ABSTRACT
The chapter explores how the hinterland relates to notions of memory, mobility, and identity in the South African novel Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe (2001). The narration is read through the lens of the New Mobilities Paradigm to understand how the novella creates a sense of belonging by situating its main characters in space and time. The mapping inscribes the city space with memories of the characters’ rural origin, thus creating a hybrid space where their individual history and origin are interwoven into the genealogy of the nation as it is symbolized by the metropolis of Johannesburg. The analysis combines a cultural and literary studies perspective, drawing on space as a process of materially embedded practices, following Doreen Massey, and mobility as discursively constructed, to trace how spatializing practices create collective identities and question imperial discourses of power in postcolonial settings.
