Abstract
Herrero offers an in-depth analysis of places as sites of memory, which are thus fundamental in providing a locus of identity and sense of belonging, and of human memory as a phenomenological experience rooted in the body and the senses as reflected in Wendy Law-Yone’s The Road to Wanting. Focusing on the mobility traumatically forced upon the main character in the novel, who ends ups working as a prostitute in a nightmarish Thai brothel, this chapter shows that losing one’s sense of place can trigger off paralysing feelings of shame and fear, and that only love and affection can turn this paralysis and its resulting fragmented memories into a narrative of recovery that can alone return to (Burmese) traumatized individuals and communities the dignity they once lost.
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Acknowledgments
The research carried out for the writing of this chapter is part of a research project financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (code FFI2015-65775-P), and by the Government of Aragón and the European Social Fund (ESF) (code H05).
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Herrero, D. (2017). Remembering the Way Back Home: The Role of Place in Wendy Law-Yone’s The Road to Wanting (2010). In: Martínez-Alfaro, M., Pellicer-Ortín, S. (eds) Memory Frictions in Contemporary Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61759-6_12
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