“Books are essential because in a culture that presumes to know everything about us, literature is one of our last realms of freedom and mystery, where we can find the language to think, to dream, and to imagine other worlds.” ~ Neha Kale
(Note: I borrowed this quote from @streetlibraryau e-newsletter. Many thanks!)
@nehakale is an Australian writer, journalist and cultural critic, whose recently published book Foreign Return: On Art and Inhabitation is on my TBR list. I love this quote from the book:
“When I migrated from India to Australia as a young girl, I internalised the idea that there were only two paths laid out for me if I was to ‘belong’ to a culture in which people like me were simultaneously celebrated as part of a national project and framed as an invasive species that threatened a finite set of resources. During a time of rising anti-migrant sentiment, I wanted to think beyond the West’s reductive narratives and search for other ideas of what home could mean.”
As a migrant myself, I’ve never felt like an “invasive species”. Rather, I think of myself as an introduced yet long naturalised species whose growth is integrated into and hopefully beneficial to the local life. (I remain hopelessly hopeful!) While on some occasions I can still be seen as the token diversity, it doesn’t stop me from doing what I can for my community, the land and people I love. I guess that’s what it means when they say “home is where the heart is”.
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