CULTURAL TRAUMA AND THE FORMATION OF PALESTINIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY IN PALESTINIAN-AMERICAN WRITING

Abstract

This dissertation examines the relationship that the Palestinian diaspora maintains with the motherland of Palestine. Specifically, it studies the factors contributing to the fostering of such a sense of affiliation among Palestinian diasporic communities despite the absence of a Palestinian political entity that could undertake such a process. This dissertation proposes that the Palestinian master-narrative plays a significant role in maintaining and enhancing the attachment and affiliation of Palestinian diasporic communities with their original homeland. The Palestinian master-narrative, it is contended, is one of the main vehicles through which Palestinian national identity is built within and beyond the geographical realm of historic Palestine. This research claims that Palestinian diasporic writing (including Palestinian-American writing) has been circulating the Palestinian national narrative, which plays a significant role in enhancing the connection between Palestinian diasporic communities and their original homeland and helping them build a national identity. In addition, the circulation of these national narratives establishes the Nakba as a traumatic event in the collective imagination of post-Nakba Palestinian generations, making them equally traumatized as those Palestinians who experienced these events firsthand. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on representations of two main Palestinian national narratives in Palestinian-American writing and their role in building Palestinian national identity. The first narrative is that of the right of return and it is traced in Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin (2006). The second one is the narrative of sumud and it is examined in Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home (2008). In addition, the relationship between memory and Palestinian identity-building via national narrative is explored in Shaw Dallal’s Scattered Like Seeds (1998).