. He may reside here, but this is not his home. However, Lee fights this belief. He establishes that while he is Taiwanese, he is still an American. America is part of who he is because this is his home.
Finally, in Obasan, Naomi experiences this same identity-home confusion. Though she was born and raised in Canada, she is suspect of betrayal because of her Japanese descent. The country she calls home turns on her, tainting her as a traitor and sending her into internment. Still, her family, with whom she shares a home, stays as silent as she does. They keep things about their past and their family from her, things that affect her home and her identity. When the silence subsides, she realizes more about who she is.
Despite the diversity in the content of the novels, they all seem to have a similar theme: home inevitably affects a person’s identity, defining who they are and who they will be. Though it can be, home is not necessarily a physical place. Instead, it can be a place where one can fully express their identity. They can be who they are completely with no inhibition or concern. For me, home, regardless of location, is where I am respected and accepted for who I am. The people I am surrounded by and the experiences that I have affect my feeling of home and thus, the development of my identity. I feel like what I defined as home before affected how I defined myself also. Who I was before I came to Berkeley is not the same person I am today. My home in Berkeley has affected how I think, what I do, and the person I want to be. I have developed as an individual because of the experiences I have had in my new home. However, I still hold on to the home back in Southern California. I cannot deny that who I was there affects who I am today. Thus, home can be more than one place and it can mean more than one thing. Still, after all is said and done, home is where the heart is. You are the only person that can define what or where home is, just as you are the only person who can define who you are.
Laurie Bailon
No comments:
Post a Comment