Memory, History, and Storytelling in M.G. Vassanji’s The Gunny Sack and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s The Last Gift

This paper explores the role of memory, history, and storytelling in M.G. Vassanji’s The Gunny Sack (1989) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s The Last Gift (2011), examining how both authors employ narrative as a form of cultural archiving in postcolonial contexts. Vassanji’s metaphor of the gunny sack functions as a material repository of memories, while Gurnah’s portrayal of Abbas’s dying confessions underscores the fragility of oral storytelling and the silences it carries. Through fragmented narratives, both writers reconstruct the erased or marginalized histories of displaced communities, emphasizing the interplay between silence, trauma, and intergenerational transmission of memory. Drawing on postcolonial memory studies, trauma theory, and narrative theory, this comparative analysis argues that storytelling in these novels not only resists colonial historiography but also acts as a means of healing, identity formation, and cultural continuity. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates how literature becomes an alternative archive, preserving voices and histories excluded from official records and highlighting the enduring significance of personal memory in shaping collective identity.