belonging
How has your study of Belonging broadened your perception of “belonging” in reference to yourself, individuals, community and the world? In your answer you must refer to TWO poems by Peter Skrzynecki and AT LEAST TWO additional texts. Studying the poetry of Peter Skrzynecki for the past year has shown that “belonging” is a basic human need. In the words of William Yang, whose talk “My Chinese Identity” in N Whitfield (ed) From Yellow Earth to Eucalypt is one of the texts I will refer to, “A sense of identity is all bound up with knowing where you came from. If you know your story, then you have an identity. ” Knowing where we belong, then, is crucial in knowing who we are; but it is not all a positive thing. There are some “belongings” which can lead to what Amin Maalouf calls “deadly identities” – an idea developed in On Identity (2000) where we clearly see some implications for the community and the world as well as for the individual. Belonging in its positive and negative forms – it can nurture but it also restrict – may also be seen in Rob Reiner’s 1986 film Stand By Me, based on a novella by Stephen King. Many of these issues are to be found in Skrzynecki’s work, particularly in “10 Mary Street” and “In the Folk Museum”. What happens to us if we don’t know our story, or if we are alienated from it, or find ourselves in circumstances where the dominant story is not our story?