Navigating the Complex Tapestry of Life Narratives - Reflections, Resilience, and the Pursuit of Meaning

This Book examines displacement through the lens of life narratives, that is, how do people narrate

a lived experience like displacement and express it as a story? The Book specifically examines the

life stories of seven Iranian/Persians who each experienced displacement to a different degree,

including those forced into "exile", those forced to flee for their lives, and those who made a

decision to leave for fear of the future. The Book analyses three interactive, life-story interviews

and three autobiographies, one book co-authored by two narrators. I use a narrative framework

drawn from a number of academic works to explore their construction of meaning, processes of

negotiation, temporality and relationality. The Book approaches labels and categories as stories

pregnant with meaning. By comparing the label 'displaced' with these life stories according to this

narrative framework, I demonstrate the disparity in this label to act as a social narrative or story

representative of the lived experiences of those it claims to represent. In addition, the Book

explores displacement as it is conceptualized in Persian language and culture, which emphasises an

experiential narrative, rather than a political category. The Book concludes that people's lived

experiences ought to be acknowledged, so that 'displacement' becomes a social narrative derived

from people, instead of one that is imposed upon them.