Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities ...

I explore the various definitions of exile and, in the process of analysis, dwell on the ramifications of exile for the different characters. Although exile figures in all of the four works examined in this book, it rules pervasively in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, in which all the characters suffer from either physical or mental exile, pointing to the multiple notions of exile and exilic identities.

Some of the works discussed here bespeak of exile through their characters (as in Crescent), while others project the exile experience by traveling back in time to recreate an alternative to their national history (as in Border Passage, E-mails from Scheherazad, and West of the Jordan). Hence, the marginal position from which Arab American writers and artists write has also figured as a liberating factor allowing them to revisit their past/history, deconstruct it, and reconstruct their own her/stories. In most cases, however, these authors and their dispossessed characters share what Edward Said terms the “perpetual state of the exiled.” They exist in a “median state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half-involvements and half detachments, nostalgic and sentimental on one level, an adept mimic or a secret outsider on another” (34).

Split Vision and Doubleness

Because of the “median state” in which the exiled or immigrant identities live, they also experience a kind of doubleness or split vision. Indeed, the concern of Arab American women writers in finding a place within their bicultural upbringing and the search for their Arab American identity has played a significant role in their works. While the details of their personal experiences differ, their negotiation of cultures results in a form of split vision: as they turn one eye to the American context, the other eye always turns toward the Middle East. As Lisa Majaj says in The Post Gibran Anthology of Arab American Writing, “As hyphenated Americans we seek to integrate the different facets of our selves, our experiences, and our heritages into a unified whole.