Response to "Letter of Transit"

I am an American, born and raised.  I know that now, and feel it in my bones , but there was a time where I wasn’t.  My childhood sounded like Brasil, with the exception of television.  It tasted like Brasil and I spell it with an S because that is how they spell it.  The older I got, the less Brasilian I felt, however, I found myself in the limbo of the in between.  I am not the exile,  or immigrant, or expatriate; my parents are. Were? Still, I found myself dangling on the strings attached to my parents’ home land, and a culture I was never fully part of at all.

I think the constant discovery of “What is America” (Mukherjee, 69) is an interesting subject for anyone who is not native to America.  Simic depicts his discovery in the most open, and positive tone, and his use of ethos and pathos is appealing not only to an exile, but to an America (even though some of his non-nationalistic views may be unattractive to an American nationalist).  Mikherjee’s “Imagining Homelands” directly questions the status of being all different types of exiles in America, and some of the underlining issues are not just about being an exile, immigrant, etc, but the context of the status. It becomes a relationship between a host and the new additions.  One without the other doesn’t exist, which I think brings about a unity already, however divided this may be.  

The state of being an exile is beautifully describe in Andre Aciman’s “Shadow Cities,” my favorite reading of the series.  It is through his personal relationship with Straus Park that enables him to transcend his own exile, experience it through shifting views, and visit his past memories.  

Hoffman’s “The New Nomads” is a bit harder to read.  It’s use of logos did not appeal so much to my emotions, in that is didn’t appeal to pathos as much.  However, the level of insight on the values of an exile, and what is lost or gained, or lost and not gained, is charged in the conflict for what it means to be “those who leave one country for another” (40).  

I was pleasantly surprised by Said’s story considering my perception about him from the last essay we read. I found his idea that his own exile experience was one he “accepted like so many fact of nature” to be insightful, appealing to logos.  His personal account and telling of his own journey, it seems his own ideas transform, and he finds himself exiled in many different forms: “Either way, I’ve long since learned to cherish it.” His own identity as an exile is not where he finds himself, yet the ideals inherent in his past do find him.  

All in all, I found the reading to be insightful, and although I never questioned what exiles, immigrants, expatriates, etc, had to experience since living in Miami I am aware of their existence, I think I have traversed a new understanding of the depth that humanity has been faced with.  My favorite way that it was put (although Mukherji meant in America specifically, but I see it even bigger) is that we are “heading towards the ancient dream of unity through diversity” however, the roads are being built, bridges are expanding, and although the chaos may never end, through the rising dust of fallen walls, doors are open.(69)