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Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Created: 02/20/14

Replies: 10

Posted Feb. 20, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
davinamw

Join Date: 10/15/10

Posts: 3442

Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

The idea of "home" plays a large role in the book (for example, many refugees wrote their homeland information in their clothing in case they were killed on the road). Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?


Posted Feb. 23, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
kathleenr

Join Date: 12/07/12

Posts: 68

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Absolutely. I think the concern raises many questions as well. When does education separate you from your homeland? If all of your relatives are gone, if the government is stamping out your culture, if your language is no longer taught, is it possible to have a homeland to return to. Do you try to keep the stories, language, recipes, customs alive elsewhere instead?


Posted Feb. 23, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
crofly

Join Date: 06/14/13

Posts: 29

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Yes, because homeland makes up a large proportion of an individual's identity. It influences a person's behavior from when they are just a child. So if a representation of homeland is destroyed or removed, it would be as if a limb, a vital part of the individual, has been destroyed.


Posted Feb. 23, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
lbellg

Join Date: 02/23/14

Posts: 46

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Probably as much a universal compulsion as it is a concern.


Posted Feb. 25, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
Suzanne

Join Date: 04/21/11

Posts: 281

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

I believe the reason for leaving in the first place would influence the desire to return. For instance, if a person left because his life was evil, and he was deported, would he care where he did his evilness? Or if a person was content to continue where he presently resided, he may not be concerned to return. I just don't think there is a pat answer to this question.


Posted Feb. 26, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
kimk

Join Date: 10/16/10

Posts: 889

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Good point, Suzanne, I hadn't thought of it from that angle. I do think, though, that even if one is forced out of one's homeland that there's still a yearning to return. I think this is especially true of people who left when they were young - they can develop a romanticized view of home and homeland.


Posted Feb. 28, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
Denise B-K

Join Date: 01/19/12

Posts: 26

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Yes, returning to one’s “homeland” is a universal desire, but believe this is not necessarily a place. For most of my life “homeland” has been where my parents live. After medical school and 8+ years in the Navy my husband and I discussed that we could live anywhere in the world so long as we could practice medicine. We eventually acknowledged that our true wish was to return “home” thus now reside a couple hour drive from each of our families.

My parents live in the same town they were born and raised in. The only times they’ve lived elsewhere is to attend college. My mother’s and her siblings’ “homeland” is their 1870’s Native American land grant property. Emotionally they all want to keep it, but finances may not allow this. Selling this “homeland” will be a devastating loss.

My husband and I have entered a new chapter in our lives. Our sons are both attending college far from “home.” Our concept of “home” left with them. It’s unknown where their eventual careers will take them. After our sons graduate and no longer need financial support my husband and I plan to take jobs that will allow us to visit often. Ideally we want to establish a new “home" near them.


Posted Mar. 02, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
joyces

Join Date: 06/16/11

Posts: 410

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Several very astute comments on this. I am many generations from a homeland outside the US so have no particular interest in where those people lived. I also grew up in small town Midwest where my very large and extended family has resided for a couple centuries and still remain. I, however, have no desire to live there but do live very close to my children and grandchildren so this place is truly home now.


Posted Mar. 15, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
booksnob

Join Date: 11/12/11

Posts: 31

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Absolutely. I know home is where your heart and family reside and for many people that place is far away from where they live. My people are from Poland and even though I have never been there, the stories I hear and their collective memories are stored in my heart (through a few generations) and I want to visit there someday. I will probably never live there. But I think for first time immigrants or for those who have been forcibly removed or had to leave do to other problems in their home country, I think many want to return someday, at least to visit and parts of their hearts are always in the place they once called home.


Posted Mar. 30, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
elizabethg

Join Date: 07/16/11

Posts: 9

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

I think possibly the concept of homeland is universal, but in the 21st century the definition would be different for more people. Unfortunately, many people in the place we call the Middle East are being displaced by the millions and this has happened in Africa, too. Personally, my family has a home on an old farm and I think that I thought at one time, someone would always be there. Now sometimes I think I'd bulldoze that house down and let someone start over. Life takes strange turns.

But this story kept reminding me of <i>The Book of Laughter and Forgetting<\i> by Milan Kundera who was from Czechoslovakia and witnessed the Prague Spring and had to flee and lived most of his life in France, even writing in French. He writes about these questions and themes that seemed to run through Marra's novel as well.

In the novel when they describe purging people and then allowing them to return--their places have been taken by others. So how would returning feel to find your homeland occupied in such a way? That it was now home to another population? The Russians are great at this if you look at their history--shipping people around, a little ethnic cleansing here or there, opening a territory back to some. It goes back over 100 years. And what do we see in current events? It was definitely not lost on me the timing of reading this book.

In the U.S., we are home of the free and brave after we killed off and "reserved" one population and enslaved another. I wonder what the colonists' idea of homeland was? The Confederate States fought a very bloody war attempting to preserve their ideal of homeland that was dependent on people far, far from their home. That war sometimes does not seem to be over.


Posted Apr. 16, 2014 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
maryj

Join Date: 03/06/12

Posts: 12

RE: Do you think the idea of returning to one's homeland is a universal concern?

Having lived in the US my whole life, I believe if I moved away I would always want to come back. I think most people around the world feel the same way. Identifying with your place of birth is a basic human belief I feel.


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