From Professor Rosenblum:
The following is a very moving essay which I shared with my last year’s seminar. It’s very central to the subject matter of this seminar, and perhaps this is something we can discuss in class tomorrow after our speaker makes her presentation.
In Search of Home, by Roger Cohen
This is a really moving essay. I think the question of where one would go if he/she only had a few weeks to live is really powerful. Being born in the United States, I don’t feel the same way an immigrant might feel about going back to their origins. However, I think it is interesting the different perspectives immigrants can have. Some people love it here and make America their new home, and others are more resistant and tend to just “live” here, while their true home lies abroad.
This essay is very deep, both intellectually and emotionally. As a child, I did not grasp the idea of “home” because I was constantly moving from one country to another, and from state to state. If I lived in my childhood town for more than two years, I would have missed the environment and my surroundings even more. Cogen’s thoughts relate to my parents’ experiences because they often complain about missing their hometowns and the familiarity of it. I find America more pleasing since this is where I actually grew up. It all depends on your experiences and how well you became accustomed to the “landscape of your childhood.”
I do not have the same correlation between happiness and home that this article constructs. While my childhood home in Manhattan certainly appeals to me more that my current home in Merrick, if I only had weeks to live I would set out to experience all I could, rather than return to my nostalgic birthplace to lay down and die.