Losing, Finding, and Returning Home: Sense of Belonging

Abstract

This collection was ironically built without the intention that it would become a collection. Similar to many other projects I have done, it always begins with a curiosity. The puzzles slowly move into places that allow me a great amount of self-reflection and discovery of my personal values. Most of the books in this collection can be found in our library at Goucher since I didn’t really have the luxury of going to a bookstore during a pandemic. However, the lack of intentionality in this collection makes it difficult to put them in thematic categories. Initially, I decided not to categorize them at all but as I reread some of the works for this reflection, I decided they do belong to three groups - personal (individual), familial (community) and national (nation). What is interesting, for me, is that any book in this collection can move fluidly between those three categories because home is all-encompassing of individual, familial and national identity. Those three themes, with their link to belonging, become the connecting thread for the works in this collection.