The Shifting Homeland: Homeland in Relation to Past Experience

          Imaginary Homelands touched on the idea of a multicultural identity that is not fully incorporated by into any of them.  As an Indian formerly from Bombay, he sees himself as Indian, especially as he looks at his memories through the "shattered mirror", but at the same time he very much sees himself as British and loves living in England.  This multicultural identity is, however, strained by the fact that, at times, he feels like he does not have a present homeland in either country. To this effect he talks about the reception of his book in Indian and how it was poorly reviewed, because, he implies, that he is not Indian to the subcontinent's inhabitants, or at least he does not have the right to talk about India in the same way a true Indian can.  On the other side, the author does not always feel entirely a part of England because he is seen as different, e.i. when he is being interviewed and is asked if he accepts the word "wog", which is a person who is not white.  Instead of allowing this struggle to either break him and become a part of neither culture or conform completely to one culture, he takes a page from many black American writers in how they both retain their personal identity as black, not always necessarily as "African", and their identity as American.  This is a sentiment shared by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
          Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shares a similar multicultural identity as Rushdie, that he is a proud member of the "Negro community", but wishes to also be an American, as he feels he is one.  The government of America sought to make a single tale of what an American is, primarily a white individual that ethnically heralded from western Europe, which excluded those who have given much to American culturally and otherwise, in this case the black community.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sought to recreate the American tale into a multi volume edition that did not just include ethnically western European white people, but people of all nationalities and creed, including the black community.  This was not just in response to the poor treatment of the black community, though it was an important driving factor, but to the fact that the black community found it nearly impossible to find pride in their American identity because, logistically, they were excluded from being American.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the avenue of education to bring this single tale into light and ultimately rewrite it and this in many ways is Jesuit ideals put into action as Kolvenbach talks about in his manifesto on Jesuit service in faith.
          The Jesuits, in America particularly but also worldwide, have always focused on aiding the poor and in the process spreading the message of Christianity, but Kolvenbach looks at the shift in mission objectives during a meeting of the Society after Vatican II.  The mission switched primarily in that it did not hold the spreading of Christ in the same regard as it once did, instead it switched much of its resources to education and the spreading of faith and love, non-denominational ideals that were highly valued by Jesus.  Through education, the Jesuits sought to unite the individual self, the communal self, and the world self into one conscious being.  That is to say that through each of these selves we learn more about the whole, thus through community service and awareness we not only help those in our local or global communities, but also develop our person through discernment.These three interrelated articles actually touch very closely to me in both being and in belief.
          In my younger years I traveled much more than most people travel in their lives and by living out my developmental years mostly abroad, I found myself in a very awkward place when I settled down for high school.  I was use to bowing to elders in Japan, listening to the Islamic call to prayer in Jerusalem at the wee hours of the morning out of my window in the King David Hotel, and drinking coffee with my brother and the local village women when I was in Ethiopia.  Suffice to say that readjusting to life in America was a difficult task and it broke me.  I was anxious all the time and even though I physically fit in being a middle class white man, i could not have felt farther from my peers.  It wasn't until I went to a private school because I couldn't fit into public school that I felt at home.  So many cultures were bouncing around in my mind a soul and it was at this private school that I could once again feel at home because this was no ordinary private school.  The school I went to had people right off the boat from Korea, Ghana, Peru; and those who were not directly from another country were many times first or second generation.  Even though I was one of three in my graduating class that was white, I have never felt so comfortable.
         It was a hard transition to Loyola for that reason because it felt like I was back in public school with all the white NY/NJ niches dominating the school, but even here i found the culture I needed, mostly in the city of Baltimore itself.  Red lining was/is a horrible practice, but it truly has made a very charming and unique city.  I can walk from Little Italy to Little El Salvador in a matter of blocks and experience completely different cultures.  Even right off campus, I can sit on the steps of CVS and talk to a lady who was hit my a bus a week or two ago who's down on her luck talking about her crazy daughter who won't buy a pair of shoes under $100.  It's these experiences here and abroad that makes me who I am and its these moment of communication that bring me a sense of home.  I do not think of myself as Japanese, Israeli, Ethiopian, or American; I consider my home to be wherever I can sit down and share communicable experience even for a moment.

