Here are mullings on the six places that writers have thought of as defining President Obama, six places that he wrote about in his own autobiography.
Op-Ed Contributors – Places He Remembered – NYTimes.com.
My place? I would think that my time at the University of Chicago defined my life, shaping my intellect and approach to knowledge, as well as the world. Teaching me how little I know, but how intellectual curiousity is the bedrock of a life well lived. Also, it framed my friends and my perspectives, broadening my sense of self, but also defining it more clearly. Chicago, as a literary construct, with its emphasis on making and reinvention, underscored my experience of a city rich in diversity, taste, and culture–one in which past and present resided uneasily and sometimes violently. Both, too, complemented my university experience, heavily laden with symbolic university architecture that was invented as an embodiment of European educational ideals.
It has never occurred to me that physical locality would serve to define me. I certainly have pondered what my overall demeanor might be if I lived in a warm and sunny climate, but never if my surroundings defined me. The relationships, sorrows, joys, and general life experiences are what I associate with defining myself. I will admit that these “life experiences” will ultimately be shaped by physicality, but to what extent would be different for us all.
I had lived in Brooklyn, Ohio for the first nine years of my life, and I believe that it had a significant contribution to how I am defined. It was a smaller neighborhood with few major roads going through it (until I-480 was built), so I grew up playing outside everyday with friends, and riding bikes when we needed to get somewhere. It contrasted strongly with North Royalton (where my family moved when I was nine) where I had to be driven to play with friends and the streets were too busy for us to walk or ride anywhere. I think Brooklyn helped instill the strong sense of closeness and community that I have today, and the friends I had and experiences we shared were a major contributor towards that.
When looking at what is defined as homes or “places” i have lived. I have to agree with the sentiments wrote about by Henri Lefebvre. He comments it is overfilled with meaning. This is where my thoughts run, living or residing in a certain “place” could define a myriad of certain areas, such as a home, a school, or a group of people. The truth is each of these places has shaped my life, although the thoughts that are associated with each gives you the ideals and shapes you whether it is culturally, spiritually, and even mentally. A home is not just a place where one resides it encompasses all that comes with that place, and may take you to broader horizons.
I need to leave a small edit on my post the comments were those of Dolores Hayden, and not Henri Lefebvre. Should that have been cited, just asking?
I’ve been fortunate to live in a few different cities but when it comes to defining me, I credit my hometown of Cleveland. I include the suburbs in my definition, as I lived primarily in Brecksville, 10 miles south of downtown. At 18, I went to Syracuse, at 20, spent a semester in London and, at 22, moved to Los Angeles. Everywhere I went, I brought Cleveland with me: Indians and Browns, classic rock and solid Midwestern values. Clevelanders embody a unique juxtaposition of humility and pride. It’s acceptable for Clevelanders to make fun of our city but outsiders who dare speak against it will witness an impassioned defense. After September 11th, I felt the need to come home and have been here since. I still remember the time my Los Angeles boss remarked that I was “so Cleveland.” I took – and take – this as a compliment.
I grew up in Mentor and spent my first 13 years living there. I grew up in a development with over a hundred other kids. Growing up like this I was constantly interacting with friends and spent very little time inside watching TV or playing video games. I think this plays a huge role in my current life as I have a very difficult time sitting for any extended period of time. I struggle to stay involved in class or meetings after the first hour because I begin to get real antsy.
After Mentor I moved to Perry at 14. Perry was still a country town when I first moved. It was their first time that I encountered blatant racism in person. It changed my views on some things as I was naive as to how much racism still existed. I found the lifestyle there to be extremely boring as it was more laid back and it was when I recognized I had a problem with anything that was slow place.
Since the end of high school I have moved and lived in Downtown Cleveland. Moving to an urban setting impacted me because it opened a lot of opportunites for me to meet people that have had a great impact on my views on life. The Urban also provided me a more fast pace lifestyle that I enjoy
I would like to think my place would be the city I spent 17 years of my life growing up in. But it wasn’t until I left Hudson, OH that I realized that wasn’t my place. That was nothing more than a small bubble which secluded itself from the real world. And after going to Cleveland State for some five years now it occurs to me that CSU isn’t really my place either. I enjoyed living in the city for a few years and all that comes with that, but it is not where I want to be. So I am leaving my place undefined because up to this point in my life I have not found the place where I want to settle down and spend the rest of my life. That will be my place, and something tells me its going to be a little more country that my places in the past…
In my family we knew that home was where the Coast Guard sent us and indeed it was. My father has been in the United States Coast Guard since before I was born. Because of this I spent my childhood moving around. Being born in a small fishing village in Alaska is something to be proud of when you are moving from school to school, all full of kids whose families had spent their entire lives in one state, usually one county. And having spent most of my childhood in different East Coast beach towns has most definitely helped in defining me as a person. I could not imagine living in one place forever, and I am sure I will move around for the rest of my life. I love all the exciting experiences involved in relocating my life to new and unexpected places.
