Vianney A. Gavilanes

I have always struggled with calling anyone of my fields of study my home. I have difficulty calling myself a [insert the field qualifier of choice] because I do not fully agree with the totality of a field’s view. This bleeds into my hesitation to adopt a field as my home when I do not fully see myself reflected in them. Also, there is a refusal not to get trapped and defined by labels, including academic ones. I think part of this refusal stems from my migration experience. From the lived experience of having to leave my home and not being able to go back and longing for it for the rest of my childhood, teenage, and early adult years. The traumatic experience of creating a new home in an inhospitable context, where I always felt like an outsider, a stranger, a foreigner, was a constant source of uneasiness. Grappling with the ongoing renegotiation of what home means in a place that does not look, sound, smell, or feel like my previous home while simultaneously recreating those looks, sounds, smells, and feels of home with my family. 

However, the specter of our ‘lost’ or ‘left-behind’ home still lingered, and it was palpable at every Christmas and New Year’s Eve when the collective spirit was more melancholy than usual. Growing up with these mixed feelings of longing for what we left behind prevented me from fully embracing our present because we were always either in the past or future and seldom basking in the everydayness of our present. The constant re-negotiation of the here and there, the now and then, Spanish and English, Mexico and the U.S. left me feeling like I was always at a liminal midway point. It was the Nepantla state Anzaldua talks about in Borderlands. 

But after that day, I finally returned to the ‘homeland,’ and I became confronted with a new, unexpected reality. I thought I would get the closure I needed when I returned for the first time. But I didn’t. I did not feel all my questions were answered, nor were my unresolved tensions and contradictions appeased. On the contrary, I felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction. After the initial excitement of finally setting foot on Mexican soil again after 20 years, I realized that the house that was home no longer felt like home. Yes, as I saw its exterior and as I walked inside and touched the walls, as I walked through its rooms and patios, trying to remember how I felt when I lived there, I felt the nostalgia for the fond memories I spent in that house. But after the first couple of nights, even the first night, I did not feel I was home. I no longer felt what I used to feel as a little girl. The carefree and unquestioned feeling of comfort and safety, the quotidianness of the house, and the vida de pueblo were no longer there. I was now walking the same streets as ‘la que vino del Norte,’ de los Estados Unidos. What I used to hear about others was now being used to label me.

I was trying so hard not to stand out! I was hyperaware of my Spanish and mannerisms and tried to sound like one of them, sin acento. My Spanish helped me accomplish this, and family friends congratulated me for not sounding chiquiada and having an American accent. However, I was still seen as an outsider. How ironic, I spent my whole childhood and teenage years feeling like an outsider in the U.S. and thought the only way to cure that, to get rid of that feeling, was to go back. But when I did go back all five times, I never felt like I was ‘back.’ The sense of liminality followed me. It traveled with me to Mexico, crossed the border, and did not leave my side. It was as if it had decided to graft onto my body, and no matter what I did, how much I tried to scrub it off, it simply did not budge. The saying that I grew up hearing, which I thought did not apply to me because I thought I knew exactly where home was and where I belonged, proved wrong. Ultimately, I was not different from those ‘other people’ who were ni de aqui ni de alla. This, ironically so, became my reality as well. I was claiming Mexico all these years, and when I returned, I did not feel like it gave me the homecoming I expected. It never shunned me or turned its back on me; it just never opened its arms and welcomed me back like the prodigal daughter that left and returned. My longing for closure through a return proved itself to fall short. 

I have an inescapable feeling that I left something back in Mexico, yet, I no longer know what stayed behind and what traveled with me. And worse, upon returning, I realized it was no longer there. That ‘thing’ or ‘feeling’ no longer lives there in the place that holds my before, my pre-migration, which of course, I did not know was a pre while I lived it. Maybe that’s it, the complete immersion into the present. Living the moment to the fullest and not being preoccupied with anything but what was happening right before me. It was a simple form of freedom that now seems so unattainable, living a carefree life without the baggage that comes with leaving home and being made to feel every day and, in various instances, that this new place is not home. That America is not home and that America does not want us to make a home here. 

So here I am 30 years later, still grappling with the residue of that leaving. However, this time it’s manifesting through my intellectual homes. I’m confronted once again with where I want to call home and where I want to rest my loyalty, but I have hindsight, and this time, I no longer am lured by the entice of belonging—this time, I choose not to have just one home. I choose multiple because, in every single one of them, there is a piece of me that dwells within.