In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

afterword The Complexities of home Trudier Harris “home,” robert frost asserts in “The death of the hired Man” (1915), “is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.” frost’s statement presupposes a moral obligation, one that the couple to whom the hired man Silas returns in the poem ultimately adheres by allowing him, in spite of his irregular work habits and presumptions with them, to die peacefully in his old living quarters. his frequent departures from their farm, indeed his leaving them in the lurch on many occasions, are overshadowed by his present need, a need to which they respond—Warren the husband grumpily and Mary the wife sympathetically. The voluntary departure, forced return, moral obligation, and spatial recognition of dependency that shape the poem also shape many of the ideas that the presenters offered in the “race and displacement ” symposium held at the university of alabama in october of 2009 and that now grace this volume. While there is no governmental obligation in frost’s poem, it is implicit by its absence. What is a society to do with its homeless persons, with those who have voluntarily or forcibly been driven from their dwellings? and what is the nature of their sojourns? do they find solace, a home, in a different space, or must they return to their points of origins? if they return, will they be welcomed, merely tolerated, or dispatched with violence ? The history of forced and voluntary movement throughout the world and internally within the united States is a history informed as much by race as it is by culture, as much by financial expediency as it is by moral obligation. attempts to find a new home after one is forcibly dispatched/driven from a native territory is one of the recurring threads in considering the complexities of home. africans captured and brought to the americas spent the better part of two hundred years waiting for the u.S. government to begin the pro- 212 / Trudier Harris cess of allowing them to call america home. even after they were emancipated from slavery, they still needed an additional hundred years before they could stake a claim to the moral conscience of the country during the civil rights movement. But what of the mixed race Métis, who, as nomads in Montana, idaho, and occasionally Canada, were deliberately disfranchised and disinherited through linguistic reference? delia hagen notes that, to the american government, the Métis were decidedly not native american; therefore, they had no rights to make claims on the land on which they lived. to the Canadian government, they were not Canadian, not indian, and nonwhite, so they could make no claims to Canadian territory. They defined themselves as native american and european, but that self-description did not earn them sufficient respect to warrant uncontested space. as the Métis were forced from their lands by the american government and in turn forced from Canada, did they ever have a chance to call either territory home? neither the united States nor Canada was willing to admit moral responsibility in allowing the Métis to live peaceably—or even die peaceably—in their selected space. indeed , neither government recognized the rights of these persons to claim a space. With their inability to enroll in native american tribes, and denied the “social whiteness” that would have enabled them to change their status from outcasts to citizens, they remained nomadic, displaced at will, unable to call any place home. linguistic displacement also informs Sir francis drake’s response to the africans he encountered in Panama in april of 1573, as Cassander l. Smith explains in her essay. as he planned a robbery of gold that was intended for Spain and needed the assistance of these africans, known as Cimarrons, he realized that they did not fit into a narrative of victimized africans. nor could he accept them as his equals, as is clear when he prefers to give one of the Cimarrons a sword instead of allowing him to pay for it. to drake, the Cimarrons are a troublesome lot whose attempts to define themselves disturb him greatly. So he portrays them as indians, sons and daughters of the land, indigenous , not like imported africans. he therefore attempts to construct a “suffering indian” presence in the Cimarrons under Spanish rule. While what the Cimarrons think and feel is not abundantly available to us, it is obvious that drake would like to...

Share