Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy
Chitra Ramaswamy blends two stories of migration, belonging and family in Homelands – and the result is a book that couldn't be more timely
Homelands: The History of a Friendship is both biography and autobiography, as journalist and author Chitra Ramaswamy weaves together her own family’s story of migrating to the UK with that of her friend Henry Wuga, a man who came to Glasgow as a teenage refugee to escape the horrors of Nazi Germany. Theirs is a friendship that is simultaneously simple and complex as the extraordinary is discovered in lives that, to those on the outside, most likely seem unexceptional.
At its core Homelands is about belonging – as much about people as it is place – and fortitude in the face of prejudice and persecution. It’s also a book that couldn’t be more timely – in ways no one involved could have foreseen. While it deals with the contemporary, touching upon the personal and emotional cost of Brexit, and then COVID, the reality of another war in Western Europe, with people fleeing from their homes and for their lives, raises Homelands from an interesting read to an essential one.
There are few books that prove that individual stories inform shared experiences as well as this one. Chitra Ramaswamy’s and Henry Wuga’s recollections would be compelling on their own, but by bringing them together we are encouraged to look at our own family history, and compare them with those of others. Homelands rightly proffers there is more that unites than divides.
