Over the next few days I’m going to talk about different perspectives of place drawn from different authors, focusing mostly on academics, but also from some current and former writers who focused on sense of place and place making. I plan to start with John Brinckerhoff Jackson.
January 6, 2006
January 2, 2006
Narrative as Story Telling: A Place Called Home
The December 20th edition of NPR’s Living on Earth is an excellent example of narrative use as story telling. As we consider a sense of place, home, is one of those places that draws us naturally to it. Having been raised in the military my family never had a home as I was growing up, at least not until my father retired and then I was already married and had a family. Yet going to visit my parents has always evoked a sense of home and a sense of place. The three stories included in the Living on Earth broadcast remind me of the power of the narrative in storytelling and the effect it has on each of us.
As a bonus author André Aciman talked about Ghost Places or places that continue to evoke special meaning. In the discussion following André’s story two inidivduals focused on the urban forest as individual places that were part of their ghost place.
I found great pleasure in listening to this segment and how the use of narrative so effectively evoked feelings and strengthened the concept of sense of place that a research article never could. I could talk about how narrative research would detract from the sense of these stories. I will save that for a later post.
As a side note, Living on Earth is available as a podcast from iTunes.
