Home (Taiye Selasi)

What were we seeking when we set out? And where did we set out from? Birthplace. Plausible. But who was born? Not ‘we,’ not whole. Not yet, not then. Then, we were theirs: the parents, the adults, the fully-formed members of loosely-formed worlds. They had homes. Or thought they did. We belonged to them. They belonged to There. At least they tried: they ate the food, they spoke the tongue, they donned the garb. Still they moved like strangers There, like looser threads in tight-knit Thens. A question. If they belonged to There then why did they leave in search of Where? We were born Here, not There, not Home. We were born not fully whole. We lived, we became, we belonged, we did not. Fully-formed strangers in tightly-knit Nows. When we grew up, we set out ourselves. From Where? From Here. In search of There. We read the tongue but could not speak. We ate the food but could not cook. We donned the garb but not with smiles, uncertain that it suit us. What were we seeking when we set out? The place they left, the place “for” us. Time had passed and changed the place. We had grown. Now whole, not Home. We breathed the air, we walked the land. Strangers There, as Here, as Then. An option. Is strangeness inherited? Possible. Looser threads grow looser yet. And yet. We were not halves of wholes. We were not No One. We were ourselves. We breathed, we walked, we sought, we loved. We took up space. We lived in worlds. Worlds lived in us. We belonged. We did not. Not Here, not There, not Then, not Now. We knew ourselves as wholes, as homes. What were we seeking when we set out? We were what we sought from birth. Self as home and home as self.

Pour citer cette ressource :

Taiye Selasi, Home (Taiye Selasi), La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), août 2015. Consulté le 22/11/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/litterature/entretiens-et-textes-inedits/home-taiye-selasi-