From Place to Place in Aminatta Forna’s Autobiographical Writing

This chapter explores Aminatta Forna’s memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest (2002), as well as her more recent autobiographical text Notes from a Life in Motion: The Window Seat (2021) from a perspective of moving from place to place, addressing the permanence of place in autobiographical contexts. As the title of the recent collection indicates, the essays to varying degrees revolve around the theme of movement and ponder the meaning of home in relation to this. In many regards, a discussion of Forna’s essay collection is a suitable finish to this study, as the texts deal with place in multiple ways that have been analysed in more detail in other chapters. There is the experience of leaving a childhood country of origin, Sierra Leone, due to political repression, and the loss of the author’s father. The texts focus on political upheaval and unrest. Forna brings the discussion of place to the present day in her essays on gendered spaces and the harassment women may be subjected to in streets and other public places, as well as providing a focus on race and racialized spaces.