Diasporic Identity Formation
in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Birds of Paradise
Hanaa Hamdan 286015
Pro Gradu Thesis
Course Code 2130505
English Language and Culture
School of Humanities
Philosophical Faculty
University of Eastern Finland
February 2020
Contents
1. Introduction ... 1
1.1 Aims and Structure ... 2
1.2 Diana Abu-Jaber ... 3
1.3 Birds of Paradise ... 6
2. Theory ... 8
2.1 From Postcolonialism to Diaspora ... 8
2.2 The Concept of Diaspora and Diasporic Literature ... 11
2.3 Anglophone Arab Diaspora Writing ... 14
2.4 Anglophone Arab Women Writers ... 18
2.4.1 Home, Belonging and Memories... 21
2.4.2 The Role of Food, Taste, and the Culinary in Shaping Diasporic Identities ... 26
2.4.3 The Significance of the Kitchen and Cookbooks ... 34
3. Analysis ... 41
3.1 Forming Diasporic Identities via Diaspora and Home ... 42
3.1.1 Reading the Arab American Diaspora in Birds of Paradise... 43
3.1.2 Avis's Home in Miami ... 47
3.1.3 Felice's Diasporic Journey and Identity Formation via Home ... 50
3.2 Identity Formation via Food, Food Signifiers and the Kitchen ... 55
3.2.1 Family Relationships ... 55
3.2.2 Diasporic Identity Formation via Food ... 63
3.2.3 Food and Its Connotations in Birds of Paradise ... 71
3.2.4 The Role of the Kitchen and Cookbooks in Birds of Paradise ... 79
4. Conclusion ... 90
Works Cited ... 93
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Philosiphical Faculty Osasto – School
School of Humanities Tekijät – Author
Hanaa Hamdan Työn nimi – Title
Diasporic Identity Formation in Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise
Pääaine – Main subject Työn laji – Level Päivämäärä –
Date Sivumäärä – Number of pages
English Language and Culture Pro gradu -tut-
kielma 18 February
2020 98 Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin tut- kielma
Aineopintojen tut- kielma
Tiivistelmä – Abstract
As forming diasporic identity has become one of the most problematic issues in contemporary diasporic literature, this thesis analyzes this issue in Arab American Diana Abu-Jaber's novel Birds of Paradise. The main aim of this study is to address the question of how hybrid identities are constructed in the Arab diaspora. The thesis analyzes identity formation by means of two fundamental sets of concepts: home, diaspora, and food, as well as the kitchen as a space.
The theoretical part deals with postcolonialism as it forms one of the main theoretical backgrounds in diaspora studies. Then, it approaches the concept of diaspora and the features of diaspora on the basis of Safran's classification. In addition, it presents diasporic literature and its features. The study also introduces Anglophone Arab writers and shows their literary trends on the basis of Al Maleh's study. The final section deals with Anglophone Arab women writers with a particular focus on the second generation, and it discusses three issues, the concepts of home and food as well as the role of the kitchen.
The analysis of Birds of Paradise consists of two sections. Both uncover the diasporic identity formation as it becomes a focal point in the novel. In the first section, the analysis explores the role of diaspora and home in constructing the hybrid identities of the diasporic characters as they struggle with the traumatic situations in the geographical dispersion. The study also analyzes Miami, the main diasporic location in the novel, and it also examines the physical home in diaspora as a way to define its owner's identity. Then, the discussion underlines the articulation of diasporic identity by means of the concepts of diaspora and the desired home.
Since food marks the cultural heritage of one's culture of origin, it stands in the novel as an identity marker that defines diasporic characters. The chapter shows the way food shapes family relationships. It analyzes the role of food, taste, food preparation, food ingredients, hunger, and food rejection as well as sugar to define diasporic characters. It also analyzes some other meanings of food offered in the novel. The final section deals with the role of the kitchen as a private, transitional and liminal space, and expands to examine the role of other culinary media used in the kitchen.
As a conclusion to this study, the final chapter offers a summary of my argument and findings, with a reflection on the theories used in this research. It also draws attention towards some issues in the novel which are not included in this study and could be analyzed in future studies.
Avainsanat – Keywords
Anglophone Arab writers, Arab American women writers, Diana Abu-Jaber, Birds of Paradise, diaspora, di- asporic identity, home, food, the kitchen.
