Space, Place, and Ecological Memory in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses

Abstract

This research examines Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses through Yi-Fu Tuan’s theory of space and place, alongside the concept of ecological memory. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, the analysis explores how the novel represents displacement and the transformation of place experienced by a Palestinian family across generations. Tuan’s distinction between space as open, unstable, and unstructured, and place as meaningful and rooted in lived experience, is used to examine how characters continuously reconstruct home under conditions of forced migration and political instability. The analysis focuses on four characters representing different generations—Salma, Alia, Souad, and Manar—and examines how each move between space and place through changing environments and historical rupture. Their experiences show how unfamiliar spaces are gradually transformed into meaningful places through memory, bodily experience, and emotional attachment. At the same time, ecological memory explains how sensory and environmental traces of the homeland persist across generations, shaping how place is perceived and imagined even after displacement through inherited memory. The findings suggest that in Salt Houses, displacement destabilizes the boundaries between space and place. The novel highlights how place is constantly produced and re-produced across generations, even under conditions of displacement.