Mourning and Resilience in Indian Ocean Life Writing

Esther Pujolràs-Noguer is a Serra-Húnter Fellow in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Lleida, Spain. She teaches postcolonial literature and culture, gender studies and poetry in English. She is a poet and uses creative writing as a therapeutic tool to help people overcome traumas related to gender violence and forced displacements. She is the co-director with Felicity Hand of the research group Ratnakara, which explores the literatures and cultures of the South West Indian Ocean. Felicity Hand is Honorary Professor in the English Department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.

• 1 Introduction: Mourning as a Resistance Trope: Trauma, History and Memory in Indian Ocean Life Writing - Esther Pujolràs-Noguer & Felicity Hand.- Part I: Mourning Memoirs.- 2 The Ectopic Insider: Exploring the Interstices of Travel Writing, Memory and History in M.G. Vassanji’s And Home Was Kariakoo - Esther Pujolràs-Noguer.- 3 Of Father and Son: The Configuration of the Trauma of Return in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family - Esther Pujolràs-Noguer.- Part II: Female Resilience.- 4 Rhizomatic Perennials:  Resilience and Survival in Kenyan Asian Memoirs - Felicity Hand.- 5 ‘Learning to wear a sari is a rite of passage’: Shailja Patel’s Inventory of the Migrant Body in Migritude - Esther Pujolràs-Noguer.- Part III: Indian Ocean Crossing.- 6 Transoceanic Connections, Past and Present. Lindsey Collen’s The Indian Ocean as a Unifying Force: A Memoir - Felicity Hand.- 7 Banyans Behind Bars:  Three SouthAfrican Indian Memoirs - Felicity Hand.