ABSTRACT
This chapter explores discursive narratives as inextricably linked to the construction of identity, place, and history by a group of interviewed individuals. From an interactional sociolinguistics (cf. De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012) perspective, the study explores the context of the East African diaspora (Georgiou 2006; Manger and Assal 2006 among many others) as the interviewed participants are all Zanzibar-born individuals for whom the relationship with the island and its history is crucial to their construction of selfhood. The study analyses the narrative voices (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2008) of those individuals who decided to leave Zanzibar at the time of the 1964 violent political upheaval never to return and those who, on the contrary, decided to go back after a lengthy period abroad. However, more than establishing a division between these two groups, the paper highlights how these individuals take a different positioning (Bamberg 1997) towards Zanzibar and its history and construct a range of identities in the context of the interview.