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1. Introduction
Identity formation and belonging are two crucial issues that have been widely discussed in literature. In fact, the practical influences of both phenomena, migration and diaspora, leave tragic traces deeply within the hearts of those who go through such a painful experience, and as a result, it dominates their minds. As a reaction to diaspora as a global phenomenon, the concepts of home and food are strongly present in diasporic literature and represent the diasporic identity, which is considered as a hybrid identity, as well as recreate the sense of home in the in-between space. Such traumas are clearly discussed by Anglophone Arab writers in general, and by women writers in particular, who are hanging in suspense between their homeland and the adopted home, and between their identity of origin and that of the adopted home with a need to assert their existence in the American milieu. Anglophone Arab women writers try to build their new identities to match their original ones, they manage to maintain the remains of their identity of origin on one hand and adapt it to suit their present situation in the diasporic milieu on the other hand.
In this thesis, my main concern lies in analyzing the articulation of diasporic identities in Diana Abu-Jaber's most recent novel Birds of Paradise (2012). Abu-Jaber belongs to the second generation of Arab-American female writers who are "American born citizens […] of Arab origins" (Sarnou 56). They, therefore, try to create a balance between their home culture and the adoptive one, and to use Sarnou's words concerning Arab-American female writers, they "hold a specific view of their home, the adoptive culture, their cultural identity and how to bring closer the two cultures" (56; emphasis original). Abu- Jaber experiences the sense of diaspora and its tragic effects which has been transferred to her by her Jordanian immigrant father. She, therefore, has created her impressive
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literary style within the climate of diaspora and reflects on its consequences to the characters' destination.
In Birds of Paradise, Abu-Jaber depicts the diasporic members in the American diasporic milieu, and negotiates their diasporic identities via two crucial concepts, those of home and food. With reference to the concept of home, she observes the state of an adolescent being away from home and living in the diasporic American milieu. Within this painful situation, she depicts diaspora as an inevitable destiny for other diasporic members. Moreover, she offers a better understanding to the concept of food and sends some messages in order to negotiate crucial issues of identity formation. Thus, the novel's discourse shows the development of identities and characters with reference to both home and food. As the novel progresses, the characters undergo a noticeable transformation as they articulate their new identities.
1.1 Aims and Structure
This thesis is organized in four main parts. The first one is an introduction to the whole thesis, which includes the aims of this thesis and presents Diana Abu-Jaber as a contemporary Arab American female writer, as well as providing a summary of Birds of Paradise. The second part is the theoretical part, in which I will read diaspora as a distinguishable trend in literature and show how it forms an essential part of postcolonial studies. Then, I will present the Anglophone Arab literature in general, with a specific concentration on the second generation of Arab American women writers. Finally, I will focus on two significant concepts related to diaspora, home and food, as being radical motivations in forming diasporic identities. In addition, I will analyze the role of the kitchen as it becomes one prominent component in the process of diasporic identity
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formation. In the third chapter, I will concentrate on diasporic identity formation as well as diaspora and its tragic consequences in Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise. Then I will focus on the concepts of home and food as well as the kitchen, as a private space, all of which cooperate in building diasporic identities in the diasporic American location.
Finally, the final chapter presents the conclusions of the thesis.
1.2 Diana Abu-Jaber
Diana Abu Jaber is one of the central contemporary Arab American female authors, who
"teaches writing and literature at Portland State University" (dianaabujaber.com). Her main concern lies in portraying the process of constructing hybrid Arab American identity in Arab American communities and neighborhoods. Her writings had added her own delicate fingerprints on the contemporary development concerning the mainstream of Arab American literature.
As a daughter of a Jordanian immigrant father and American mother, Abu-Jaber is fully aware of the dilemmas regarding her situation as a second-generation immigrant woman who lives in the American milieu. She inherited the sense of diasporic coexistence in such a diasporic space from her immigrant father. When she was an adult, she moved with her family to live in Jordan for a number of times, though for short periods. Her experiences in living in two different spaces enable her to depict the meaning of living between identities. Al Maleh refers to Abu-Jaber's situation by writing "Abu-Jaber has said that she learnt to negotiate identities" ("Anglophone" 33). In her narrative discourse, Abu-Jaber follows her own path by (re)constructing and negotiating her characters' hybrid and transitional identities in the in-between space because she has experienced what it means to be have been born and grown up in a foreign land, live behind the borders, be
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an intruder in a foreign culture as well as in one's home culture, suffer from living in diaspora and diasporic communities, and experiencing the sense of belonging or the lack of belonging to both identities. Abu-Jaber summarizes her feeling when she declares in an interview that "'I was a stranger everywhere' […] 'neither fully Arab nor fully American" (Al Maleh, "Anglophone" 33). All these reasons enable her to touch the exact meaning of alienation. In other words, Abu-Jaber has been strongly affected by the double sense of alienation she had already experienced throughout her diasporic life.
