In this wide-ranging study, Gomma examines contemporary migrant narratives by Arab-American, Chicana, Indian-American, Pakistani-American, and Cuban-American women writers. Concepts such as national consciousness, time, space, and belonging are scrutinized through the non-national experience, unsettling notions of a unified America.
In this wide-ranging study, Gomma examines contemporary migrant narratives by Arab-American, Chicana, Indian-American, Pakistani-American, and Cuban-American women writers. Concepts such as national consciousness, time, space, and belonging are scrutinized through the non-national experience, unsettling notions of a unified America.
The book proposes the concept of 'imagined transnational communities' and positions Arab American literature as a field that can broaden, deepen, and complicate the meaning of Americanness. Gomaa's study will be of particular relevance to scholars of multiethnic studies, American studies, Arab American studies, and women's studies. (American Literature, Vol. 89 (3), September, 2017)
Dalia M.A. Gomaa is an Associate Lecturer of Women Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA.
Introduction
1. The Non-National Subject in The Language of Baklava and An American Brat
2. Re-imagining the US National Time in West of the Jordan and The Last Generation
3. Moments of (Un)belonging: the Spatial Configuration of Home(land) in The Time between Places: Stories that Weave in and out of Egypt and America and The Namesake
4. Transnational Allegories and the Non-national Subject in The Aguero Sisters and The Night Counter
Afterword