Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera at Public Books:
“Reflections on Exile” summoned to mind the only seven words my grandfather ever said to me about Ireland, where he had cousins he never knew: “I don’t think I’ll go back there,” he muttered one day in the 1990s, in response to my prodding. He had visited, seen family, kissed the stone, and got in a car accident (my parents said he was distracted). I wondered what Herlihys in Cork thought of how he pronounced our surname. What they thought of Puerto Rico and Martha’s Vineyard, the islands where he chose to live. The reaction in their eyes and in his, the confusion wrought by exile and empire, Americanization and the impossibility of return.
Seven words linger of his story—but maybe they comprise it.
Edward Said and my grandfather had different approaches to exile (one used words, the other silence). Both were fluent in the hollowness of relocation, the inconsequence of acculturation. They had new languages and accents, lived in different climates and cities; they were surrounded by the deception of success. The jealousy, depression, confusion, and misunderstandings wrought by diaspora and imperialism were shot through their very existence.
Part of Said’s genius was the knowledge that it’s too easy to blame empire for all of that.
More here.
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