Abu-Jaber is the author of four novels and two memoirs. What is special in her writing is that she uses the concepts of home and food in her both fictional and nonfictional writings to articulate diasporic identity. Through the notion of home, she depicts the sense of displacement, dislocation, and lack of belonging. She also "has dealt with conflicting messages about her Arab identity [and she] writes about Arab American life" (Sarnou 57). Abu-Jaber manages to use skillfully the concept of food and food preparation, along with their signifiers, to negotiate identities as they are in progress. Abu- Jaber creates her own literary style by using such notions in order to depict the sense of diaspora in its both meanings, the outward and the inward diaspora.
Therefore, while portraying the traumatic experiences of diaspora, she has articulated the hybrid identities in the in-between space where Arab Americans are struggling to save the remnants of their own existence. In so doing, "Abu-Jaber employs a distinct ethnic presence in her writing" (Salaita 96): she portrays Arab American characters and features and their experiences in the American milieu in her writings. In this vein, Abu-Jaber has created her two culinary memoirs The Language of Baklava in 2005, which won the Northwest Booksellers’ Award, and Life without a Recipe in 2016 (dianaabujaber.com). Both memoirs depict, starting from the title, the power of food and food preparations in the Arab American community.
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Abu-Jaber has created four impressive novels. The first of these is Arabian Jazz (1993). According to Alice Evans, Arabian Jazz "is thought to be the first novel published about the Arab-American experience" (qtd. in Salaita 9). Arabian Jazz was selected as a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award, and Abu-Jaber was awarded the Oregon Book Award for Literary Fiction (dianaabujaber.com).
The second novel is Crescent (2003). The main characters are Arab Americans, and the main theme deals with the construction of identities via the conception of food and food preparation. In addition, Abu-Jaber offers a well-knitted depiction of both, living in exile and diaspora as well as reconstructing an exilic and a diasporic identity. For Crescent, Abu-Jaber was awarded the PEN Center Award for Literary fiction and the American Book Award (dianaabujaber.com).
Abu-Jaber's third novel is Origin (2007). The Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Chicago Tribune selected Origin as one of the best books of the year (dianaabujaber.com). Salaita describes Origin as "an 'Arab American' novel that appears to have no Arab characters" (106). In fact, some Arabic names appear in the novel, such as Fareed, Amahl, and Handal. Such names imply Arab ethnicity indirectly. However, the novel itself reflects on the diversity of origins. Salaita classifies the genre of Origin as an Arab American novel and draws the reader's attention to the fact that "Origin is an ethnic novel by design, not by default" (Salaita 109).
While weaving the threads of her most recent novel, Birds of Paradise, which I will analyze in detail in the analysis chapter, Abu-Jaber negotiates the characters' hybrid identities, depicts them as they are in-transit, and articulates them in the final stage after they have been reconstructed in different spaces under crucial circumstances. In fact, the Washington Post, The National Public Radio, and the Oregonian considered Birds of
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Paradise as one of the best books of the year (dianaabujaber.com). For this novel, Abu- Jaber was awarded the 2012 Arab-American National Book Award (dianaabujaber.com).
1.3 Birds of Paradise
The novel takes place in contemporary Miami, where the Muirs' home is located. Miami is depicted as a dangerous theatre of crime and murder, filled with runaway teenagers.
The novel is about the Muirs, who are trapped as victims of agony concerning the loss of their thirteen-year-old daughter Felice. The family has fallen apart after Felice's departure. In fact, Felice's departure, as she turned thirteen, marks the beginning of the novel, while the end is marked by the hurricane Katrina and Felice's eighteenth birthday.
The runaway, the beautiful teenager Felice, decides to escape home in order to hide her secret. In fact, she accuses herself of her school friend's suicidal act. Not surprisingly, Felice experiences the worst conditions during her runaway life. She punishes herself, runs away, carries the burden of her secret, and leaves her parents, without giving any explanation, hanging between the grief of loss and the patience of waiting her to show up. The family struggles to come into terms with their painful life and tries to cope with their grief concerning their daughter's departure.
The family members are: Brian Muir, the father, works as a corporate real estate attorney. Avis, the mother, is a talented pastry chef. Stanley and Felice are their children who have chosen their own lives according to their own wishes. Stanley, the older son, refuses to continue his university studies, but instead he runs an organic grocery store.
Felice, in turn, escapes her parent's home and refuses to come back. As she approaches the age of eighteen, she plans with Emerson, her friend on the run, to move from Miami to Portland.
