A friend once asked my dad, “Where do you consider home?” I was having a birthday party at my house. There were people gathered in small groups scattered around the house–eating, laughing and chatting. I was just in earshot to hear my dad.
I leaned in, anxious to hear what he would say. We are immigrants to this country when I was only 6 years old. Home has meant so many things in my life. Decades later, I still wonder: Where do I belong? Where do I fit in? Where is home?
My dad had a pensive look for a moment, and then he said, “Home is wherever I am.”
He paused again, “When I am here [at my son’s house], I am at home. When I am in my house, I am at home. When I am in Jamaica, I am at home. When I am in Canada, I am at home.”
You might wonder what all those places have in common. They are places where we have close family, places where I can show up on the doorstep and I have a place to stay.
As an immigrant to this country, my own sense of belonging comes and goes. I am an American naturalized citizen, born in Jamaica, of African and Chinese descent. I have grown up in America since six years old. My sense of belonging here was a slow transformation, like a flower repotted and replanted, growing new roots, becoming something new.
In a single moment, my dad made me realize that my sense of home has been tied to family. The distance between extended family scattered across countries has been an obstacle to belonging. During summer vacations with extended family, that sense of belonging is so strong that each summer ends with the acute pain of loss–a heaviness in the chest that lingers.
Yet, now my dad gave me a new perspective. Replacing this sense of loss across the distance is the sense of home as wherever I am. My extended family has given me the gift of not just one home, but so many homes. They have given me a place to belong.
“Home is wherever I am.”
~ Delroy Ying (my dad)
On Tuesday, June 25th, I zoomed over to California (online and virtual) to emcee a program on Belonging by Asian American Voices. Stories in Living Color, a storytelling series started by storyteller Rick Roberts, normally has paired stories and storytellers comparing and contrasting their experiences between communities and cultures. This program partners with Asian American Storytellers in Unity for a twist on the format. Professional storytellers of very different styles and representing very different faces of the Asian American diaspora come together on the topic of belonging. After each set of stories, the storytellers open up about the theme. Each story is a work of art. Each story will take you home.
Watch Stories in Living Color, sponsored by the Storytelling Association of California, Belonging–Asian American Voices
Emcee Dr. Joel Ying, opening poem Lily Li-Nagy, stories by Tobey Anderson, Nancy Wang, Emil Guillermo, Bowen Lee, M.J. Kang, Bonnie Gardner. Produced by Rick Roberts and Roopa Mohan.
Such WISDOM! It can only come from those who have ‘felt’ and ‘lived’ and who can share without offending! BRILLIANT. You are truly blessed to be an offspring of this Vine. Peace always.