The Shared Homeland: Justice and Acceptance within Diverse Communities

It is a strange and life-altering moment when we realize that our home does not belong to us alone – that, in fact, the homeland is an intrinsically interpersonal space, which both exist for and relies upon other people. In fact, a homeland comprised of one person is no homeland at all, for others influence this space in unexpected ways. We do not always acknowledge the significance of the man who drives our bus or the woman who rings up our groceries to our sense of belonging, and yet we experience the absence of these people profoundly. And so, at some point, one must acknowledge that their home is not an isolated space occupied by them alone, but a congregation of interwoven lives and experiences that come together to form a complex interpersonal community by which one can define oneself. At this point, one becomes conscious of one’s role in supporting the others in this community.

It is not my place to assume that this experience is universal, for humanity cannot be so easily reduced to a single paradigm, but it has certainly affected me. In my transition to my adopted community here in Baltimore, the ongoing dialogue about community service and justice have made me acutely aware of the other people who comprise the Baltimore community. Recently, the civil unrest in Baltimore has made me realize that, even though we all live in the same city, not everyone feels the same way about it. There is a distinct absence of dialogue and understanding between neighbors of different races and social classes that brings into question the role of privileged groups in making this country unsafe for those unprivileged groups with which we share our home.

Rushdie, Kolvenbach, and King explore from different perspectives the need for further development and acceptance of others in their homelands. Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands” explores the author’s own identity as an Indian man who has grown up in England, and develops the idea that people living in a culture that is not strictly their own have a unique and valuable perspective. Rushdie encourages the sharing of the conflicting feelings of belonging at the same time to both and neither culture, suggesting that this new dual culture may be a powerful tool in the cultivation of understanding between societies. Rushdie sees himself and others like him as a bridge between two communities “because they… are at one and the same time insiders and outsiders in this society. This stereoscopic vision is perhaps what [they] can offer in place of ‘whole sight’” (19). By sharing their perspective with the world, this group may succeed in unifying different groups.

Kolvenbach, through the lens of Jesuit education, describes the necessity of service and justice in the effort to make communities equally safe and welcoming for all people. He explains that “only substantive justice can bring about the kinds of structural and attitudinal changes that are needed to uproot those sinful oppressive injustices that are a scandal against humanity and God” (7). He discusses the racial and economic divides in the world, and the exploitation of those people who cannot defend themselves from these institutional injustices. These people who are taken advantage of suffer within their own communities and are treated as lesser than the wealthy and privileged classes, and Kolvenbach suggests that we must, through service and justice, end this inequality and make a worldwide community in which all people live as equals.

Martin Luther King Jr, in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” addresses issues similar to those in “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education.” He tries to express in this letter the suffering of African American citizens during times of segregation, and to defend the means by which they fight to secure their rights. He describes in the twelfth paragraph of his letter all of the terrible injustices African Americans suffered under segregation, and communicates in jarring detail the pain of feeling unwelcome in one’s own hometown. Rather than acknowledging the place of these citizens in their communities, the white oppressors of the past willfully divided their homes, and cut others off from their society. This letter remains relevant to this day, as black citizens are subjected to racially biased police brutality. King’s words shed light on the protests in Baltimore taking place decades after his death, and even as he explains that “few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans… of those that have been oppressed” I see evidence of it in my own community (4). King wants to make the American homeland safe for all people, and I agree that this is a necessity: this city, this country, and indeed this world, belongs to a multitude of people, and everyone deserves to feel at home here. 

