Unhomed Memories: Trauma, Displacement, and the Search forBelonging in Toni Morrison’s Recitatif and Philip Larkin’s Poetry

This article examines the unstable relationship between memory, space, and belonging in Toni Morrison’s Recitatif (1983) and three poems by Philip Larkin: “I Remember, I Remember,” “Mr Bleaney,” and “Poetry of Departures.” Building on Chakraborty’s separate studies of racial trauma in Morrison and the home–homelessness tension in Larkin, it proposes “unhomed memory” as a comparative interpretive term for recollections that fail to secure an uncomplicated sense of place or self. A qualitative comparative reading considers institutional childhood, encounters with former homes, occupied rooms, and imagined departure, attending to narrative perspective, contradictory recollection, material detail, and formal hesitation. Morrison’s racial indeterminacy and the dispute over Maggie expose the ethical and social stakes of remembering within a racialized environment; Larkin’s speakers question whether birthplace, tenancy, or the possibility of escape can provide authentic attachment. Their works converge in resisting the assumption that remembered places guarantee belonging but diverge in what produces estrangement and what forms of accountability it entails. Morrison’s treatment of racialization, vulnerability, and the silencing of a disabled figure cannot be assimilated to Larkin’s domestic and existential unease. The article contributes a bounded comparative vocabulary for place and memory while identifying the limitations of a cross-genre, cross-context analysis.