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In fact, as Felice becomes eighteen, the novel changes into a positive direction and displays the new shapes of the developing identities. Furthermore, the hurricane Katrina itself, in the novel, marks a distinctive turning point in the course of the events.
The novel is organized so that each chapter is narrated from the point of view of one of the Muirs, Avis, Brian, and Felice, apart from one chapter, which, as the novel approaches the end, is narrated from Stanley's point of view.
Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise has been praised by a number of writers in their literary articles. For instance, in his review in Washington Post, Ron Charles praises the culinary style adopted in Birds of Paradise which added a unique flavor to the novel.
Charles remarks that "Diana Abu-Jaber's delicious new novel […] her most mouthwatering writing ever […] A full-course meal, a rich, complex and memorable story […] will leave you lingering gratefully at her table". Cristina Garçia, in turn, in her article in The New York Times, places the novel in the realm of reality in Miami. She notes out that "Miami comes alive in Birds of Paradise, a lush new novel […] From the verdant streets of Carol Gables to the back lots of Little Haiti and the seedy underbelly of Miami Beach, the metropolis is floridly, meticulously detailed".
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2. Theory
The theoretical part is divided into four chapters. The first chapter 2.1 deals with the postcolonial studies as a theoretical background concerning the concept of diaspora, which is one of the problematic topics within the postcolonial movement. The second chapter 2.2 discusses diaspora, diasporic features, and diasporic literature. The third chapter 2.3 focuses on Arab Anglophone writers in general, and, in particular, the literary trends, concerning Arab Anglophone writers, which Al Maleh explains in her article
"Anglophone Arab Literature: An Overview". The fourth chapter 2.4 deals with Anglophone women writers with a specific reference to the second generation of Arab Anglophone women writers. This chapter includes three sections. The first one 2.4.1 analyses the concept of home and belonging. The second section 2.4.2 focuses on the notion of food and food preparation, the culinary, and taste. The last section 2.4.3 analyses the role of the kitchen which contributes directly to building and rebuilding diasporic identities. In addition, this section analyzes the role of the dinner table and mealtimes.
2.1 From Postcolonialism to Diaspora
Arab American literary works created by Anglophone Arab women writers in diaspora can be understood under different theoretical literary criteria, as Sarnou points out: "that narratives produced by this category of Arab women writers have often been classified under the few labels of postcolonial, feminist, non-native, hybrid or Anglophone literary discourse" (52). On this basis, I will start the theoretical part in analyzing postcolonialism and then, move to the concept of diaspora as an essential part of today's postcolonial studies.
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Postcolonialism, as Hiddleston declares, is a ''broad and constantly changing movement" (1). This cultural phenomenon has gained a wide attention in its 'inauguration' between 1950s and 1960s "during and after the fight for independence" (Hiddleston 1), which was launched in the "remaining of the Britch and French colonies" (Hiddleston 1).
At present, postcolonialism became a field of a great importance for "intellectual innovation and debate" (Hiddleston 1).
For Bhabha, the colonial domination over the "Third World countries" (171) and
"the discourse of minorities" (171) inside the "geographical divisions"(171) are considered to be the main reasons behind the emergence of postcolonialism (Bhabha 171), but Featherstone reads the postcolonial period as starting from "the liberation struggle of the twentieth century […] to the present" (5). In fact, postcolonialism includes different "responses to colonialism" (Hiddleston 1) such as "political, economic, cultural and philosophical" (Hiddleston 1) ones, and so it challenges colonialism without showing any sign of resistance (Hiddleston 1).
Thus, as Featherstone points out, postcolonial studies represent 'a truism' in discussing decisive issues and form new cultural narratives, "it is a truism that touches upon crucial issues of representation, and upon the economic and ideological control of production and reproduction of narratives of 'other' cultures" (9). Furthermore, Kanu indicates the 'Other' as those cultures which form parts of the colonial periphery during the colonial period as well as the minorities who consist small parts of the 'dominant- culture societies' and yet, they lack freedom to find a cultural space for their cultural voices (Kanu 9). In this context Kanu claims that:
the colonized Other refers not only to the former colonies that comprised to periphery at the receiving end of cultural dispensations from metropolitan
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centers in Western Europe during the colonial period, but also minority populations in dominant-culture societies whose knowledge and cultural productions have been silenced in the educational space. (9)
Therefore, in postcolonialism, problematic topics are always questioned, such as
"questions of nationhood, cultural identity and hybridity; the effects of and responses to diaspora; a questioning of inherited, colonial-influenced historical narratives and essentialist description of race" (Featherstone 7).