Home and Childhood: The Shattered Mirror

Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children is the work that launched Rushdie’s career and earned him popularity and renown. In the excerpt from Imaginary Homelands the we read, he ties in images and moments from Midnight Children. He explains why he made the narrator of that story, Saleem, untrustworthy as a narrator: because he is human and has a “fallible memory” and a fragmented vision of his past (Rushdie 10). This introduces the metaphor of the shattered, broken mirror, which represents human memory and the past in the excerpt and allows the reader to visualize how difficult it is to write about one’s homeland, when one doesn’t live there anymore. Rushdie himself seems somewhat unsure whether a fragmented view of the past is beneficial or detrimental stating that “the broken mirror may actually be as valuable as the one which is supposedly unflawed” (Rushdie 11). Although it may seem obvious that seeing the whole picture is better, Rushdie argues that in some ways, the fragmented pieces become more valuable and more vital to people’s lives and writer’s experiences. This is  because the memories that human beings do have of the past and of their homes are more often than not, big moments in their lives. As Rushdie writes, the memories that he had of his childhood in Bombay were “of greater status, greater resonance, because they were remains; fragmentation made trivial things seem like symbols, and the mundane acquired numinous qualities” (Rushdie 12). To Rushdie, it is the little things combined that make up his childhood and remind him of his homeland. 

I believe that the shattered mirror is also representative of childhood. Even if you still live in the place where you grew up, your past is fragmented. We are not meant to remember every single thing that happened every day when we were two years old. Childhood is where we develop our first idea of what home is. So Rushdie, as a child living in Bombay, developed his personal idea of what his home was. That is why when he returned to do his research, he was amazed by how many of his memories came back to him and how, even if they were the most ordinary things, they became a part of his stories and became symbols of his past in the present. 

Home is a collection of memories, whether they are our own or not, that represent moments in time where we felt at home. When we think of home, we think of a place or people, but in reality we are thinking of the memories we made in that place or with those people. We are thinking of moments in which we felt like we belonged, felt loved, or felt a part of something. Through these childhood memories that we bring to the surface, we put together our own idea of home. Rushdie’s definition is that , “meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved” (Rushdie 12). Therefore, we find meaning in the shattered mirror fragments of our past, and they contribute to who we are and what we do in the present. For writers like Rushdie, whether they have left their homeland or not, it is a similar idea; they take the experiences of their past and turn them into stories about their homelands. 

In my dad, who has lived in the United States for the majority of his life, but lived for his first 18 years in a small village in Ireland, I see this idea everyday. Though he is Irish by heritage and proud of it, he considers himself to be American and you can barely hear his accent anymore. But whenever he does something or says something a little different or out of the ordinary, he always has a story about when he was a kid in Ireland to explain why he uses that phrase or acts that way. His stories are vivid and he tells them so well that I can almost picture myself there and they seem so real to me. Does that mean that he remembers every moment of his childhood second by second? Of course not. He forgets names and dates and places. Sometimes he just remembers a person and tells me about them, but it is obvious that although they may not be complete these stories are a part of who he is. Just because isn't in Ireland anymore, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t, deep down, carry his homeland with him everyday through the fragments of his childhood memories. In this sense, the shattered mirror is not a bad thing, but, as Rushdie said, beneficial, as it makes the things we do remember all the more special. 

Homelands Analysis

When I think about my time in Paris, I think about how it is a cosmopolitan city where people you can meet people from all different walks of life, backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, races, and even nationalities. The homelessness in the city is astounding, as the cost of living in Paris continues to rise. And one is more likely to find minorities, immigrants, and first generation children in the suburbs or banlieue, the outskirts of the city of Paris. One thing that unites them all, however, is they all, more or less, speak French and well. It is common to hear English in the shops and restaurants, but not so much in the streets. Even then, as a foreign student, I was always aware of how French natives seemed a little put off with the Americans or foreigners who would enter into buildings speaking straight English. Sometimes, these French people even become hostile. I sympathized with them, careful to always begin or maintain conversation in French to the best of my abilities. The influences of globalization have overexposed them to American culture. As a first generation minority in America, it was interesting for me to see how the first generation French people my age felt about their country. I feel that it is there is a profound difference, with some people feeling that they are French because they have chosen to become so, and some people still working to navigate their two different homelands. From the French themselves, there seemed to be this prevailing idea that anyone who came into their country simply needed to let uphold their French-hood above everything else, whether that be a home country, mother tongue, or even religion. Becoming Frnech demanded that in France, you did as the French did, that all other identifications became secondary. This idea can be explained by the Frenc concept of Laïcité, which traditionally demanded a strict adherence to the separation of church and state, but has evolved into a concept tha forces the Muslim minority to forego adhering to their Muslim laws in favor of French laws.

