Sonja Boon - What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home

WHAT the OCEANS REMEMBER

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS Life Writing series celebrates life writing as both genre and critical practice. As a home for innovative scholarship in theory and critical practice, the series embraces a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, from literary criticism and theory to autoethnography and beyond, and encourages intersectional approaches attentive to the complex interrelationships between gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and more. In its commitment to life writing as genre, the series incorporates a range of life writing practices and welcomes creative scholarship and hybrid forms. The Life Writing series recognizes the diversity of languages, and the effects of such languages on life writing practices within the Canadian context, including the languages of migration and translation. As such, the series invites contributions from voices and communities who have been under- or misrepresented in scholarly work.

Series editors:

Marlene Kadar, York University; Sonja Boon, Memorial University

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: What the oceans remember : searching for belonging and home / Sonja Boon.

Names: Boon, Sonja, author.

Series: Life writing series.

Description: Series statement: Life writing | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190073012 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190073179 | ISBN 9781771124232 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781771124256 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781771124249 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Boon, Sonja. | LCSH: Boon, SonjaFamily. | LCSH: Identity (Psychology) | LCSH: HomePsychological aspects. | LCSH: Belonging (Social psychology)

Classification: LCC CT310.B66 A3 2019 | DDC 971.07092dc23

Cover and text design by Lime Design Inc. Front-cover image: De plantages Nijd en Spijt en Alkmaar aan de Commewijne Rivier (ca. 1860), Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, inventory number TM-3348-17. Page viii image: Het hospitaal op plantage Sarah, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, inventory number TM-H-3357.

2019 Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

www.wlupress.wlu.ca

The epigraph, The past is remembered and told by desire, is copyright 2015 by Lauret Edith Savoy, from Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.

Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publishers attention will be corrected in future printings.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

TO OMA ,

for bequeathing your stubbornness to me
(and for teaching me how to make pastei),

AND TO OPA ,

for the music.

THE PAST is REMEMBERED
and TOLD by DESIRE.

LAURET EDITH SAVOY

Authors Note

This book is based on archival research undertaken
in the Netherlands, Suriname, England, and Canada.
All conversations have been reconstructed.