Narrative and narrative strategies to explore trauma: 'Up close from afar' - an African migrant's story

In this essay I discuss the process of writing autobiographical creative fiction, and how a narrative on trauma can offer the potential for catharsis to both the writer and reader. I give a self-reflective autoethnographic account that draws from my own personal feeling of discontinuity and an awareness of being between worlds as an African Australian migrant. I focus on the self-knowledge that emerged from the act of writing a short story in the wake of grief. I use narration-the act or process of storytelling-to understand my own narrative strategies, how I tell a story. The essay is interspersed with excerpts from my short story Up close from afar-a story that follows the emotional journey of protagonist Sienna, an African migrant in Australia, who loses her sister to HIV. In mirroring into the creative fiction aspects of my own experience (loss), my relationship with Sienna was symbiotic. I needed her as much as she needed me. As I developed her character and transferred to her my direct experiences, she responded. Without answering all my questions, Sienna came along with new meaning that helped me understand and process my grief. I divide my essay into background, the power of narrative, autoethnographic research, narrative devices and cathartic autobiography. My overall intention is to expose a written artefact (the short story) on death, an artefact that is, to me, also a metaphor for life.