The concept of diaspora is one of the crucial topics that has received special attention and is discussed widely in postcolonial studies. The term "diaspora" is defined in the Lexico, an online English Dictionary, in a way that could be applied on immigrant literature: "[t]he dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland". In fact, the word origin of "diaspora", as shown in the same dictionary, is the Greek word
"diaspeirein" that means "'disperse', from dia 'across' + speirein 'scatter'". In this sense, such a definition addresses people who scattered across the world for many reasons. They have left or been forced to leave their homeland behind and crossed borders, to use Cohen's words, "in practice voluntary and involuntary migration" (162), in order to search for better life conditions, such as education and business, and, therefore, to escape, for instance, discrimination and wars; or, they are sentenced to exile, the most painful kind of migration.
In its first usage, as Cohen mentioned "the classical use of the term, usually capitalized as Diaspora and used only in the singular, was mainly confined to the study of Jewish experiences" (Cohen 1). Today's definition for both terms, 'diaspora' and 'diaspora community', refers to those groups of people who share the features of living in diasporic milieu. In this context, as Safran writes,
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Today, 'diaspora' and, more specifically, 'diaspora community' seem increasingly to be used as metaphoric designations for several categories of people – expatriates, expellees, political refugees, alien residents, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities. (Safran 83)
It should, therefore, be noticed that diaspora and exile are two different terms with two different origins as they produce different consequences. In other words, agony, nostalgia, and the feeling of loss are much more painful in exile than those which result from diaspora. Syrine Hout notes that "'[d]iaspora' derives from the Greek word for being scattered (in Arabic al-shatat), whereas 'exile' is Latinate and means to be banned from one's place of origin. Diaspora is 'less inclined towards suffering and longing' than exile"
(144-145; emphasis original).
As a result of migration and crossing borders, diaspora and diasporic communities are created wherever the main features of these concepts are found.
2.2 The Concept of Diaspora and Diasporic Literature
According to Safran, the concept of diaspora is characterized by main features, many of which form what he calls the "expatriate minority communities" (83). Safran refers to the characteristics of diaspora as:
1) They, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific original 'center' to two or more 'peripheral', or foreign regions; 2) They retain a collective memory, vision, or myth about their original homeland – its physical location, history and achievements; 3) They believe that they are not – and perhaps cannot be – fully accepted by their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it; 4) They regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal
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home and as a place to which they or their descendants would (or should) eventually return – when conditions are appropriate; 5) They believe that they should, collectively, be committed to the maintenance or restoration of their homeland and to its safety and prosperity; and 6) They continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship. (83- 84)
However, Cohen adds more features to the previous diasporic ones that Safran describes, one of which is related to the 'collective identity' which can be easily motivate and recall all the 'co-ethnic members' to gather and form one union in the diasporic milieu (Cohen 7). In this context, Cohen declares,
diasporas often mobilize a collective identity, not only a place of settlement or only in respect of an imagined, putative or real homeland, but also in solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries. Bonds of language, religion, culture and a sense of a common fate impregnate such a transnational relationship and give to it an affective, intimate quality that formal citizenship or long settlement frequently lack. (7; emphasis original)
Diasporic communities that share some of the previous features are considered to form an ethnic community. Cohen borrows the words of Martin Sökefeld to define "the formation of diasporas as a 'special case of ethnicity'" (13). Thus, as Fenton suggests, ethnicity means a set of ideas about origin and culture around which people gather and support. In this sense, ethnicity, means: "an array of private and public identities which coalesce around ideas of descent and culture" (Fenton 187). Moreover, the ideas of descent and sharing the same culture create ethnic ties between the members of an ethnic
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community, ties that are considered to be 'emotional' ties far, to some extent, from being reasonable: "it could be distinguished from rational action by the fact that ethnic ties were defined as 'emotional' rather than guided by reason or calculation" (Fenton 189). In such a context, ethnic emotional ties within ethnic communities are depicted in literature, specifically in diasporic literature, to create an imagined milieu that matches the concrete one and portrays the various relationships as well as the dilemmas within the adopted home. Thus, the shared home of origin and the diasporic identities are some of the most crucial issues which distinguish diasporic literature from others.
As the literary trend has emerged, diasporic writers have created their own literary space through which they reflect on their own experiences in the host country and express their thoughts, as Al Maleh notes, "through the medium of English" ("Anglophone" 4).
