Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging
Too much has been made of origins. All origins are arbitrary.||||I try to tell him, you don't write about racism, you write about life.||||Why is all geography irony?||||
In a new city there are ghosts of old cities. There are lies and re-creations. Everyone thinks that a city is full of hope, but it isn't. Sometimes it is the end of imagination.||||
I stepped into the cool opening of the Door of No Return. My feet landed where my thoughts were. This is the trick of the door - to step through and be where you want to be. Our ancestors were bewildered because they had a sense of origins - some country, some village, some family where they belonged and from which they were rent. We, on the other hand, have no such immediate sense of belonging, only of drift.
