Poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo and journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge articulate the realities of existing in between two worlds. In Diaspora Blues’, Ijeoma Imebinyuo writes:
So,
here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here
never enough for both
Meanwhile, Reni Eddo-Lodge’s essay Forming Blackness through a screen, found in The Good Immigrant she states: “To be an Immigrant, good or bad, is about straddling two homes, whilst knowing you don’t really belong to either.”
Both writers convey the feeling of displacement I felt during my trips back home. I was born in Harare and I moved to the UK when I was seven years old. During my visit to Zimbabwe earlier this year, I felt foreign in my birthplace. I spoke to a fellow writer, Zoé Samudzi and we shared our experiences. She called what we felt, “diasporic alienation” and that was the perfect description.