Taking into account, that the cohabitation of different cultures introduces many new experiences within all literary forms, Nyman states that "these experiences are based on the meeting, or, rather, co-existence of two or more cultures" (Home 10). In this context, the culture of origin, as well as the identities of diasporic writers, are reconstructed according to their present experiences. In order to depict their situation, diasporic writers sometimes use binary oppositions, one of which indicates the feeling of being accepted as members of the host country or being considered as strangers. Furthermore, they live here at present, but cannot forget their past in the home of origin. They also feel that they are far away from homeland, but, at the same time, they are so near. In this sense Al Maleh explains that:
Diasporic experience certainly leaves its powerful imprint on this literature, and the authors use it to offer their own reformulations of culture and subjectivity.
No longer beholden to the dictates of the 'home' community, they benefit from
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their positions as 'outsiders'/ 'insiders' and enter into a dialogue with past and present, the distant and the near. ("Anglophone" 15)
However, and following Nyman's idea, mobility and forming identities, on one hand, are two basic features out of which many stories of diasporic literature have emerged (Home 10), while home and belonging, as problematic issues, form further a crucial feature in generating diasporic literature (Home 21). Therefore, the imagined third space, "the space of in-betweenness", is seen as a liminal space where hybrid identities are constructed (Nyman, Home 22).
Paying close attention to diasporic literary works, Al Maleh points to the features of this literature with a particular reference to the dominant issues that the diasporic writers discuss. Such features, including the sense of alienation, double consciousness, hybridity, and self-representation, are typical of texts classified as postmodern and postcolonial literary works. Al Maleh mentions that:
Thematically, the works mostly concerned themselves with the issue of psychological and social alienation (at home and abroad) and the 'return of exile' theme, the experiences of hybridity and double-consciousness […] an almost frantic preoccupation with identity […] and the quest for authentic self- representation […] which clearly anticipates the postmodern and postcolonial texts. ("Anglophone" 8)
2.3 Anglophone Arab Diaspora Writing
Anglophone Arab writers call into question the problematic issues and experiences which they have passed through in the diasporic milieu. Their narratives come as a cultural response to colonialism. Although Anglophone Arab writers can be classified as
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postcolonial writers who negotiate 'historical boundaries' and cultural differences, at the same time they have managed to escape colonialism which has dominated upon their lives for a long time. In this sense, their literary works form an essential part of postcolonial literature:
To classify as 'postcolonial' those cultures which have experienced colonialism but have, to whatever extent and whatever means, freed themselves from it, is only to raise other questions about historical boundaries and the usefulness of cross-historical and cross-cultural comparisons and parallels. (Featherstone 5) Within diasporic literature, a wide range of attention has been dedicated to Arab American literature. This literary category, according to Salaita, "consists of creative work produced by American authors of Arab origin and that participates, in a conscious way or through its critical reception, in a category that has come to be known as 'Arab American literature'" (Salaita 4). In this sense, the literary works written by Americans of Arab descent, form the distinctive category of Arab American literature.
Diasporic literature in general, and Arab American literature in particular, is overshadowed by 'collective pain' and tension. Diana Abu-Jaber's novels, for instance, according to AlMaleh, reflect on such a grief and tension. In such a context, Al Maleh notes that, "Arab American literature […] would reveal a curious strain of collective pain […] Even Diana Abu Jaber's novels, full of clever humor and wit, seem to at times to betray pangs of some hidden grief" ("From Romantic" 433).
In speaking about Anglophone Arab literature, and during a century of immigrant cultural phenomena, as presented by Al Maleh, Arab immigrants represent three trends.
