Home Address

This manuscript aims to do exactly what it claims to in the title—to address home. Home is a word that gets used without thought and often multiple times per day. “Let’s go home” and “I’m on my way home” are thrown out over dinner parties or phone calls. Advertisements that plaster the side of apartment complexes tell the passerby, “If you lived here, you would be home by now.” Home Address contains five short stories, each of which strive to contextually define and redefine “home.” This collection explores aspects of the stories’ characters’ homes, or lack thereof, and the effect that can have in warping, creating, or breaking down personal identities. Home is not a place, or a relationship, or a blood relation, or a material thing. It is none of those things. It is also all those things. I hope that those who read Home Address and who feel as if they have no real home can be encouraged by these stories which show the ways home is a concept, not a concrete reality, and that it can continue to be shaped throughout any individual life.