Post-9/11 Anglophone Arab Fiction. A Dialogue Between the West and the Arab World

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 9.2, University of Hyderabad (school of humanities,centre for comparative literature), course: MA, language: English, abstract: This book is about Arab Anglophone fiction produced after 9/11 in the United States. It attempts to analyze how the writers of such a period portray the life of Arab Americans in a post-9/11 America. It shows how Arab Americans dealt with the consequences of 9/11. It reflects several aspects that characterize Arab American writing as a diasporic narrative, such as memory and home, racialization, anti-Arab sentiment and urgency of expression, and how Arab Americans responded to the terrorist attack of 9/11. The study also investigates the role of Anglophone Arab fiction in paving the way for more intercultural understanding and attempting to de-orientalize the Arab. What I found is that some writers often try to negotiate with the American culture in order to arrive at an identity that incorporates multiple elements from both the culture of origin and the host culture. Hybrid and cosmopolitan in their approach, such writers also attempt to be cultural mediators, and they show much concern about subverting the normative judgment and stereotypical image that has fixed the Arab American. Works of fiction produced by Anglophone Arab writers, such as Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land, Rabih Alameddine's The Hakawati, and Alia Yunis' The Night Counter represented how Arab Americans faced difficulties after 9/11 in terms of identity construction, cultural identification, and the conflicting sense of belonging and non-belonging. These works genuinely depict the life of Arab Americans and give a better understanding of who Arabs are. They also interlink both the Arab culture and American culture, celebrating both cultural identities.