Strasbourg, Ankara, Madrid: none felt like home, but in books I discovered my people | Elif Shafak

guardian.co.uk (nprofile…fw9w)
✍️ The author, Elif Shafak, reflects on her childhood and her search for a sense of belonging and home, exploring the concept of home through her experiences of moving between countries and cultures.
👉 The author was born in Strasbourg, France, but moved to Ankara, Turkey, with her mother at a young age.
👉 She was raised by her maternal grandmother, who was a strong influence on her life and identity.
👉 The author reflects on the cultural and linguistic differences between her two homes and her feelings of not belonging in either place.
👉 She describes the impact of her grandmother's stories and the oral traditions of the Middle East on her sense of identity and belonging.
👉 The author explores the idea of home as a sense of belonging and connection to one's cultural heritage.

#ElifShafak #SimonedeBeauvoir #LouisAlthusser #EricHobsbawm #PauloFreire #FrantzFanon #JeanFrançoisLyotard #Jean-PaulSartre #Strasbourg #France #Ankara #Turkey #Madrid #Spain #lifestyle

quoting nevent1q…aalz

guardian.co.uk (nprofile…fw9w)

As a child I moved from France to Turkey to Spain – then I finally found roots and belonging in storiesIn our end of year series, writers and public figures remember the place or time when they felt most at homeWhere is home? The question has always intrigued and puzzled me, ever since I was a child. I was born in Strasbourg, France. Of those early years I do not remember much. Fragments of memories, like ribbons attached to a kite, drifting in the air, caught between the pull of a place and the possibility of an elsewhere.There was a small flat, that much I know. In a high-rise building in a banlieue on the outskirts of the city. University students of multiple nationalities would cook together and hang around – Turkish, Kurdish, Lebanese, Algerian, Egyptian, Tunisian, Albanian, Greek – the smell of strong coffee, cardamom and roasted chickpeas; red wine in tea glasses, the scent of Gauloises.Elif Shafak is a novelist and political scientist Continue reading...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/02/child-france-turkey-spain-stories-children-home