Practising Hope through Agency and Choice
On reverse migration stories, organizational inclusion readiness and a podcast about conflict
In an episode of the podcast “What Now? with Trevor Noah” devoted to celebrating his 40th birthday, he shares that the specific date of his birthday does not hold meaning to him because he is a summer baby. After moving to the Global North, his birthday now falls in the winter, and he is not interested in going from celebrations in sunshine to celebrations in grey. Instead, he chooses to celebrate different milestones, and track his progress in different ways.
The conversation reminded me of a tacit assumption that undercuts many migration and inclusion stories: that being in the West is better than being in the Global South. In contrast, here Trevor Noah chooses something else. He sees a birthday in South Africa as infinitely better than celebrating in the U.S, and so he chooses that instead.
That decision challenges the dominant migration narrative and feels like a way of practising hope.
I thought about that podcast when I saw the film When Morning Comes at the Vancouver International Film Festival (also available for rent through YouTube and other streaming services) as part of their “Celebrating Black Futures” programming. The film centers around the story of a young boy named Jamal in Kingston Jamaica who is about to turn ten years old and finds out that his mother is sending him to Toronto to live with his grandmother. He is heartbroken by this decision, bursting into tears upon hearing this news, and begging his mother to let him stay home where she is, his friends are, and where he can visit his father’s grave easily. As viewers, we can understand why he wants to stay because the visuals in this film are gorgeous. We are introduced to a Jamaica of clear blue waters, lush verdant landscapes, shades of green and blue that signify abundance and generosity. Jamal lives in a world of cooked breakfasts, baths and mint tea before bed, and freedom to move.
Echoing these abundant landscapes, Jamal lives in a circle of flowing generosity. When he is suspended from school for a few days for example, Jamal goes to school to meet up with his best friend. On his way, he is stopped by his neighbour who checks where he is going and drops him off. From school, Jamal goes to his friend’s house. When they arrive, his friend’s mother calls Jamal’s mother and lets her know of his whereabouts and that he will sleep over. He changes into his friend’s clothes and shoes, they sleep in the same bed, wake up early the next morning and go out fishing together with his friend’s dad. All of this happens with minimal words and with a ease, looseness and relaxed energy that speaks to a collective culture and a generous community. When Jamal and his friend return home from fishing, he gets dropped off with an ample share of the fish and the mangoes they collected that day. Yes, there is violence here, but that is not the dominant note of this community. What we are asked to focus on instead is the friendship, love, and care between family, friends from different class backgrounds and within loose community ties. As a viewer outside this story, witnessing all this makes you wish throughout the film that he is successful in his quest and does not have to leave his home.
I watched this film with my husband, who has lived in Canada for less than a decade, and every so often I would surreptitiously sneak a glance to see how this film was landing with him. Even in the dark cinema, I could that his eyes were soft and his shoulders relaxed. After we got married I lived in South Africa for only a couple of years, but even I could see that the landscapes were reminiscent of Durban, the shops and homes looked like Johannesburg and that all of this was a slice of home that is rarely experienced in storytelling or on screen.
When there are so many narratives about “keeping migrants out” and journeys about people having to prove their “worthiness” for immigration, this film is a reminder of the wealth and beauty of the global south.
Though it takes place in an entirely different context, the book No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib asks similar questions. Published in 2022, No Land to Light On is an extraordinary novel that follows the story of married couple Naseem and Sama. The novel opens in the United States in January 2017 at the time of the “Muslim Ban” and follows how this ban affects the lives of Naseem and Sama in deep and lasting ways. Naseem and Sama are Syrian. Sama arrived in the U.S on a scholarship to Harvard, Naseem arrives years later as a refugee, and they meet, fall in love, marry and get pregnant. When Naseem’s father passes away before his reunification visa interview, Naseem travels back, but when he returns back to the U.S his visa is cancelled. Waiting for him at the airport, Sama goes into premature labour. This novel follows their story from that point and goes back in time to tell more of their story before they met. It is told in chapters that alternate between their respective viewpoints and different years in their individual and shared history, interspliced with details of migratory birds, the topic of Sama’s research at Harvard.
It’s a gorgeous, hopeful, and hard read, and I absolutely loved it. Studded through the book’s very challenging chapters are moments of hope, grace and generosity. The nurses who give Sama pillows when she isn’t supposed to stay at the hospital, her academic supervisor who visits her and provides her food and snacks at a time and place when she has no family to draw on, the forgiveness and generosity that flows between Naseem and Sama, and to them from the people that they love, all of these are examples of the agency and choice individuals exercise daily in the face of unjust laws and policies. At the same time, this book also asks serious questions about how long one should persist in trying to enter an unwelcome nation. It asks: to what extent does one try to be part of a nation that is asking for too high a price for entry? When is it too much? How does one weigh that cost against the reasons for staying and going and what you’ve already sacrificed in your journey?