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.