The first of which, as Al Maleh states, is the Mahjar. This trend, according to Al Maleh, refers to the immigrants who migrated during the early times of twentieth century in order
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to escape poverty, as they balanced between the cultural differences concerning homeland and adopted home (11). Both Khalil Gibran and Ameen Rihani are pioneer representatives of Arab American writers of the Mahjar trend who published English as well as Arabic books:
the Mahjar […] The early Arab emigrants [who] came from backgrounds of poverty and even illiteracy and worked their ways up to elitist literary circles;
furthermore, they were able […] to preserve a happy balance between East and West, home/host country. (Al Maleh, "Anglophone" 11)
The second trend concerns "the europeanized aspirants of the mid-1950s" (Al Maleh, "Anglophone" 11). They are, as Al Maleh notes, Arab immigrants who were well educated in their home of origin. They master English and they have managed to face the traumas and all kinds of discrimination in the host country, overcoming their grief concerning the nostalgic feelings towards their homeland, and the feeling of alienation in the host country. As Al Maleh writes, they
came from elite backgrounds and worked assiduously to embrace the identity of the European 'Other', thus typifying the traumas […] of the culturally 'colonized' […] Doomed to face rejection by metropolitan power but having cut their moorings to their country of origin, they have no choice but to embrace their alienation and estrangement. ("Anglophone" 11)
The third trend, as Al Maleh states, covers the literary works of Anglophone Arab writers published after the 1970s ("Anglophone" 11). Among the well-known names of the third trend Al Maleh mentions in her article, are Diana Abu-Jaber, Jamal Mahjoub and Leila Abuleila. However, the third trend also includes, "the more recent hybrids, hyphenated, transcultural, exilic/diasporic writers of the past four decades or so who have
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been scattered all over the world" (Al Maleh, "Anglophone" 11). They either were born on the soil of the adopted country from a mixed family with Arab and English/American parents and have English as their mother tongue. Alternatively, they have migrated from their homeland to participate in the process of transculturation:
The third group […] is the least homogeneous. There were those – second-, third-, even fourth-generation hyphenated Arabs – who were born and raised on the no longer foreign soil of their immigrant forebears; and there were those who were new immigrants working out of an experience of transculturation.
The latter came from diverse intellectual and social backgrounds. (Al Maleh,
"Anglophone" 11)
It should, therefore, be noticed that all features of diasporic literature are obviously reflected in Anglophone Arab literature, which, in one way or another, forms a window through which Arab culture and society can be seen. The literary researchers and intellectuals all over the world have "found in anglophone Arab writers a convenient window on Arab thought and culture. Arabs at last became 'visible'" (Al Maleh,
"Anglophone" 2).
In forming such a window and building cultural bridges between East and West, Anglophone-Arab literature enables all cultures to look upon the crucial dilemmas they endure in the adopted home. Meanwhile, Arab-Anglophone women writers shed more light on what they experience in such a diasporic milieu in general, which paves a way for the readers to enter into, to a large extent, different dilemmas they endure within their own families and domestic relationships.
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2.4 Anglophone Arab Women Writers
Anglophone Arab literature by women emerged when intellectual Arab women crossed borders in order to receive their education abroad. They mastered English and became bilinguals, therefore, they use English to narrate their stories. Sarnou refers to "[t]hese women writers, in particular, are of Arabic decent: either academics and/or intellectuals who migrated to Britain or USA and decided to write in English" (52). However, in their English narratives they reflect on crucial issues, many of which are considered to be taboo according to the values of Arab culture and their narratives also reflect the multiple realities of the Arab world. Furthermore, they build bridges between different cultures and pave the way for other cultures to cross towards the Arab world. This can be seen in Sarnou's view suggesting that:
these women writers not only write in a universal language, be it English – in the sense that most of them are women of two worlds: the mother country and the Diaspora –but they also may find more liberty in dealing with controversial issues and taboo themes when writing in English; these characteristics make their English writing more likely to give a vivid, authentic representation of the Arab world with its cultural, religious and political specificity, and to succeed to construct cross-cultural bridges between the West and the Arab world. (58) In her reading, Lionnet explains that women writers have established in their narratives a better understanding concerning the hybridity of the characters on one hand, and they introduce, on the other hand, a chance for the reader to discover the female writers' own personalities as well (8). Lionnet notes that women's narratives can be considered as a genre of:
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Literature [which] allows us to enter into the subjective processes of writers and their characters and thus to understand better the unique perspectives of subjects who are agent of transformation and hybridization in their own narratives – as opposed to being objects of knowledge, as in the discourse of social science. (8) Bringing together the most significant concerns, and adding to their bicultural background, Arab American women writers discuss their identity in terms of Arabness and Americanness. In addition, they introduce their private experiences with personal details in order to show the lives of Arab women under the shadow of American culture.
Amal Talaat Abdelrazek states:
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 towards the Middle East. (10)
For diasporic writers in general, and Arab American female writers in particular, living in the host country and longing to be at their home of origin creates a sense of this third 'liminal' space and in-betweenness within which they reconstruct their hybrid identity and imagine a home that matches the one in their homeland.
Although the narratives of the first and the second generations of Arab American women writers share many similar issues, slight differences, regarding their culture of origin as well home of origin, emerge. The second generation loses its desire and interest in the culture of origin. Al Maleh depicts this difference by noting that:
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The second generation of Arab-Americans somehow lost this cosmic view of themselves and their mission as writers. Furthermore, they were less able or less desirous to maintain the cultural balance with their predecessors sustained.
