The Complexities of Alienation, Otherness, and Marginalization in Miral Al-Tahawy’s Novel Brooklyn Heights (Published)
This paper is an attempt to bind the reader to the complexities of otherness and marginalization as trauma experienced by the protagonist and other immigrants in the America depicted in Brooklyn Heights[i]. In all of their complexities and nuances that this paper seeks to explore and discuss these concepts, otherness, alienation, and marginalization, in light of Homi Bhahba’s concept of otherness and Daphne Grace’s theorization on the geographical senses of ‘belonging’ or ‘dislocation’. As such, since Al-Tahawy’s narrative focuses on spaces of otherness and marginalization, this paper aims to reveal how the novelist tends towards the deeply personal, and creates interesting transnational connections through a wide cast of multi-racial immigrants and refugees. The paper further exposes how Al-Tahawy, through her compelling and masterful style, captures the confusions and conflicts of marginalized immigrants and how otherness and marginalization, as experiences of social and psychological disjunction, lead to cultural alienation in America; how attempts at assimilation in a new host country even further highlight the sense of loss and alienation, especially if the immigration from the original home country takes as a result of a traumatic event; and whether or not assimilation necessarily nullifies one’s ethnicity or means total disappearance or “dissolving” into the mainstream.
Citation: Farouq Rezq Bekhit Sayyid (2022) The Complexities of Alienation, Otherness, and Marginalization in Miral Al-Tahawy’s Novel Brooklyn Heights, European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, Vol.10, No.3, pp.1-15
Keywords: Acculturation, Assimilation, Otherness, Trauma, al-tahawy, brooklyn heights, marginalization
Confused Identities: A Diaspora Study of Aamer Hussein’s Cactus Town and Other Stories and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (Published)
Confused identity under the diasporic subject has become a crucial entity of the postmodern age that is creating the socio-political and economic interventions resulted by diasporic space. This space paves a new way for diaspora-native relationship; leads towards identity crisis of the diasporas, pinching question of hybrid identity and ultimately, towards assimilation. This research paper is going to explore the dispersion identity of diasporas by living in the host land as a product of native’s otherness and the sense of belonging to the home in Hussain’s literary enterprise, Cactus Town and Other Stories (2002) and Ali’s novel, Brick Lane (2003). The paper unearths how homing desire of the dispersed diaspora is the product of the otherness of the natives and their issues related to conflicting identity by focusing on Brah’s concept of native superiorized diasporic space: a diversion of the interpretation of natives.
Keywords: Assimilation, Otherness, confused identity, diasporic space, homing desire, hybrid identity
The Self/Otherness and Occident/Orient Dualisms: A Saidian Comparative Reading of George Lamming’s Water with Berries and Firoozeh Dumas’s Funny in Farsi (Published)
Withregard to the theory of thepostcolonialcritic; Edward Said in his book Orientalism , the study ahead aims at analyzing the novel Water with Berries (1972) by George Lamming and Firoozeh Dumas’s a Memoir, Funny in Farsi (2003). Indeed, Said in his book examines the key elements such as the dualities of self / otherness and Occident/ Orient; as well as the attitudes of the western in relation to the Eastern. Moreover, the immigrants’ new identities by which they are to escape from being considered as an “Other” can be observed in this investigation. The study based on analysis of the content and how it is described through the characters interactions. To fulfill that, the researcher highlights the relations and the similarities of the two works; in the lights of the given theory, in terms of the content. Therefore, by providing a precise definition of post-colonial theory and duality selected in this study, the study attempts to have a comparative analysis of the two works. Recurring themes such as: other, self, superior, inferior, savage, civilized, occidental and oriental, which are noticeable in the Dumas’s and Lamming’s works.In other words, considering Said’s theory of the Orientalism, the comparative study of the two mentioned works, it comes to the conclusion that both of them with collation of Said’s key facets of his theory in Orientalism.
Keywords: Inferior, Occident, Orient, Otherness, Savage and Civilized, Superior
Sympathy, Hospitality and Love in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pick Up (Review Completed - Accepted)
This paper sets out to discuss the extent to which the trinity of sympathy, hospitality and love are interwoven in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pick Up. To be sure, this postliberation novel is a stunning tribute to what Arthur Schopenhauer calls “loving-kindness” which encompasses respect for ‘otherness’ and rejection of intolerance in any shape or form. As a one-time antiapartheid activist driven by her unflinching belief in deep-dyed liberal values, Nadine Gordimer reminds us through the casting of her lead characters, to wit Julie and Abdu, that human action must always be tinged with a measure of compassion and acceptance of diversity, or else the ravages of egoism and absence of empathy will doom us. This powerful work of fiction, indeed, teaches us that it is only through the steady exercise of compassion that one can carry out one’s responsibility for the ‘other’
Keywords: Hospitality, Liberalism, Love, Otherness, Sympathy