Redemptive Place in Elamin Abdelmahmoud’s Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

The chapter analyses Elamin Abdelmahmoud’s memoir Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces (2022), in which place intertwines with personal identity, with becoming Black and struggling to find footing in the spaces provided in the city to which Abdelmahmoud relocates. The text follows Abdelmahmoud’s teenage years and young adulthood in Canada, to which he moved in 2000 with his mother to join his father, who had relocated earlier. Arabness takes on a different meaning in the memoir when compared to Ahmed’s experiences, being connected to colonial history and privilege. Much of Abdelmahmoud’s writing revolves around movement and the in-between space he calls “elsewhere”. This elsewhere becomes symbolic of the diasporic existence, with no easy belonging in any place. Movement is represented by highway 401 in several of the chapters. Eventually, the highway becomes a mediator and connector more than it separates, and it provides possibility for redemption and healing on multiple levels. Place is written into being through the disruptive experience of migration, but the elsewhere represented throughout Abdelmahmoud’s personal narrative also becomes a space for reparation.