Annie Hawes's Ligurian memoirs: navigating identity and place in transnational relocation

At the intersection of life writing and travel writing, relocation narratives are a distinct form of travel memoir concerned with the everyday experiences of travellers who become settlers abroad through a process of voluntary migration and long-term foreign residency. This chapter examines the nonfiction accounts of transnational writer Annie Hawes whose Ligurian trilogy recounts a translingual and transcultural education acquired through transnational relocation. Her multipart memoirs map out a protracted process of identity reformation, revealing that learning the language, interacting with locals, and engaging in everyday cultural practices are forms of deep immersion in place that lead to the development of a dialogical identity that presents cultural differences through an ethical lens.