Revision Piece

Karen McMillan
Professors P. Shen and L. Smith
Eng 101
May 11, 2007

An Ever Changing Community

Feeling comfortable in a community comes from history and change. Our communities change as time changes. There was once a sense of stability in a community where people tried to go and build their lives, a life that is secure and successful. Now there is a longing to return to the roots of our ancestors and to a place that is secure and is defined as our home or community.

Our longing for heritage comes from knowing our history and wanting to be where our roots are from. In the essay, Reclaiming Our Home Place, Angelou refers to her black community, “…our people’s bodies and sweat and tears and blood have enriched this soil, and thought, wait a minute maybe I belong there too.”( 137 ) Does our sense of belonging come with age and understanding of our heritage? In “The Ending Poem, Morales and Levins Morales also indicate this. “All the civilizations erected on their backs.”(96) Their backs are the strong backs of their people coming from many different cultures. Both of these quotes are indications of hard work for the cultures and communities they are from. They have established roots and heritage from these places of their birth. Many never leave this stable community. They feel at ease knowing they are accepted there and have a history there as well.
We all try to “fit in” to the communities in which we live. But, sometimes there is uneasiness as we try to settle. It’s possible we are not welcomed by the small town people or the community may be too large and we don’t know where we fit in. Angelou states, “The move in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the place Robert Hayden called “mythic northern city” was caused by people who hoped they could find a better place.” (136) “However, if the North did promise that, it never lived up to its promise,” (137) There is a movement from the North to the South in the black community. Angelou indicates, “They began to look south again and see it as they want it to be.”(137) Morales and Levins Morales state, “History made us. We will not eat ourselves up inside anymore.”(97) People are looking for a sense of belonging which goes back to the heritage they are from and the history of the community which was built. They want to be comfortable in their community.


We can not assume that all that have left their roots to join other communities are unstable. Morales and Levins Morales state, “A product of the New York ghettos I have never known.”(96) The people they speak of as products to the ghetto were never in the New York ghettos but, there is a history there because of their heritage coming from the ghettos. They have chosen to not be in the ghettos. An assumption is made as to what life would be like in an unknown community. A picture is usually painted about how wonderful the new area will be. A great community, nice neighbors, etc. Or, an assumption is made how awful it will be, drive-by shootings, graffiti and gangs. But, Angelous states, “Our people are coming home. The South is rich with memories of kindness and courage and cowardice and brutality. It is beautiful physically and spiritually rich.” ( 137) This is where Angelou indicates her people, being black, are returning to the south, their “home”. These “people” may not have even been born their but, want to return where they are from.

Many communities are stable. There are those that have had generations before them live there. Some have left and settled elsewhere. But, there are those communities that are transient that never settle. Many people try to find the better community which, they think will bring them to a better life. But, as time goes on they will see they belong with their original community for that stability in their life. Angelou sums it up by saying, “Wherever home is, the closer one gets to it, the more one relaxes...I think this is true for all people.”(135)