Women in Cultural Insularity and Anxious Spaces in the Arab and Arab American Contexts in Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan

Ishak Berrebbah

doi:10.5334/as.58

Abstract

This article, throughout Laila Halaby’s <em>West of the Jordan</em> (2013), examines the socio-cultural characteristics and conditions that determine the identity construction of Arab women in both the diaspora and the homeland. In other words, it demonstrates how Arab women’s identity oscillates between their country of residence – diaspora – and their countries of origin, showcasing the complexity of their belonging. I argue that socio-cultural traditional mechanisms such as conservatism and judgementalism contribute to the positioning of women in the Arab context in a complex cultural insularity and spaces of anxiety, providing multiple readings of Arab female bodies. This article concludes that Halaby’s portrayal of Arab women’s experiences in her fiction tends to trigger feminist and empathetic engagements. In addition to critical and analytical approaches to the novel, the arguments in this article are based on perspectives of prominent critics and scholars such as Fadda-Carol Conrey, Nadine Naber, and Homi Bhabha, to name just a few, as well as on interviews I conducted with prominent Arab American novelists, namely Rajia Hassib and Laila Halaby.

Highlights

Laila Halaby, a prominent Arab American novelist, justifies this claim with her statement on the intersection between the labels Arab and American in an interview conducted by me: “When I was growing up and navigating these labels, Arab-Americans seemed like their own culture
Throughout West of the Jordan we can understand that cultural insularity differs from one female character to another on the basis of various circumstances and conditions
Laila Halaby, an author of Arab Palestinian origin, complicates the multiple readings of Arab female bodies as they are forged in the narratives, both in the USA and Palestine – two oppositional socio-cultural hemispheres

Summary

Introduction

Arab American literature in our contemporary times, especially the novel, according to the Arab. American literary critic Steven Salaita, has developed “as a formidable art form in the Arab. In Salaita’s view, contemporary Arab American literature “is undergoing something of a qualitative and quantitative maturation” (2011: 2). This particular ethnic literature portrays and represents Arab communities either in diaspora or countries of origin. It focuses on, and questions, the construction of identities, projecting them as complex and dynamic.

Objectives

Conclusion