Abstract
The novel al-Biṭrīq al-Aswad [The Black Penguin] by the Iraqi author Diaa Jubaili is a rare example of a contemporary Arabic novel that centers the experiences of Iraq’s Black population, most of whom live near Basra in Iraq’s south. The novel’s mixed-race narrator recounts his life story in the form of letters addressed to international figures, highlighting the life of his family on the margins of Iraqi society and his later involvement with the real-life civil rights group, the Movement of Free Iraqis. This article draws on Stuart Hall’s dual conception of cultural identity in diaspora to frame the characters’ search for a Black Iraqi identity as a dynamic engagement with memory, one that represents a counternarrative in the face of legacies of African slavery and legal discrimination.
Highlights
Messages in Bottles: An Archive ofThe relative dearth of contemporary Arabic novels that center Blackness and antiBlack racism is a reflection of a greater silence about race—as well as the tangled historical legacy of slavery—within Arabic societies
This article draws on Stuart Hall’s dual conception of cultural identity in diaspora to frame the characters’ search for a Black Iraqi identity as a dynamic engagement with memory, one that represents a counternarrative in the face of legacies of African slavery and legal discrimination
While the connection between slavery and race in the Middle East was not as rigid and institutionalized as it became in the Americas, Blackness became linked to servitude and inferiority and remained so long after the Ottoman Empire and later states made slavery illegal.[1]
Summary
Messages in Bottles: An Archive ofThe relative dearth of contemporary Arabic novels that center Blackness and antiBlack racism is a reflection of a greater silence about race—as well as the tangled historical legacy of slavery—within Arabic societies. Abstract: The novel al-Bit.rıq al-Aswad [The Black Penguin] by the Iraqi author Diaa Jubaili is a rare example of a contemporary Arabic novel that centers the experiences of Iraq’s Black population, most of whom live near Basra in Iraq’s south.
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