Where is “Home” for you?                  by Davida Siwisa James

I recently returned to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands to work for a few months at this beautiful amphitheater called “The Reichhold Center for the Arts.” It is part of the University of the Virgin Islands. I worked here when the theater opened in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. So I have a long history with the island, its people and the university. Between those decades, I lived here a total of ten years. I met some of my dearest friends here. I met my husband here.

Coming back evoked a lot of memories – both good and not so good. “Hurricane Marilyn” was definitely one of the less pleasant memories. But the thing that struck me the most with all the warmth of the greetings welcoming me back were the people who said, “You came home.” And then the others who said, “You belong here.”

So here is my question and my ponderings on this “Bull and Bread” holiday in the U.S. Virgin Islands when I have a much needed day off to celebrate the D. Hamilton Jackson Holiday: Where is home for you? How do we decide where we are “from” on this planet? And how do we define just one place we choose to identify as being our home?

I wrote a paper once many years ago for a UCLA class, before personal computers when I was still trying to master how to save documents on a word processor. It is lost to me now but it pondered these same issues of home. And it was spawned by some article about homeless people and that ‘home’ for them is too often a cardboard box or their cars or inside an abandoned subway station underground.

I know one thing with great certainty: people do not necessarily identify the place of their birth as where they are from. We just don’t. I am one of those people who will say “I’m fromL.A., but I was born in Philly.” Or I leave out the Philly part altogether. But I’ve heard countless other people say the same thing. They name the place they live, the place they most identify with or the place they love and have roots as where they are from.

When I first moved to the Virgin Island in 1976, it was directly from Harlem. So I told people here I was from New York. After those first couple of years here, when I moved to Los Angeles I said, “I’m from St. Thomas.” And then, after 13 years in L.A., when I returned to St. Thomas, I said “I’m fromL.A.” At this point, I am clearly a citizen of the world. Yet after 23 plus years in L.A. now, I clearly identify most with being from Los Angeles.

But that still brings me back to the tug of war in my heart over the Caribbean, the deep love I feel for these islands and the fact that somewhere in my DNA I do feel an affinity for here that I feel for no other place. I guess in all its finality, since this is where I have asked for my ashes to be sprinkled, that this is where I consider my most enduring home in my heart.

Notice in all that recitation of where I identified with, I never mentioned Philly.

So I guess that says it all: home is where your heart is. Home is the place you feel most comfortable, most a part of, or the most grounded. Perhaps it is the place where you feel the most magic has happened and where, as you reflect on the memories of your life (good and bad) you still feel it is where you belong. And for just as many who agree with that sentiment, home really is where they were born, have roots, history and family or where they want to be their last resting place.

Caribbean people call those of us who move here from the states “Yankees.” I know Yankees who have come and gone as many times as I have or more. They have that same tug of war, trying to decide if they can handle life in the Caribbean– because it’s not all about white sand beaches, swaying palm trees and majestic take-your-breath-away views. It can be hard, trying, frustrating, aggravating and just plain tough. But it’s like Al Pacino said more or less in “Godfather III” – “Every time I try to leave, they pull me back in.” That’s what the Caribbean does – it just keeps pulling you back, emotionally and physically.

Yet there are also Yankees who have stayed – for 30, 40 years they stayed. They dealt with the good and bad and decided “this is my place on earth.” And just as importantly, there are the people of Caribbean birth who moved to the U.S. or Canada or London and never moved back home. They visit but they prefer to live elsewhere to enjoy the comforts and modernization of city life and the good and bad that comes with that.

I have been deeply touched by the people who said, “You came back home.” Some part of me knew that deep inside this was home for me. But though I know it is the home of my heart, when someone asks now – I say quite comfortably, “I am from L.A.” It is too much to try to describe the magic that has happened here in these islands and that I left my heart here and that the last of me will be sprinkled here. But I know.