The Non-National in Contemporary American Literature

This study examines contemporary narratives by Arab-American, South-Asian American, Chicana, and Cuban-American women writers. Gomaa argues that the disparate histories of Arabs, South Asians, Chicanas, and Cubans in the U.S. unfold new non-national sites for affiliations and identifications that unsettle notions of a unified American national space. In each chapter a South-Asian American, Chicana, or Cuban-American text is paired with an Arab-American text to examine sites of ambivalence, which problematize an individual's sense of belonging to an "imagined community." The author proposes a redefinition of imagined communities to imagined transnational communities, which are formed beyond the geographical boundaries of a single nation and are not nation-centered. This study values Arab-American writings as a potential terrain to expand American Studies, and calls attention to Arab-American feminist strategies that contribute to theoretical debates by and about American women writers.

Autorentext

Dalia M.A. Gomaa is an Associate Lecturer of Women Studies at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, USA.

Zusammenfassung

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.

Inhalt

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 Agüero Sisters and The Night Counter
   Afterword