Excavating Mashriqi Roots in the Mahjar: Agriculture and Assimilation in Raduan Nassar's Lavoura arcaica

Abstract

First- and second-generation Levantine authors in Brazil have turned to the novel as a means of both excavating ancient Mashriqi roots and negotiating new Mahjari identities. Plantations, farms, and other agrarian spaces have typically played an important role in their literary negotiations of different migrant identities, especially in rooting migrants onto new landscapes. In Lavoura arcaica (Ancient Tillage), Raduan Nassar transforms the land into a troubled site of identity contestation and failed assimilation, questioning the viability of earlier literary groundings of Levantine migrants in Brazil.