Promoting Identity and a Sense of Belonging: An Ecocritical Reading of Randa Abdel-Fattah’s <i>Where the Streets Had a Name</i>

Abstract

This paper examines Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel entitled Where the Street Had a Name (2008). The main goal is to examine how interacting with ecology, culture, and nature in the contexts of the host land and the homeland as depicted in the novel promotes identity and a sense of belonging. It also aims at analyzing the links between land and identity from an ecocritical perspective and how Palestinians’ land and identity are psychologically, mentally, and physically interconnected. Through using natural forms of Palestine, humans’ and non-humans’ interconnectedness and the symbol of the iconic jar of homeland soil and its possibilities for revitalising Hayaat’s identity, Abdel-Fattah attempts to reveal her ecological connection to the land of her origin and how this tight connection promotes identity and shapes the sense of belonging. This paper reveals that it is impossible to separate Palestinians from their homeland because the land is part of their identity. Therefore, the current debate provides new perspectives on how to open a new horizon for identity strengthening in Abdel-Fattah’s and other Muslim diasporic writers’ works.