Returning home: a londoner's decade-long brooklyn detour
The pull of home, it turns out, isn’t a linear equation. After nearly a decade transplanted across the Atlantic, journalist Bim Adewunmi has returned to London, bringing with her a toddler steeped in Brooklyn culture and a profound shift in perspective—and a healthy dose of culture shock.
The atlantic divide: a decade of transformation
Adewunmi’s story isn't simply about repatriation; it's about a life fundamentally reshaped by a decade spent in New York City. Initially intending a twelve-month reporting stint during a pivotal election year, the city’s gravitational pull proved far stronger. She recounts a gradual metamorphosis: silver streaks appearing in her hair, a palate broadened by North America’s culinary landscape, and a peculiar involuntary sound when rising from her desk—all hallmarks of a life fully embraced. But the grand experiment of returning, especially with a young child, has revealed unexpected frictions.
The relocation itself, moving an entire life—and a small person’s entire world—3,000 miles, is a feat Adewunmi readily acknowledges as emotionally taxing. “If you have to do it,” she writes, “then you have to do it. But I can’t recommend it.” This sentiment underscores the profound disruption, both for the child and the parent navigating a world entirely uprooted.
London reconfigured: a familiar city, strangely alien
South London now hosts Adewunmi and her family, a welcome shift for space, but a geographical reset nonetheless. The familiar landmarks of her youth have been replaced with new buses, new cafes, and a landscape subtly but undeniably altered. The Young V&A, once overshadowed by her affection for the Geffrye Museum, now sees far more of her – a testament to the priorities of parenthood. Even a simple trip to the theatre became a negotiation, ending prematurely when her son struggled with the imagery of My Neighbour Totoro.
But it’s the people, Adewunmi observes, that register most acutely. The ingrained British reticence, a characteristic she’d momentarily forgotten during her time abroad, feels particularly stark. The memory of a gallery visitor shushing her son for pointing out the eyes on a Kerry James Marshall painting serves as a poignant illustration—a reminder of a cultural nuance lost and rediscovered.
The absence of spontaneous connection, the reluctance to offer assistance with a stroller on the Underground, these are the details that define Adewunmi’s present experience. She doesn’t lament the loss of New York so much as the vibrancy of its inhabitants, the ease with which New Yorkers inhabit public space with an undeniable energy. It’s a quality, she suggests, that Brooklynites embody particularly well.
Thomas Wolfe might have been partially correct about returning home, but Adewunmi’s journey is far from a simple homecoming. It’s a return laden with observations, adjustments, and a growing understanding that home is not a static place, but a constantly evolving landscape shaped by experience and, crucially, by the people who populate it.