Mary Webb is so convinced that she was a man, a black man in
fact, and not just a black man, but an Australian black man (not American), and
to be precise—an aboriginal in a previous life that she can feel his carnal
pleasures and speak his language. Mary
assumes that Jasmine will understand this channeling of a past life because she
is Indian, when in truth; Jasmine understands this because she has already been
reincarnated several times in her short life. We talked a lot about how often
Jyoti/Jasmine/Jane’s identity changed in just the first half of the novel, but
in the second half she says something shocking. She says that, “Even memories are a sign of
disloyalty” (231). Mary doesn’t feel
that way at all. Mary is desperately
trying to access her past life while Jane is determined to flee hers. What Jasmine learns is that it is not just
what you carry with you from life to life that defines you; it’s what you leave
behind as well. No matter what you try
to forget, there will still be the tastes and the languages and the loves from
the past that permeate your skin and drift into your very soul.
Jasmine’s lesson is not far from the
greatest lesson that this course has taught me about home. I love to tell people about my grandparents’
house. Not only is it a beautiful place
in sunny California,
but I am not shy about the fact that it feels more like home to me than any of
the 13 houses where I have lived in the past 22 years. When talking to my mom about why her old house
feels more like home to me than our current house, I remind her that it’s
constant and safe and no matter how many times my grandma insists on painting
the walls or changing the furniture—it is still the same old house. But how is it possible that I am only in that
house about once a year and yet I never feel as though I am far from home? This class has made me question whether that
house is my home or if I am a home unto myself.
Maybe my
homeland is plain old change. I have
learned to tumble from state to state and self to self. I used to adamantly hate change because it
happened so often, but it turned out to be the easiest way to shed the aspects
of my personality that I didn’t like. I
could become a new person in every new home.
I used to think that what I left behind was irrelevant, but now, I’m not
so sure. What made me change my mind was
not just Jasmine, but my old furby. In moving from Idaho
to New York
in second grade, I already felt myself becoming a new person. I had decided to leave behind a lot of my old
toys, jealousy, and immaturity, but I wasn’t aware that my brother had packed
my old furby despite the fact that I thought it had been donated. As most people know, furbies never die. I had taken out the batteries almost as soon
as I got the damn thing for Christmas and it still kept talking. Well, in
my new home in my new state with my new self in my new bed, I would close my
eyes and hear that stupid furby beckoning me from the dark recesses of one of
the mysterious and unmarked (and woefully unpacked) boxes. I had no idea my brother had actually hid it
in my closet, so I eventually resigned myself to the fact that the furby was a
construct of my imagination and I was going crazy. Newsflash: change makes you crazy. We are crazy to voluntarily shed our skins
and rebirth ourselves, but there is something exciting in improvement. Mary Webb had the right idea: change isn’t as
scary in hindsight. Memories are not betrayal—they
are walls. They structure the lives we
move into so that we never actually build ourselves new homes, we simply add on
additions. New rooms are connected by
old doors that can stay open or they can stay closed, but they never go away. Jasmine/Jyoti/Jane never left behind any of
her identities; she simply added new ones to make herself more than she ever
dreamed she could be.
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