home & language

“I was old enough, then, to know that I did not want to leave the only home I had known. I insisted that my parents leave me behind, but there was no room for such a suggestion. For them, home was only possible where we were all together even if it meant leaving behind the graves of our loved ones, something that still causes my mother pain as she thinks of those lonely, untended resting places (of parents, sisters, brothers, aunts, and cousins and of countless other souls tied to her by bonds that surpass blood).

When she returns home, she goes on a solemn series of elegiac visits to commune with each departed one, to uproot lovingly the weeds from the graves, to remind the occupants of her love, of her faithful recall in the diaspora of birthdays, wedding anniversaries, death anniversaries, all of the moments that marked their lives among the living and her own memories of them. These visits are more important than the ones to the market to renew contact with old friends; to inhale deeply the smells of home; and to plunge hands into the parcels of fish, vegetables, and fruits that no non-Caribbean grocer in the diaspora recognizes the names of, although here they flow smoothly like the coveted breezes in the heat of the morning.

As the juice of a home mango trickled down my arm during a previous moment of return, the taste ignited memories of a childhood spent in trees, spent on back steps in the moonlight during a blackout. Reveling in these reanimated memories, I eagerly sought out the items then less likely to be found at a Saturday market—psydium, dunks, monkey apple, awara, cokrit—ones whose descriptions I trip over as I attempt to portray them to friends, husband, and daughters in my American locales. Home is where your language easily fits experience, where you do not stumble often doing work of cultural translation.”

-Touching the shores of home: Guyana, Indo-Caribbeanness, feminism, and return, Dr. Lisa Outar