Home 家: The Before and the Now
BY HANNAH M. GORE
Featured in Vol 9, Issue 1: Community
Dedicated to the Japanese women , the mothers, the daughters, the sisters, and the friends who have moved overseas to come and to live here and build a home in Jackson, Tennessee. You inspire our community more than you know.
As our city has grown, there has been a sort of migration of international families and individuals to Jackson. Of these different people who have ventured overseas to temporarily build a life here, the Japanese community in Jackson is one group that has seen significant growth in the past decade. This growth has flowered into a thriving community that is impacting the landscape, growth, and development of Jackson, Tennessee, and can teach our city valuable lessons about both place and culture.
Leaving everything that you have known for a vacation abroad is exhilarating, but moving 14 hours across the ocean to become a part of a country, a city, and a culture that is foreign to you takes bravery. The definition of “home” becomes blurred, as “home” is now an in-between. It is where you are and where you were before all at once. For many families coming from Japan, there is a sense that “home,” which was once a steady and consistent thing, is suddenly disturbed and uprooted by a change in current location. Traditions are not the same, and the people value different things from place to place when shifting from a country such as Japan to a small city in America like Jackson.
Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of meeting and doing life alongside some of the wives and mothers from these families. Some are newlyweds, some are seasoned mothers of multiple children, and some are awaiting the birth of their very first child. The journey here to Jackson from Japan is an exciting thing for many of these women, but it does not come without hardship. Daily life activities that were once simple are now difficult due to language barriers and culture differences. Despite the many hardships they face, these women have stepped confidently into life in Jackson, linking the culture of their country to their life here. The richness of each woman’s cultural background and heritage combined with an eagerness to thrive in a culture vastly different from what they are familiar with brings together both past and present to showcase the beauty and vibrancy that is the concept of home.
sea to land
mother and matriarch
women and warmth
we hold our heritage close to our hearts
singing a song of migration and home
home is two-fold
when you are caught bridging
a thousand miles of rocky shore
and a landscape more open
than the eye can see
it is a dance and a balance
of a child in one arm
and confidence in the other
mustering up the courage to
walk when all you
yearn to do is run
as days stretch to months
home is both yoshino cherry trees
and southbound freeways, golden flatlands stretching on either side
home is more than four walls
it is in the daffodils that bloom unprompted
it is in the strength of a maple in a spring thunderstorm
bending but not breaking
home is humid tennessee summers
and breezy red autumns
farmer’s market saturdays
and tomatoes bigger than your head
and a man in blue jean overalls asking how you are
just because he felt like it
home is strength to prevail
against the winds that threaten to break that which we hold together
it is bluegrass in the evening
rockabilly in the afternoon
and soul on a sunday morning
home is a becoming and a letting go
home is an anticipation
and a longing
life becomes a mix of yearning
a desiring, a tender memory of a home-cooked meal
salty seafood, soy sauce, a bowl of rice
a trip to okinawa,
the warmth of a kotatsu in winter
the way that the cat on the street corner greets the passerby daily
the sunlight streaming through a half-open door
home is a salty-sweet breeze laced with melancholy
beckoning simpler times, and days of strolling down weathered sidewalks
or familiar subway platforms
or watching the monsoons in autumn, an invitation to winter
home is hard now
with simple things becoming something painstaking
there is a pondering, a yearning
for a time when the cashier at the convenient shop
wasn’t the most difficult part of a day
and the waiting room of a doctor’s office
didn’t feel like a reason to feel defeat
but despite it all, home isn’t as lonely
as it was after the arrival
like seeds bursting open to yield a carpet of green after a long winter,
there is awakening
and home becomes more than just what is behind
home becomes what is also ahead
day by day, there is a feeling that grows
it wraps itself around weary shoulders
a balm to soothe the days where home is no more than a big room
home is a feeling that is found in moments where the room is full
and there is laughter and words of all languages
mingling and dancing, tying everything together
the days are long
the words are hard
but the persistence is plentiful
these women are something of steel
laced with the courage
to soar like the stars
they love
they gather
they make and mend
coax and craft
and build a life
despite the feeling that home
is only what came before
they are mother and matriarch
women and warmth
their stories stretch thousand of miles across oceans
to the here and now
singing a song
of migration and home.
Hannah Gore is a photographer from Jackson,Tennessee, who currently lives in the nearby town of Medina. She is currently working to earn her associates degree in mass communication at Jackson State Community College. Through her passion for authenticity, she seeks to capture the heart and soul of Jackson through the art of photography. When she doesn’t have a camera in her hand, you can find her in the corner of a coffee shop with a good book, learning a foreign language, or watching Korean dramas.
