Migration, Memory, and Belonging: The Duality of Place Attachment in Sadia Shepard’s The Girl from Foreign

Abstract

Estrangement and nostalgia, having interrelated and paradoxical connections, are intrinsic indicators of an individual’s experience of place, especially when memory acts as a catalyst. The multi-dimensional quality of place attachment is analysed in this paper through a close reading of the Pakistani-American author Sadia Shepard’s The Girl from Foreign(2008), a memoir exploring identity, heritage, and transnational migration through the matrilineal memories of her family. Her journey to India as a full-bright research scholar, which is central to the narrative, transforms to be introspective as she begins to construe the convoluted connection she experiences in Bombay, a place which was once home to her Jewish grandmother. By analysing the protagonist’s emotional, social, and physical responses to Bombay as a place, I seek to construe the effect of transnational migrations and their memories in reshaping individual identities, and attachment to places that are not static. Ray Oldenburg’s concept of “third place” (1989), Doreen Massey’s “global sense of place” (2005), and Jan Assmann’s theory of “communicative memory” (1995) are read to interpret the fluidity of place attachment in the cultural and political landscape of migration as reflected in Shepard’s memoir. In its analysis, the study aims to understand how the intersection of migration, memory, and place attachment contributes to the formation and transformation of personal and collective identities in the context of transnational movement.