Arab-American Literature and Its Response to Ethnic Homoegenization and Invisibility (2015)
Undergraduate: Hana Haidar
Faculty Advisor: Laura Halperin
Department: English & Comparative Literature
In an analysis of two contemporary, fictional Arab-American texts: I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters (2001) by Rabih Alameddine and Through and Through: Toledo Stories (1990) by Joseph Geha, I draw the relationship between the authors' use of formal and thematic elements as promotions of self and experiential multiplicity, respectively. I connect these advances to the combating of ethnic homogenization from without faced by Arab-Americans in a hostile post 9/11 environment. I also explore the way the text's thematic treatments of the individual's relationship to the larger familial collective act as representations for the concept of solidarity in difference among Arab-Americans at large and as a means of avoiding previous invisibilization of Arab-Americans into the white racial category before 9/11. Essentially, the texts act to create a meaningful space for Arab-Americans in popular discourse as hyphenated subjects with unique identities and subjectivities, whilst avoiding homogenization and invisibilization from without and divisiveness from within.