Return Quotes

“author of the national bestseller Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, which won the 2013 Toronto Book Award and was a finalist for the CBC’s Canada Reads and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-fiction. His second book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), was hailed as “essential reading” by the Globe and Mail and “brilliant” by The Walrus. A finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction as well as the Trillium Book Award, Brown won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Al-Solaylee, a two-time finalist for a National Magazine Award, won a gold medal for his column in Sharp in 2019.”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From

“Tekoa struck me as overdeveloped and sparse, more like a gated community in the American Southwest than a settlement in the Middle East. In 1975, it started as an outpost confiscated from the Palestinian village of Tuqu. It was handed over to Jewish residents (French, American and British) two years later for development.”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From

“When you move to another country, the only thing that stays in your memory is your house, the tree next to your house, and the bench," Igor tells me, as a mortified Daniela sighs. She had warned me that her father liked to speak in metaphors. "He has a metaphor for every situation in life," she says as he smiles and ignores her. On that trip in 1995, he founds out that the house was gone, the tree cut down and the bench burnt. "The only thing in your memory and now it's nothing. Even after only four years, I realized that Israel is my home."

Their feelings track with what some scholars of diaspora and return immigration say about the relegation of the country of origin into the realm of nostalgia and memory after just a few years in the new homeland.”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From

“I continue to marvel at this concept of returning to a land that you've never set foot in. But if Jews born in New York City or Toronto can call Israel home, why can't a Palestinian young woman whose parents have shown her the land deeds and maps long for the same?”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From

“We had a conversation about what we want to do with our lives. She said she wanted to go home," Steve recalls. "That was a big realization for me, as I thought we'd be here a bit longer. Then I actually realized that what I wanted was to get married. I didn't want to raise kids in Southern California." He explains that the body-conscious culture and the ready availability of drugs made the two of them rethink plans of starting a family in that setting and book their one-way tickets to Ireland. They flew back in 2007. He's now the father of three, a seven-year-old and five-year-old twins. "I just love the depth, the warmth of the people here. The resonance. I probably could have been a better global citizen elsewhere. But I love the effortlessness of being home, of raising kids here. For everything that was wrong here growing up, there is so much more about it that's right.”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From

“By their very nature, returnees seek a reconnection to a past life, a former identity marked more often than not by a single language or a single cultural frame of reference. We go back to what we know, including our native tongues. This process of reclaiming a homogenous existence runs counter to multi-culturalism on a societal level and hybridity on an individual level. Aren't we supposed to be complex, hybrid creatures containing multitudes? What about the concept of multiple belongings promoted by such internationally successful authors as Elif Shafak and Zadie Smith? On paper, where it mostly lives, this concept sounds ideal. "Multiple belongings are nurtured by cultural encounters but they are not only the preserve of people who travel", writes Shafak. "It is an attitude, a way of thinking, rather than the number of stamps on your passport. It is about thinking of yourself, and your fellow human beings, in more fluid terms than solid categories".

I wouldn't go as far as to suggest that returns imply a repudiation of a complex view of identity or of globalization - it's globalization that has allowed the many people you'll meet in this book, me included, to come and go, to cross borders and cultures - but they force us to think of movement in multi-directional ways. Some returnees find that the life they thoughts they would have back home is a fantasy, so they make their way back to the host country. Homeland returns remain unpredictable, in part because despite their historical contexts, they don't have the clear road maps and narratives that outward migrations enjoy.”
― Kamal Al-Solaylee, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From