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Description
Kapka Kassabova’s Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria is an important autobiographical text that addresses the relationship between migration, identity, belonging, and language within the framework of exophony (writing in a language other than one’s mother tongue). Born in Bulgaria, Kassabova writes in English, leaving her mother tongue behind; this choice goes beyond a mere linguistic preference and also signifies an exophonic writing practice in which identity, memory, and spatial perception are reconstructed. The Bulgarian spaces of Kassabova’s childhood, together with her experiences in New Zealand and England after migration, reveal how identity is reconstructed through both physical spaces and cultural mobility. This paper aims to examine Kassabova’s work through Homi Bhabha’s concept of third space and Harold Proshansky’s concept of place identity. According to Proshansky, the concrete spaces of Kassabova’s childhood—including apartment blocks, street layouts, and neighbourhood rituals—function as fundamental components of the author’s personal identity, while migration disrupts and reconfigures this continuity of place identity. Following this rupture, Kassabova positions herself within Bhabha’s third space, becoming a hybrid subject that is neither entirely Bulgarian nor entirely English, as she navigates cultural, linguistic, and emotional boundaries. Through examples drawn from selected passages, this study seeks to reveal the multi-layered relationships Kassabova establishes between migration, memory, and space. Moreover, it demonstrates that migrant identity can be conceptualized not only through cultural hybridity but also through the transformation of affective bonds with space.
| Keywords | exophony, crisis, migration, third space, place identity. |
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