Leaving Home: Abandoning a Problematic Metaphor

To feel at home is an experience often proffered as desirable because it connotes comfort and familiarity, and as such it is often taken for granted as positive. In this essay, I delineate how “home,” whether actual or metaphorical, is a contested concept and location, one that is marked not only by who and what we let in but by what we keep out. I offer that belonging—multiple, elective, and temporary—enables a way more in keeping with our transient being.