Collision or Coalition: Cultural In/Determinacy in Diana Abu-Jaber's Arabian Jazz (1993) and Crescent (2003)

Abstract

Arab-American novelist, Diana Abu-Jaber (b.1960) explores in her novels, Arabian Jazz and Crescent the vortex of belonging which makes her characters (second and third generation Arab-Americans) repeatedly clash head on with white hegemony while assuming, at the same time, semblance of whiteness. Equally, they tend to employ strategy of identity building that aligns them with other minorities as substitute to the failure to carve out space within the dominant white community. Hence, the construction of what Carol Fadda-Conrey calls: ethnic borderland; constructive space in which interethnicities between and within different communities of color could be established and maintained[1] (187). In Arabian Jazz, the characters' actions to blend in mainstream whiteness point to an awkward relationship with American society; sense of displacement articulated in daughter's raging at her father: There's only so much you can do to become American(106). Yet the daughter, herself, is trapped animal; bound by contradictory cultural perceptions; at times viewed as a wild-American girl, painted and cunning(10) and at other times as a boring Arab(10). Plagued by whiteness, characters attempt to find way out by affiliating themselves, consciously or unconsciously, with other minorities like African-Americans and Latinos. In Crescent, Abu Jaber concocts medley of characters, members from wide selection of Arab (and other Middle Eastern) backgrounds that negate simplistic representations of Arab identity. Yet, in defiance of American racial injustice, they manage to negotiate their cultural barriers by partaking in an Arab communion provided by the protagonist's cafe-shop; thus constructing boundaries among the various ethnicities. This paper, as such, explores the doubleness of signification which highlights the spaces between Arab and American, propelling Diana Abu-Jaber towards strategy of negotiation. Collisions with mainstream American culture engenders coalitions across boundaries which calls for the cultural indeterminacy of both Arabian Jazz and Crescent. This need, if not compulsion, to forge connections beyond the insular boundaries of group identity; to articulate identity within and across cultural lines, lies at the heart of the ongoing discourse on the ethnic/cultural status of Arab-Americans in the United States.