Diasporic Ramblings

            In class on Thursday we talked about the idea of the real versus the imagined.  I left class thinking about this concept, and how it can be so subjective and unique to all of us.  I was specifically able to conceptualize this idea when thinking of my own hometown.  While I was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, I always say that my hometown is Ann Arbor.  I have lived there almost my entire life, and I don’t really have any memories from when I lived in Maryland.  But technically I could probably call Silver Spring my hometown since that is where I was most originally from.  In this case, while I call Ann Arbor my home other people might argue that this is my imagined home, and that Silver Spring is my real home.  On the other hand, there may also be others that agree that Ann Arbor is my home since I have no memory of Maryland.  As can be seen from even the small-scale nature of the issue as it relates to my life, the argument about the real vs. imagined is extremely complex, with no one clear answer.

            When it moves to transnationalism, immigration, and large groups of people it becomes even more complex.  Since I didn’t change countries during my move, I didn’t have to deal with the struggle of not being “American” enough.  I looked, sounded, and acted just like everyone in the new place that I moved to without having to try, or change anything.  The feeling of not fitting in completely in either your new residence or your old residence is not something that I have ever had to deal with.

            While the idea of diaspora may be helpful to some in conceptualization, I feel that in many ways it does more harm than good.  Trying to define and qualify the lives and experiences of real people attempts to squish them into little boxes, including and excluding people off of details that are often extremely trivial.  The difficulty we had in class trying to define a concept that I thought would be fairly straightforward just served to demonstrate how many layers and aspects there are, all under the term of diaspora.  In addition, there are also large groups of people that are left out by the term.  Overall, while it may be helpful to some level in an academic sense, I don’t think that it should be used as any kind of governing force or rule of sorts.  There are so many different types of stories and experiences, that it would be literally impossible to try to define them all under the umbrella of just one word.

            I guess this ramble doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I hope that can serve to illustrate the confusing and complex nature of the term diaspora!