scholarly journals Surviving in between worlds of Laila “Halaby’s West of the Jordan”

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Safia Al-Shameri ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Arab American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
New Era

“West of the Jordan” was published in 2003, a period when the Arab American movement was coming to a new era in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was a time when scholars/writers began deconstructing the concept of Arab and Arab American identity to highlight the diversity of the community by taking into account internal differences, especially in areas such as gender, class, and sexuality. I intend to add to this body of work by setting “West of the Jordan” against Gloria Anzaldúa’s theoretical concept of nepantla (Borderlands; In-betweenness), seen here as an identity formation framework. Anzaldúa’s theorization of nepantla has stressed the instability of identity categories through movement betwixt and between identity and transformative ethics of change. Thus, the novel’s formulations and reformulations of ethnic, gender, and other categories should be understood as a way of criticizing these categories ’essentialist nature (even if some of the characters in the novel fail to formulate a constructive liberatory alternative to the essentialisms it attacks/aims to eradicate). In this context, the heroines ’actions succeed in destabilizing the categories ’ideological power and manage to show the shallowness of such delineations.

Coming of Age in the Solitude of the Lost Land: Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home

Hawwa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 268-288
Author(s):  
Marta Cariello
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Arab American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
A Site

This contribution analyzes Palestinian-American Randa Jarrar’s semi-autobiographical novelA Map of Home(2008). The novel is read through various, overlapping lenses: the use of the semi-autobiographical form and the related challenge, brought about by the woman migrant writer, to the genre itself of autobiography and its relevance to individual and collective identity formation, the deconstruction of fixed, universal subjectivity and the challenge that exile narratives bring to the narration of nations, the specific positionality of the author that brings into play not only Arab and Arab-American identity construction but more specifically the narration of the Palestinian people. Finally, aMap of Homeappears as a site for Jarrar to produce a specific articulation of an Arab, Arab-American and Palestinian self through a female genealogy of agency.

scholarly journals The Power of Recipes: Culinary Practice as a Strategy to Deconstruct Arab-American Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Ishak Berrebbah
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Arab American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Homi Bhabha ◽  
Arab American Literature ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
Cultural Component ◽  
Analytical Approaches

AbstractCrescent (2003) is an example of the kind of Arab-American literature that has emerged noticeably in the early years of the 21st century. It signifies a hypothesis that culinary practice is an essential cultural component for diasporic figures to define their identities, especially in a multi-cultural society. These figures embrace such component to strategically define themselves and assert their belonging and affiliation to their original homelands. This paper, as such, examines the extent to which Arab-American characters in the novel, namely Sirine and Han, consider culinary practice as a key tool to understanding their identity, locate themselves in a multi-cultural society, and re-discover their true belonging. The study of this novel shows that culinary practices, as indicated in the narratives, deconstruct Arab-American identity through various dimensions, including memory, nostalgia, hybridity, and essentialism. In addition to employing critical and analytical approaches to the novel, this paper relies on a socio-cultural conceptual framework based on perspectives of prominent critics and theorists such as Homi Bhabha, Brinda Mehta, Dallen Timothy, and Stuart Hall, to name a few.

The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

scholarly journals Wide Sargasso Sea: Antoinette’s Living Spaces as a Case Study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fann Oudah Aljohani
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea ◽  
Psychological Analysis

This study explores the identity formation and mobility of the role of Antoinette in the novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" from the perspective of the cultural and human geography. In general, it is a space and place study. The thesis suggests that, Antoinette has some conditions and circumstances that she developed in an autonomic manner with different experiences in order to navigate and recognize the dangerous and safe spaces around her. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, elaborates a self-sacrifice experience that the protagonist went through in her search for identity, which she lost due to the circumstances around her. In this research, a psychological analysis of Antoinette's personality will be taken, moreover; an attempt is made to find out the reasons for her schizophrenic behavior. The research focuses on Antoinette's shattered identity and the specters she faced in her life, which ultimately played a huge role in her madness. Also, the visible opposite aspects of black/white, rationality/unconsciousness, male/female, and sanity/madness are conceived by her conscious mind, and it causes the frantic thoughts of insanity, womanhood, and blackness. Also, it sheds light on Antoinette's journey in life to figure out where she belongs and her struggle in this search. Antoinette's personality and identity crisis as a Creole girl will be discussed in depth. There are different areas that are explored in this paper; such as the interpretation of how the surrounding spaces affect Antoinette and the reasons behind the absence of a loving mother in Wide Sargasso Sea. Furthermore, Rochester's character is also examined to find out how the masculine space differs from feminine space, and to what extent Mr. Rochester's cruelty harms Antoinette. Another important thing that is discussed in the paper is the effect of family relationships on a person's identity, and how it becomes a reason of mental disorder.

