Introduction

There is no place without autobiography and no autobiography without place. Remembering publicly is inevitably a political act, attaching itself to and emerging from place. Place can be said to be inherently contested in African contexts due to colonialism, political upheaval in postcolonial times, as well as in connection to more current phenomena such as migration. This book examines autobiographical texts in English of and from Africa, written by writers who have relocated to the United States and the United Kingdom, revealing anxieties linked to place: to the places of childhood, to places of personal and national history, to new lives in new places far removed from countries of origins. The material indicates that where people come from continues to impact their experiences of places they later come to visit, live in, claim as their own, or outright reject. This includes complex relationships to countries of origin and countries relocated to, and in connection to this study, it also comes to encompass relationships to Africa; to the continent itself and to the myriad perceptions and interpretations, often imposed from the outside, of what it means to be of African descent in the twenty-first century.