            The readings for this week offer some ideas that I feel help shed some light on the problems that minorities in France, and most especially the Arab and Muslim minorities in France face. I was most struck by Rushdie’s words in “Imaginary Homelands.” In my opinion, he seemed to be advocating a sense of openness to western culture, advocating for a sense of “cross-pollination” (20). I agree with him that this attitude toward different cultures is beneficial and one that does open both the writer’s and the reader’s universe a little more (21). However, keeping this in mind with the power dynamics I saw between the French and French minorities, I feel that Rushdie ignores the unequal exchange that occurs in some situations of cross-pollination. I feel that his argument could have benefited from some acknowledgement that every exchange necessitates a struggle for power, to be the dominant one. Still, I feel that Rushdie’s assertion that we should work to avoid the ghetto mentality, lest we fail to realize that there is a world outside of the ones we belong to (19) is a deeply powerful warning, one that means to protect people from being stuck inside of a box. And yet again, I feel as if he fails to include recognition that homelands are important as they are the first home, a home base even; they need not be the only home that one claims, but they hold importance in how they shape and color a person’s world or their perception of the world. 

Homelands Analysis- 9/23

The three short pieces written by Rushdie, King, and Kolvenbach convey similar conceptualizations of an established "Homeland." Rushdie expresses his ever-present affinity and familiarity with his original homeland of Bombay before moving to England where he is forced to cultivate a new life for himself in an unfamiliar environment. Rushdie juxtaposes his relationship with India to those of other natives forced to leave for various reasons as history progressed. He describes their shared sense of affinity with Bombay as well as their latent desire to revisit or reclaim lost sentiments of familiarity. King writes from behind the bars of Birmingham Jail while orchestrating the civil rights movement. He describes in detail the severity of black oppression while indicating the burden it bears on African American citizens who suffer discrimination in what should be a homeland that ensures their freedom. Kolvenbach describes the various missions of the Jesuit order. Jesuits dedicate their livelihoods to service for others and actively involve themselves in various service projects to poor or impoverished areas. Doing so enables them to foster the lives of others while cultivating homelands for those they serve. All three authors utilize similar themes to describe those who live in a state of longing or deprevation and their desire to immerse themselves in a familiar and accommodating homeland.

Martin Luther King Jr. describes African American's feelings of abuse and marginalization, describing their very existence as a state of oppression based on the degree of racial tension prevalent in the South. King states, "oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro" (King 4). King elaborates by describing the collective sense of urgency expressed by oppressed African Americans to secure equal rights and privileges though the Civil Rights Moment's acts of peaceful protest. King states, "Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations" (King 4). King describes participants of the movement as longing desperately to claim a homeland for themselves that actively supports their rights and interests. Similarly, Kolvenbach describes the society of Jesuits and their dedication to social justice in the ethnically diverse Silicon Valley. Jesuits embrace diversity and equality as hallmarks of social justice. Such views are expressed in the Silicon Valley area, which according to Kolvenbach is populated by various immigrants seeking to establish livelihoods for their families. He states, "thousands of immigrants arrive from everywhere: entrepreneurs from Europe, high-tech professionals from South Asia who staff the service indus­ tries as well as workers from Latin America and Southeast Asia who do the physical labor - thus, a remarkable ethnic, cultural and class diversity" (Kolvenbach 31). This excerpt describes the socioeconomic diversity of a prospering American region with an immigrant population congregating for the common purpose of establishing a homeland. Finally, Rusdie conveys his longing by describing his relationship with his homeland of Bombay. He states, "It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back...we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind" (Rushdie 10). This passage describes the profound affinity Indians express towards their homelands and how they attempt to mentally construct their conception of home while projecting it on their strange environment.

