Within the Shadow of Displacement

Abstract

Within the Shadow of Displacement Jamaica Baldwin (bio) The following pieces constitute the response of a wide variety of writers to my invitation for work on "home and displacement." While I have always gravitated to writing that navigates displacement on some level, spending time with these poems and stories has led me to an even deeper appreciation of the rage, grief, longing, and desire that is often carried simultaneously, the way these writers weave them into poems and stories that honor the fullness of their histories, that honor how they find ways to love and be loved within a society built on narratives designed to contain and harm so many of us. I often think of displacement and home as parallel universes. I find it difficult to talk about displacement without aching for home, or to talk about the safety of home without acknowledging, if only tangentially, the shadow of displacement in which homes are created. So many of the pieces included in this issue engage this shadow in some form. The authors are giving voice to the delicate, capacious, brutal, and complicated reality of occupying this space. One of the joys of my guest editing journey has been the solicitation process. It's the ability to reach out to writers I admire and invite them to share their work while discovering new (to me) writers along the way. I began by soliciting writers I've read who deal deftly and intimately with what it means to live in exile far from their country of birth, or what it means to long for the country of your parents' birth, or what it means to exist in community and comfort when those left behind face the daily realities of war, the daily realities of colonization—poets like Ruth Awad, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Su Hwang, and others. I also reached out to writers whose work I've admired for its ability to engage the intimate realities of living in the generational shadow of empire and conquest, of being displaced in one's homeland, of living in diaspora, in that in-between space—Romeo Oriogun, Anjanette Delgado, Ana Portnoy Brimmer, to [End Page 42] name a few. I also wanted to place alongside these works pieces that engage other forms of displacement, other ways of complicating the idea of home. For example, poet Carla Griswold navigates what it is to feel displaced and rootless without leaving home, when one's lifelong partner becomes unrecognizable to you, and you to them. These are just a handful of the writers and stories that make up this issue. I began writing this introduction the day after the Buffalo, NY supermarket shooting earlier this year. Tried again not long after the Uvalde, TX massacre. Each time I found myself mute and restless. Words seemed insufficient. I didn't foresee such recent violence shadowing my thoughts on this project, and yet I chose this topic precisely because displacement is a kind of violence—I should have seen it. Mass shootings have become a consistent, unsurprising part of life in the United States. Making a home here is a risky endeavor. Warsan Shire said, "no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark." What happens when you leave the mouth of one shark only to end up in another? What happens when the local elementary school where you send your kids becomes a war zone? The answer, as these writers have expressed with such fierce honesty and grace, is that we begin with what we've lived, with what's been passed down to us, and what we decide to pass on to others. "One wrong history giving way to another / until you find yourself stranded / at home," (Joan Kwon Glass). We begin with acknowledging the truth. "Violence has always lived here" (Julia Alekseyeva). We begin with our children. "What does it mean that my only justice has been on the page, and that life, for you, will be different," (Terese Marie Mailhot)." We begin with the bravery to articulate what we need to replace the silences built around us. "all i want / is a kind hand / recognizing my spine," (Quenton Baker). [End Page 43] Jamaica...