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Bare Trees in Fog
Writer's pictureMarie Laure

My Home, Your Home

Back home in my homeland, the place of my birth, may or may not in the end be my “home." Where is home? That question is burning in the minds of many like wildfire around the world. One does not choose the homeland, but, one may choose a home far away from the homeland. My grandparetns did so in the early 1900’s. I do not know how these two natives of Quebec City, Canada, came to decide to leave their homeland during the early years of their marriage with their then small family. Their new home became New England, which once upon a time had become a new home for those fleeing England in hope of a fresh beginning far from oppression. Upon making landfall, those immigrants soon found their new home had been "discovered" long before by peoples who had lived on the land for 14,000 years. The English had followed on the heels of the Spanish who had landed to the South where other Native peoples had lived for centuries with their own ways and beliefs.


My own grandparents left their homeland for myriad reasons and never went back. Their assimilation into the American lifestyle was only half-baked as they retained their foods, their language, their religion while sending their many children out into a different world. The label that they as French Canadians in America wore was: Franco-American as they settled into “Little Canada” within a mill city. On the periphery of their neighborhood lived the “Greek lady” and “those Irish," all immigrants from different homelands. Nobody mingled. The French had their schools and churches as did the others. Sometimes disparaging remarks were spoken behind closed doors because of some noticeable difference in the others’ way of life. Each of these ethnic groups suffered discrimination upon arriving from their homeland in the place they hoped to call home. Someone was always feeling unwelcome. And, so it goes.


By the time I was grown, it was the Cambodians and Vietnamese emigrating to escape war torn homelands. My older relatives, all immigrants themselves, seemed to forget the U.S. role in fighting those faraway wars and resented these immigrants for not speaking English, for opening stores with unpronouncable names and for selling food nobody (meaning themselves) had ever heard of let alone eaten. What had changed was that now they were no longer the “other” having risen to a different rung in the pecking order that established them as bonefide Americans. How soon they had forgotten that experience of being the outsider ostracized for customs that were uniquely their own: on Friday they still ate fish or pizza due to their faith practice; on Saturday they shopped at Cote’s for pork pies and beans; on Sundays they served up dinner at midday following Mass. Christmas, Easter, and birthdays had accompanying rituals they shared amongst themselves.

All of us have different heritages having come from many corners of the globe. Mostly we want to continue to wear this proudly while simultaneously calling America home. Is it possible under the oppressive weight of today's cancel culture? Heritage speaks of something different from home and homeland. Heritage is embedded in one’s soul and psyche. Heritage is one’s roots. When you embrace your heritage you not only learn to accept your own differences, but also those of others and through this, there's a heightened sense of all-around acceptance and ability to remain open-minded to other cultures, says Elizabeth Alvarado. If only it were so.


Today, as we witness a deluge of immigrants on an inhumane, semi-barricaded Southern border, we see “others” rather than ourselves in those worn out shoes. My own namesake, my grandmother, had traveled alone from Quebec City to Lowell, Massachusetts with two small children while pregnant. She had to disembark along the way to have her baby. She spoke no English and held in her hand a piece of paper with her new address where her husband waited for his family. She was no different than others choosing to come to “the land of the free” today. Clearly, this is true only for those who made a free choice but not for the ones who were captured and transported against their will. These human beings enslaved or brought here as migrants to work, do not share this story. Theirs is unique by comparison. If given the choice, many of them would have returned to their own homeland on another continent. They are still waiting for what my grandparents came to expect: their turn to become true Americans with all the implied rights and freedom. But before that can happen hard truths must be told.


“This land is my land, this land is your land,” is not being sung these days by every American. Instead, it is being claimed by some who believe this is true only for themselves. They resent others while forgetting they, too, arrived here in the same way as descendants from another homeland. The resentment reserved for anyone who does not look the same, dress the same, speak the same, believe the same, has stoked fear of being replaced and outnumbered by them. That perceived threat throws fuel on volatile culture wars spreading across OUR homeland like wildfires.


Nobody can claim this land as my land and not your land, without marginalizing someone.The first peoples, the indigenous, know this better than anyone. Those Franco Americans, Irish, Greek, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and all other descendants of immigrants eventually found their place one after the other, albeit, with a modicum of acceptance at first. Everyone else deserves nothing less.


We the people are the embodied homeland. It belongs to all, not some, not one over another. Nobody can truthfully claim the land of the free and the home of the brave as mine only, because we each belong like all the others who came before and will continue to come.


The Wailing Wall

Salvadore Dali

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