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Dakota Diaspora

6/3/2012

8 Comments

 
In my short bio, I note that I’m part of the Dakota diaspora, but
what does that actually mean? 

According to the venerable Merriam-Webster, diaspora (lowercase) is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland.” 

But what it actually means is that I was looking for a term that
wouldn’t lay me open to the accusation of bragging, an activity heavily frowned upon in the Dakotas.

The term I discarded is one familiar to many Dakotans who have pursued advanced education and left to find professional work not readily available in our homeland: The Great Plains Brain Drain. But using that term would not only swell my own brain beyond its (demonstrably small) capacity but insult the many bigger brains who remained. 

So I coined the term Dakota diaspora as a way of saying that I
was too stupid to figure out a way to stay in the Dakotas and make a
living.

Only in researching this article for my blog did I find out that there’s actually a book out there, published in the 1980s, called Dakota Diaspora: Memories of a Jewish Homesteader by Sophie Trupin. Being neither Jewish nor a homesteader, perhaps I need to find yet another
term.

But right now that's too big a drain  on my plain brain. Back to work on Dead Dreams...


8 Comments
Deborah
6/4/2012 12:22:26 pm

Aye, my dictionary app makes that upper/lower case distinction, too. Seemed Karen's Dakota community was all about ethnicity and bloodlines. As in times past, when the number of people we knew in a lifetime was smaller than today, they could track folks through the generations, in Ada County.

Reply
Tracy Sharp link
6/6/2012 01:58:20 am

It's hard to make a living in my home town, Sudbury, Ontairo, Canada. I moved to the Niagara Falls region, then here to the Albany NY area. I think part of it is my constant restlessness. We moved a lot when I was a kid.

I am a homebody but it's hard to feel like anywhere is really home. I think this place might be the closest to a 'home' feeling for me :)

Reply
M.K. Coker
6/6/2012 03:11:32 am

Deborah and Tracy, home is a nebulous thing. For some it's wherever they currently are, for some it's where family is, and for many writers it's wherever our imagination is the most grounded. For me, that's Dakota. At least for now! I have never felt particularly at home anywhere else, though New Mexico comes the closest.

Reply
Tracy Sharp link
6/22/2012 04:10:32 am

Just over half. Your book is really outstanding. Loving it.

Reply
M.K. Coker
6/22/2012 08:03:03 am

Glad you're enjoying it. I sell more to Canadians, I think, than Dakotans. Must be the cold freezing their brains. ;-)

Reply
Tracy Sharp link
6/24/2012 10:59:35 pm

I love a good winter mystery. I think Canadians are attracted to snow naturally. We do frequently suffer brain freeze ;)

Reply
M.K. Coker
6/25/2012 01:07:10 am

Dakotans too. At least this Dakotan. But the thaw is coming...Dead Dreams is set in July!

Reply
tracy sharp link
6/25/2012 02:12:28 am

Woohoo! Can't wait! Get 'er done!

Reply

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    M.K. Coker

    Author of the Dakota Mystery Series.

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