Home and Nation in Autobiographical Writing

This brief concluding chapter summarizes findings and brings the discussion of place and autobiography together. Place is presented by the various authors as being simultaneously anywhere and everywhere, as being specific and general, local and global all at the same time. Privilege is a central theme throughout the book, defining how the authors experience place. The findings indicate that place is as fragmented as autobiography itself, but that it still guides personal experiences and perceptions of self, other, and historical realities. The meaning of African, or Arab in connection with Ahmed’s and Abdelmahmoud’s autobiographical texts, is revisited in this concluding chapter, and the autobiographical accounts examined all testify to the complexity of such categories which can be both empowering and derogatory. A conclusion to this study is that while autobiography draws on and emerges from places that are very real and tangible, such as childhood houses, particular towns and cities and nation-states, place in the personal narrative always remains more mythical and imagined than it can ever be real.