Narrating Lives in Transition

This work offers critical reflections on the politics and poetics of identity, home and cultural translation in four Arab Anglophone Diasporic novels; namely Leave to Remain by Abbas El-Zein, Arabian Jazz by Dianna Abu-Jaber, The Road from Damascus by Robin Kassab, and West of the Jordon by Laila Halaby. Drawing on a set of interlocking theories, I argue that the transnational movement of diasporic subjects across space undoubtedly destabilizes national boundaries and invigorates the genesis of new typographies and epistemologies of identity home and belonging. Furthermore, by attempting to move beyond essentialist paradigms that advocate the exigency of an original and authentic territory for identity formation, I contend that diasporic subjects and immigrants, who are floating creatures/signifiers with shallow roots in both worlds, engage in the politic and poetic of re-imagining other imaginary homelands and communities. Nonetheless, this critical frame of reference, far from assuming an essentialist and totalizing position, seeks predominantly to lay bare the mechanisms of identity formation and its discursive, inventory and mythic nature.