The Relational Imaginary of MG Vassanji's A Place Within

Currently life writing criticism shows a growing interest in relationality. In the context of lives written after empire, relational dimensions are often fragmented, misremembered and semi-imaginary. This essay explores life writing in a diasporic context, focusing on M.G. Vassanji’s travel-self narrative A Place Within: Rediscovering India (2008). Relational dimensions do not solely encompass human subjects. Selves and subjectivities are formed and transformed by objects and environments. I argue for extending the category of relational life writing beyond the human sphere to include two significant non-human others: books and places and analyse their role in the fraught project of constituting a life in writing