Spatiality in Contemporary Arab American Migrant Fiction: A Geocritical Reading

Abstract

Spatiality in Contemporary Arab American Migrant Fiction: A Geocritical Reading is a study of migrants’ space(s), and/or a textual map, from a geocritical perspective in an attempt to answer essential questions in relation to the experience of migration. Given the different motivations behind migration from some Middle Eastern countries, such as Palestine, Iraq and Syria, to the United States, what type of space(s) are stressed in the works of Arab American writers writing in the diaspora? How does the experience of migration affect migrants’ space(s)? How do migrants draw a new map in the diaspora? My analysis employs geocriticism as a literary analytical tool, within the implications of the Middle East and America as real referents of space in the selected texts. Hence, I draw on some works of Edward Soja and Henri Lefebvre on space and the contemporary works of Bertrand Westphal and Robert Tally Jr. on geocriticism. In this study, I use geocriticism and reformulate it, in order to explore the writings of Mohja Kahf, Randa Jarrar, Diana Abu- Jaber, Laila Halaby and Miral al-Tahawy. With their shared emphasis upon the spatial experience of Arab migrants in the United States, the works of these authors can be read to manifest some of the multi-spatial aspects and collective facets of Arab American literature. My research examines space in the Arab American migrant novel, employing the geocritical framework proposed by Bertrand Westphal. Westphal’s theory provides a platform for exploring the spatial experience that is constituent of migration in diverse contemporary Arab American narratives. The aim of this study is two-fold, scrutinising space and migrants. On the one hand, I explore the spatial aspects and their manifestations in the life of Middle Eastern migrants in the United States, investigating space in its different forms. On the other hand, through my examination of spatial aspects, I study migrants’ spatial experience and position in both diaspora and homeland places. By so doing, I am revising Westphal’s theory in the context of migrant Arab American fiction.