Research Report: Home and Belonging in Contemporary America

By Samantha Urena, Team 3a

Abstract

Dorris addresses contemporary America's notion of home in this article. Dorris notes in his article that in this modern age, where people come from is rarely where they stay. "What do you call home" is a question that one will get asked all throughout his or her lifetime, and the answer will probably change many times throughout his or her life. The ambiguity about home is something that has been borne out of contemporary America because for so much of our greater history, people did not move as frequently. Because home has become an abstract idea, it brings with it a series of questions the individual must wrestle. Since home has become a complex idea rather than a simple standard, it more clearly matches the nature of human life for human life is complex and dynamic. Identifying home then becomes a process that one must engage with and address throughout their experiences in the entirety of their lives.

Description

In contemporary America, our home is always changing. It is rare in this day and age that people live their whole lives in the town that they grew up in. Americans are dissatisfied with staying with what they have the moment what they have becomes “old”. In the industrialized society we live in, it is arguably necessary to continue onward from the “old” and onto the “new”. Dorris describes the contemporary American as someone who is on a “never-ending trajectory” towards improving “upon the past” (16). Americans are consistently trading in the old for the new the moment that they can afford it. Because of this desire, this pervasive Western fad, the word “home” has become a complex idea rather than a simple definition of where you live. What people call home has become more and more complex as they relocate over the span of their lives. Dorris says that our “ambition for betterment” has left us with a one-word answer to where our home is: “nowhere” (16). This has become our answer, not because we literally live nowhere, but because we have moved so many times the answer is long and complex so we answer with a tired disposition: “nowhere”. Dorris explains that much of a personal identity and a collective identity are wrapped up in one’s connection to a specific place. Dorris explains that for much of the world today and even for our “not-so-distant” past, the “connection between a person and a specific place has traditionally been intimate and consistent over time” (16). For so much of the other world, being away from their family and extended family is an “almost incompressible hardship” (16). In contemporary America, people’s identities are still wrapped up in their intimacy with a place and with their families, but now that place is not consistent over time. Individuals move and families move and now an individual’s identity is left in little pieces from city to city. All this relocating leads an individual to that tired answer: “nowhere”. Our identity is inextricably tied to place so the question “where is your home” is a lot more significant than simply pointing to a dot on a map. “Where is your home” becomes a question of identity, not just simply location.

In the past, “home” was simply where you and your family live generation after generation, but in this new age, we are marked by casual mobility. People up and leave places all through their lives and because of this, an oxymoron is made: the new home. Young adults that leave home are expected not to return as a resident and on their departure, they understand that they are set out to create a new home for themselves. Dorris writes a few questions that this young individual must face, but ultimately, they are all asking the same thing: what is home? The young person wonders if it is something that will satisfy, what is the criteria, and is it portable – the young person wonders if home exists within them or if it is something that “must be re-established afresh with each transfer” (16). These individuals tend to harbor a “vague notion of an ideal ambiance even if we’ve never directly experienced it” (16). In this new age, home is an ambiguous thing – something every individual is trying to discover or uncover whether consciously or subconsciously. Dorris deems the picture perfect idea of home as an illusion. He explains that the nature of home is similar to human life: “complex and dynamic” (16). Being able to identify home thereby becomes an “act of ongoing imagination” (16). Dorris describes this as an act of the will – that one must be able to “bestow recognition, to caption an agreeable situation with an affirming ascription” (16). Home is a place where one feels safe, where they feel they belong. Dorris explains that home is a place where desire and fulfillment can overlap, where there is no distance between nostalgia and satisfaction (16).

Dorris goes on to explain some of his personal history with location change. He was a child of a single parent and so he moved a lot and consistently felt out of place. Because he did not feel like he belonged in any of the cities or places he moved to, he was free to take up attachments to faraway locales in books. Because he did not feel like he was from any particular city or state, he was “free to imagine [himself[ a citizen of any land (16). Because of this desire to be elsewhere and the immense loneliness he felt, by the age of fourteen, Dorris has fifty-seven regular pen pals from other countries. Dorris explains his continuous and consistent moves until he finally landed in northern New England in 1971 – which is where he eventually established his home. Every part of that place resonates with an association for him. He knows it well and says that with this knowledge “comes the pleasure of ease and the gratitude of bounty” (16). Dorris goes on to explain the beauty of this place to him, the memories that he stores there, and the comfort he feels there. He expressed how this particular place, that could mean so much to him, could also mean absolutely nothing to another person. Dorris then takes another turn in his personal life to talk about the heartache him and his wife experienced in their home – heartache from sickness of both their children and extended family. Dorris takes us through the highs and lows of home to explain that it encompassed all kinds of feeling and sentiment.

Relevance to Team Project

 My team’s project is exploring the connection between place and sentiment. We are asking ourselves what sentiment is found in songs written about cities in California and New York. Once we chart the sentiment, we are comparing how themes are explored in all these different locales and sentiments – themes of love, of fear, of loss, etc. This is the first half of the project: plotting specific places and exploring the sentiment and theme afterwards. The second half of our project is about exploring a theme and then plotting a specific place. “Home” means something similar to every person. “Home” is a place of comfort or belonging. It is a place for family or for friends. It is a place for love. “Home” can pop up anywhere on a map. Dorris’s article highlights the kinds of feelings and aspects that home evokes within a person. He expresses the kinds of questions that young individuals must wrestle with. These questions are similar to the one’s that musicians sing about. So while the first half of our project is looking into specific cities, the second half will be looking at songs about “home” and then researching where a musician resided when they wrote the song. Both parts of our project are making the point that location shapes a person.

Resources for Further Study

Arndt, Routledge., Sedikides, and Wildschut.“Nostalgia: Past, Present, and

Future”. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 17, No. 5 (Oct.

2008), pp. 304-307 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20183308

Matt, Susan J. “You Can't Go Home Again: Homesickness and Nostalgia

in U.S. History”. The Journal of American History, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Sep.,

2007), pp. 469-497 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25094961

Richard, Middleton. “O Brother, Let's Go down Home: Loss

Nostalgia and the Blues”. Popular Music, Vol. 26, No. 1, Special

 Issue on the Blues in Honour of Paul Oliver (Jan., 2007), pp. 47-64

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4500299