     

Homelands Analysis 9/23

As citizens of the United States of America, it is very easy to take for granted the many freedoms and liberties we are lucky enough to enjoy that others around the world are not able to experience. We are able to speak our minds when others are silenced, to pursue our dreams while others restricted in their hopes and aspirations, and to worship freely whereas some are persecuted for their beliefs. The fact that we are promised these rights is contingent upon the notion that we call the United States our home. We take for granted that we are even able to claim a nationality to begin with, while for many around the globe, this essential piece of one’s identity—one of the most common synonyms for homeland—is not easily known. I had never considered how fortunate I was to be able to claim a nationality until I began to examine more closely various concepts of human rights in my political science classes. Learning that the United Nations stated that “[e]veryone has a right to a nationality,” in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights opened my eyes to the fact that there are those around the world who are unable to identify a nationality for themselves (United Nations). Despite this declaration, we have seen in recent years that many people around the world are still deprived of this right. From the Palestinians to the flood of refugees who are currently migrating into Europe, it is certainly startling to consider, and it leads me to wonder how I would view myself if I were left without the ability to claim a nationality, something that is so quintessential to my identity. While it is difficult to put myself in the shoes of some of the people that I mentioned before, as I have never experienced a feeling comparable to that of lacking a nation to call home, my faith and my expanding understanding of human rights has definitely made me more empathetic towards the struggle that these people face, and has helped me to recognize the importance of claiming a nationality to the establishment of a personal homeland, and ultimately, its importance in defining your own identity.

            This week’s readings examine similar concepts of homeland, especially as it pertains to feeling at home within one’s own country. In his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. describes what life was like for an African-American living during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, and the difficulties that they experienced when it seemed to them that they were hated by their own country for the color of their skin. King describes that he neither felt comfortable as an American, nor as a person of color, as he explains that the average African-American at the time was “harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments…forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodyness’” (King, Jr. 2). The discriminatory laws and constant racism that African-Americans experienced on a daily basis contributed to a feeling of discomfort within one’s own skin, as well as within one’s country. Being fundamental contributors to a person’s identity, one can understand how it would have been easy for an African-American to slip into this sensation of “nobodyness”. Salman Rushdie describes a similar sentiment in his piece “Imaginary Homelands”. Moving from India to England, he admits that his “identity is at once plural and partial” (Rushdie 15). While he has come to call both England and India his home, he at the same time has a difficult time calling either home. Over time, he has become distant from India, while simultaneously he is hesitant to call England home because a piece of his heart remains in his homeland. As a result, he is constantly torn between to distant places on the globe. These pieces underscore the importance of being able to claim a nationality and how it contributes to one’s own identity.

Homelands in Three Separate Accounts

In the three readings assigned for this post, homelands are described at length in terms of both place and purpose. The authors of all three identify with a mission that makes each destination a sort of homeland. For instance, the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" illustrates the point of a mission through King's use of biblical references. King is responding to criticisms about being in Birmingham, and he makes the case that he must go where he is needed: "But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their 'thus saith the Lord' far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town" (King 1). Dr. King recognized that his mission on earth was to eradicate injustice and promote the notions of love and equal treatment for all. He also recognized that he could not remain in his home town to accomplish these goals. So, he went where he was needed, and attempted to turn each location into a pillar of toleration and acceptance. Sometimes, a person has a purpose in life that requires him or her to leave the comforts of home and explore the farthest corners of the world. It takes bravery and confidence, but without the messages of people like Dr. King, this country, and even the world, would be much darker. The article concerning the Jesuit mission deals with a similar theme. The Jesuits, like Dr. King, established universities and institutions dedicated to promoting Jesuit ideals: "The overriding purpose of the Society of Jesus, namely 'the service of faith,' must also include 'the promotion of justice'" (Kolvenbach 23). In service to these principles, the Society focused on educating those in the universities the core values at the heart of its mission. For the Jesuits as well, homeland involved spreading the word, even if it meant leaving certain comforts. Salman Rushdie deviates a bit from this pattern and discusses a geographical area to attach to the word homeland. Rushdie talks about Bombay and trying to remember the land before the family's journey to London. Bombay is imagined romantically: "Bombay is a city built by foreigners upon reclaimed land; I, who had been away so long that I almost qualified for the title, was gripped by the conviction that I, too, had a city and a history to reclaim" (Rushdie 10). Rushdie connects Bombay with an identity. Without one, there cannot be the other. It is interesting that homelands are connected so intimately with our sense of self.