scholarly journals Conjunctures on “ASEAN Citizenship” 1967-2017: Identities, Ideas, Institutions

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-89
Author(s):  
Adonis Elumbre
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Core ◽  
Regional Community ◽  
Asian History ◽  
Ideas And Institutions

In 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was said to have set in motion a regional community with “peace, prosperity, and people” at the core of its transition towards deeper integration. In 2017, it marked its 50th year - a narrative arc in Southeast Asian history that has arguably defined the region’s contemporary period. What then could be the next for the organization? This paper explores one of those ideas that has been floating around about ASEAN’s future in relation to its people-oriented vision. In particular, it enquires into the abstracted and non-legal notion of “ASEAN citizenship” through identification of conjunctures in the development of the organization. While ASEAN’s lack of a legitimating policy on regional citizenship is understandable given its normative frameworks of intergovernmentalism and non-interference, the paper contends that this notion has already been discursively defined and constructively pursued from within the organization. The resulting narratives on regional identity formation and on ideas and institutions that articulate and generate potential elements of regional citizenship seek to capture aspects of this slippery yet lingering presence of “ASEAN citizenship,” and hopefully contribute to the evolving conversations on the nature and future of ASEAN as it enters a new era.

scholarly journals The Forms and Meanings of (In)Visibility Arab-Americans and the State of Terror in Youssef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat and Language Rooms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cinzia Schiavini
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
21St Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Arab Americans ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Arab American ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
The Relationship

This article investigates two well-known plays by Youssef El Guindi, the most important and prolific playwright of 21st century Arab-American theatre. Both plays are related to the consequences of the terrorist attacks on the Arab-American community, and they explore the structures of control enacted by the security state and the strategies of its repressive politics. The article focuses in particular on the tropes of visibility and invisibility and its paradoxes for a minority that moved from ‘invisible citizens’ to ‘visible subjects’ within a few hours. The paradoxes of visibility and invisibility and their divide are here explored in relation to three main issues: the relationship between ethnic identity and citizenship – be it social and/or political; deviancy and the construction of Otherness; and identity and the body.

scholarly journals Writing Arab-American Identity Post 9/11

1970 ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
Carol Fadda-Conrey
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Arab American ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
The Us ◽  
Arab American Literature

In their introduction to the first anthology of Arab-American short fiction, Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction, editors Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa (2004) comment on the inextricable link between the global political repercussions triggered by the events of 9/11 and the need to assert Arab-American literature on the US literary map.

scholarly journals Self-Abdication and Otherness in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assia Mohdeb ◽  
Sofiane Mammeri
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Racial Passing ◽  
The Core ◽  
Class Discrimination ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of

Identity, in one of its understanding, signifies a set of characteristics that make up a person’s ethical faithfulness to, identification with, and pride of one’s origin, tradition, and culture. Remaining true to one’s identity and being faithful to the core values of one’s culture is a complicated matter when it comes to a black living in white society like America, where color and racial identity are rudimentary prerequisites in self-definition and naming. Philip Roth’s novel entitled The Human Stain (2000) shows how some black figures undress their black identity to wear the prestigious white one to go onward with life as full selves, to have access to all the privileges the whites enjoy, and, above all, to live without the specter of race and the decisiveness of epidermal signs. The novel calls into question and revision such essentialist notions as other, class,andrace by describing the crises the subject or self undergoes in the light of racial prejudices, center-periphery relations, and class stereotypes. The present paper, then, addresses the act of self-abdication the protagonist, Silk Coleman, carries out to overstep the feeling of otherness and to dodge racial discrimination. The paper looks into the notions of selfhood and Otherness by negotiating the definition of the self and the distortion it undergoes in its encounter with the Other . The study aims at revealing, primarily, the effects of Black racial-passing, a common phenomenon in American society of the first half of the twentieth century, on familial relationships and cultural heritage. It also reveals the weight of gender and class discrimination in the individual’s identity formation and well-being.

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