She Who Returned Home

She Who Returned HomeThe Narrative of an Afro-Guyanese Activist Kimberly D. Nettles (bio) For many Guyanese living overseas and especially for me, Guyana conjures up images of the fabled El Dorado—a dream deferred. We are like global schizophrenic1 nomad exiles. . . . We are indeed a people separated by race but more deeply by culture, reinforced and abetted by religious practices. We are a people in search of One People, One Nation, One Destiny. Yes, this dear land of Guyana made rich by the sunshine and lush by the rains. Our El Dorado. (Phillips 2002) This excerpt, extracted from a letter to the editor of Guyana's Stabroek News, illustrates a desire among those in exile (either forced or self-imposed) for a sense of community. We see in his evocation of "the fabled El Dorado" a people's deep longing for roots, for connection to a place that is theirs, that is part of them, and where they nurture it and are nurtured by it. Indeed, the transnational dislocation of people constitutes a central organizing experience among those within the African and South Asian diasporas (Lamming [1960] 1992; Said [1990] 1992). The forced and semi-voluntary relocation of black and Asian people to service the global economy is not a new phenomenon; but, rather, it is one that has its roots in the workings of empire (both British and American variants) and the attendant use of slave and indentured labor. Much of the contemporary social science literature on the Caribbean transnational predicament has focused on the processes of settlement and adaptation within host societies, the longing for redefined/reconstituted communities outside of their home countries and across vast oceans, and the desired eventual return to their societies of origin to (re)create viable economic, political, and sociocultural environments there (Chamberlain [End Page 40] 1997; Hall 1989, 1995; Hintzen 2001). At the same time, feminist analyses of Caribbean and U.S. women of color's fictional writing (Chancy 1997; Davies 1994; Rubenstein 2001; Wiley and Barnes 1996) and critical feminist race theory (hooks 1990; Martin and Mohanty 1986; Morrison 1998) have interrogated the ideas of "home" and the experiences of women within them in ways that both complicate simplified "return" stories and critique the masculinist bias in understandings of the experiences of exile. In these literatures "home" most often refers either to a dwelling or physical structure or is used as a metaphor for nation or land of origin. In its metaphorical use, the tension is felt in the home/exile dichotomy. Oftentimes, the development of a sense of a home place is generated in the experience of being away from that place (Case 1996). In its literal sense as a dwelling place or physical structure that contains those considered related either by blood or marriage, the tension is often rooted in the limits felt by the inhabitants within. As Biddy Martin and Chandra Mohanty tell us: "Being home" refers to the place where one lives within familiar, safe, protected boundaries; [in contrast] "not being home" is a matter of realizing that home was an illusion of coherence and safety based on the exclusion of specific histories of oppression and resistance, and the repression of differences within oneself. (1986, 196) However, "home" as an idea continues to serve as an imagined space of connection and comfort, while it simultaneously functions as a problematic site, particularly for women, "third world" people, and "first world" people of color, who have been subject to severe oppression and repression within the home—configured as household, family, and nation—and forced or voluntary migration and exile from their lands or cultures of origin (Abdelhadi and Abdulhadi 2002; Anderson 1991; Mishra 1996). This essay focuses on how the interior migrations of Caribbean women are implicated within the transnational movement of Caribbean people (Pile and Thrift 1995). More specifically, I examine how the process of returning home (both symbolically/metaphorically and literally) for Caribbean women is not simply about a reconnection with a land or a people, but it is also about a journey toward a more grounded sense of self and identity. Through an analysis of the life history narrative of middle-class, Afro

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