Having already lived somewhat of a long life, I believe that, while it is true as Calvino noted in “Invisible Cities” that people shape places, it is also equally true that places shape people.
I grew up in Parma, Ohio, just shortly after the end of World War II, when that Cleveland suburb was becoming one of the fastest growing in the country, its population booming with the families of thousands of GIs returning home from the war. A lot of those families were composed of second and third generation Americans of Eastern European ancestry, and so I grew up with friends who had last names like Balogh, Cybulski, Macek, Kowalski. I also grew up in Parma under the close watch of the Ursuline nuns at St. Francis deSales grade school. The world, I thought as I grew up in Parma, was clearly crowded, Eastern European, and Catholic.
When I was 17, I went away to college at Centre College of Kentucky, located in Danville, Kentucky, a small tobacco and livestock town 40 miles south of Lexington. Centre was so named because, very simply put, it was located in the center of Kentucky. I have never been so far away from Cleveland in my life as I was for the four years that I lived on campus at Centre College.
Arriving at Centre in the Fall of 1968, I felt much like Dorothy must have felt upon first arriving in Oz. At the time I attended the college, its student population was about 700. My friends there did not have Eastern European names. Instead, they had last names like Castle, Ingram, Wells, Blackistone, and Joy. They couldn’t quite figure out my last name–Dubelko. “Was it Polish,” they asked? “No, Slovak.” “Same thing,” they would respond. Among those friends, no one, other than me, had been raised a Catholic. They were all Baptists, and they viewed Catholicism as a dark, forboding religion that frankly scared them.
I have lived in a number of other places in the 37 years that have passed since I graduated from Centre, but the places that most shaped me were Parma, Ohio, and Centre College of Kentucky.
I agree with Geoffrie that place can be defined in more than one aspect. For me place includes my home, school, and place of work. Each of these has shaped who I am in one way or another and my views on the world around me. I don’t believe place has to be one one single areas. It can be a collection of places. I live in an apartment building where the majority of the residents are elderly citizens. I love talking to them because they have such interesting insights about life. On campus, I meet people from all backgrounds. Going to a school with such a diverse student body has taught me alot how different people define place. Some define it by their country of origin while others define place by their experiences in Cleveland or other hometown. I am originally from Palestine. My family came here when I was six. Despite not being born in the U.S., people don’t define me as Palestinian but an American. I always meet people that tell me I am “too assimiated to American life” and that they don’t consider a palestinian but an every day American. I think that stems from the fact that I have incorporated so much of the American life style and customs into my own life. I don’t mind being viewed that way at all honestly.
Looking at what defines me and what my surroundings are is something that I guess I have always paid attention to. I can still remember being young and living in Parma until I was seven and how I lived there. Today I live in North Royalton where my family has been since 1992. There, like Brian had described in his entry, we had to be driven to places we wanted to go or drive ourselves unlike what many of us did not have to do while living in Parma or elsewhere. In a place like North Royalton things like this do shape ones life in many of the ways that me and Brian have dealt with.
In my life I also lived in Bowling Green,Ohio where I attended college for my undergrad. This was a place that to me defined the small college town. It is a place in the middle of farm country in Ohio with Toledo being the closest large city about a half hour away. At college you meet many similar people, in fact many from the Cleveland area. As well, I also interacted with local people from Bowling Green and others from this part of the state. Not only did being put in this location phyically change my perspective on what some may call country life but also interacting with the people out there. In all I feel these three places define me because of what I got out of them by learning and most recently by trying to learn more about them.
I would say that place does not have a big impact in my life. For example, I live in Wickliffe, but I feel like I have nothing that binds me to that place. Wickliffe is a small city that does not have very much. I do my grocery shopping in Willowick, I work in Eastlake and I go to school in Cleveland. Another reason why I lost a sense of place in Wickliffe is the breakdown of my social ties. The minute you go to college your friends start to change and you start to travel outside your city more. I would say that my sense of place is mainly CSU and work because it is two thirds of my life.