Reimagining Muslim Women Through the Prism of Minor Diasporic and National Literatures

Abstract

This essay explores the representation of Muslim women by reclaiming the concept of diaspora as disrupting both orientalist imaginations and the increasing tyranny of a homogenized Muslim ‘Ummah’ regulating their bodies. In British Bangladeshi author Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003), Mauritian writer Carl de Souza's La Maison qui Marchait vers le Large (2001) and South African novelist Rayda Jacobs’ Confessions of a Gambler (2003), traditional boundaries of Muslim female identities can be redrawn through the inscription of the South Asian diaspora as a significant site for the exploration of Muslim femininities. The indentured system was based on an exploitative system of contracted labour. Bangladeshi factory workers today, like Indian indentured female labourers of much earlier times, can also be evoked in terms of Spivak's concept of the ‘gendered subaltern subject’. The story lines of Brick Lane and La Maison qui Marchait vers le Large also contain elements of Bollywood cinema narratives, a key matrix for the construction of South Asian diasporic identities, which unlocks potentially different readings of Muslim female characters. Confessions of a Gambler and La Maison qui Marchait vers le Large plot Muslim identities beyond traditional cultural geographies and imaginaries in terms of creolized practices.