Shikshan Sanshodhan : Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract: This paper offers a comparative reading of the deep connection between spatial displacement and the narration of trauma in Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s A Home in Tibet (2013) and Ghada Karmi’s In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story (2002). Both memoirs show how the rupture of forced exile reshapes an individual’s relationship to place and alters the emotional and psychological contours of the self. Instead of treating these works only as political testimonies, this study uses critical spatial theory to explore how each writer negotiates loss, memory, and identity. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s idea of lived space, the paper argues that the imaginative return to the homeland allows the authors to transform absence into a sustaining inner geography that resists political erasure. Doreen Massey’s understanding of space as relational helps explain how geopolitical violence becomes embodied and how trauma takes shape within narrative expression. Using Edward Said’s reflections on exile and Homi Bhabha’s concept of the Third Space, the discussion highlights the emergence of hybrid identities that are formed through constant negotiation between memory and displacement. Ultimately, the paper suggests that the act of mapping remembered landscapes becomes a way of reclaiming narrative agency, creating a personal cartography of the self that helps each writer confront fragmentation and rebuild a sense of belonging. One limitation of this approach is the difficulty of extending individual life-writing accounts to the wider experiences of dispersed diasporic communities.