The Poetics and Politics of Identity in Contemporary Arab American Women’s Fiction in the Context of Post-9/11

: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Abstract

The Arab American literary critic Steven Salaita attests that literature produced by Arab authors in the USA witnesses a remarkable shift and quick development (2011). This literature has come into prominence following the events of 9/11. It focuses on the Arab communities, including Muslims, either in the diaspora or homeland. The crux of this thesis is deconstructing contemporary Arab American identity as presented from the vision of women authors, namely Diana Abu-Jaber, Laila Halaby, and Mohja Kahf. This thesis put their novels – The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, Crescent, and West of the Jordan – under critical lens to explore thoroughly what affect and constitute Arab American identity within multidisciplinary outlooks. Through critically examining the novels, this thesis showcases the extent to which Arab American identity, especially that concerns women, is dynamic and not static, demonstrating various but interrelated interesting components that function in different aspects, either political, social, cultural, religious, or racial. This leads us to understand that contemporary Arab American identity has no specific and determinate definition and its nature is always under question. The central characters in the novels being studied in this thesis, given that mostly all of them are females, are employed by the authors to provide multiple complex conceptualizations of the Arab community as portrayed and represented either in the diaspora or countries of origin. The focus on different aspects of the Arab American community or diaspora in these novels introduces us to each writer’s vision of reality as well as their criticism of the status of Muslims and Arabs, particularly women. I argue that these writers demonstrate the tendency to control the representation of their own communities and also to represent the white American other as a form of resistance and writing back to the centre – a counter-narrative. Through controlled representation, they tend to humanize their Arab characters and communities in their narratives by showcasing their struggle and experiences in the diaspora and homelands as well as shinning a light on East-West dialogues and the contemporary hierarchical relationship between two civilizational hemispheres .i.e. Orient and Occident. This thesis, in additional to sociological perspectives, relies on several theoretical frameworks and approaches, stemming from post-colonialism, feminism, gender discourse, literary criticism, and socio-culturalism.

Date of Award	Feb 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Coventry University
Supervisor	Lynsey McCulloch (Supervisor), Joe Morrissey (Supervisor) & Hilary Nesi (Supervisor)