("From Romantic" 432)
The other difference appears between the two generations with reference to their homeland. For the first generation, homeland exists as a painful reality. Their main obsession revolves around the home of origin and their memories there. In contrast, "the homeland often exists for [second generation] simply as an abstract and ideal concept transmitted by the first generation […] because the only homeland the American-borns have physically experienced is the United States" (Pazo 220). For the second generation, the only home is where they have been born and live, and the homeland is not more than an abstract and imagined idea.
A wide range of issues related to identity formation are depicted in the narratives of Arab American women writers. The main interest lies in the concepts of both home and food. They help, to a large degree, to form their hybrid identity in the imagined space.
In this sense, the concept of home, on one hand, including the sense of belonging, memories, and family, helps women writers to embrace the feeling of alienation within their adoptive country, and find a place within the adoptive culture to construct and protect their hybrid identity. On the other hand, the depiction of the magic of food, including the ritual preparation, recipes, and cookbooks, sheds light on the process of constructing and reconstructing identities in the kitchen as a place. Furthermore, women will find their own private space in the kitchen to practice their sacred ways in building their identities within such a realm.
21 2.4.1 Home, Belonging and Memories
For immigrants who live behind the borders, their minds, as long as they are living far from their imagined ideal homeland and suffering from cultural and social differences, are obsessed by creating a home which satisfies their longing for a home, as well as maintaining the remains of their original identity and reshaping it to imitate the diasporic location. In this section, I will first discuss how the notion of home is related to identity formation in diaspora. In fact, the notion of home appears in diasporic literature to be one of the major priorities which occupies the authors' minds and urges them to start a journey towards self-discovery (Gurr 13). Second, I will explain the different meanings that the concept of home contains such as the feeling of both, physical and cultural alienation, formation of transitional identity in the liminal diasporic space, tension, homing desire, and homesickness. Then, I will negotiate the negative consequences of deconstructing the concept of home as it is connected to issues such as race, religion, and gender. Finally, l will shed light on the concept of home when it turns into the negative direction. In this way, it can be stated that home is not a safe place anymore – on the contrary, it changes into a place where one can feel the sense of displacement and lack of belonging.
The notion of 'home' has received great literary attention, and in postcolonial literary studies, "the question of 'home' has increasingly come to be a vexed terrain"
(Nasta 1). Hence, the notion of home has become a distinctive feature that marks the modern literature, seen in Gurr's declaration that "[t]his sense of home is the goal of all the voyages of self-discovery which have become the characteristic shape of modern literature" (13). In this discourse, home is an important issue through which a person can start a journey to discover his/her own personality and reshape his/her hybrid identity.
For writers, being far away from home as a place creates ideas for new narratives. In fact, the writer's visions would be easily affected by this feeling of alienation and as a result,
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the theme would obviously emerge from what the writer suffers and experiences. In such a situation, "[a]lienation from a cultural or physical home has radical effects on the writer's mind as well as his choice of theme" (Gurr 15).
It is the so-called 'liminal space' where Arab-American immigrants live and constitute liminal groups. Apparently, those groups are hanging between the host country and longing for being there in the home of origin. This vision was described by Victor W. Turner as "[l]iminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions" (95). In such a space of in-betweenness, identities are reconstructed and affected by the local background and of the process of globalization. In this liminal space new transitional identities are reconstructed in order to create new shapes connected to the hybrid identity. In this context,
The diasporic location, then, can be seen as a liminal space of identity, as a space where various transnational forces, both local and global, remould identity. In this sense, diasporic identity can be addressed as a form of hybridized identity, as it is in this space of in-betweenness where the diasporic subject reconstruct itself. (Nyman, Home 22)
In order to understand the meaning of home clearly and the way in which home constructs identities in diaspora, the current study presents different meanings which discuss 'home' as a notion and offer many visions to depict the sense of home in literature.
The first of these answers Avtar Brah's question. She asks "[w]here is home?" (Brah 192) and suggests two answers, the first of which refers to 'home' as the ideal birthplace where people in diaspora longing to live, and yet, they can never do so (192). Brah states that
"'home' is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense it is a place of no return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as the place
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of 'origin'" (192). Her second answer to the same question includes the intimate memories of this geographical area, including the details of the four seasons, climate and the local social relationships. For Brah, her "home is also the lived experience of a locality. Its sounds and smells, its heat and dust, balmy summer evenings, or the excitement of the first snowfall, […] all this, as mediated by the historically specific everyday of social relations" (192). Cohen summarizes all the previous definitions and emotions in one sentence, which answers Brah's question. Cohen states that "'home is where the heart is'"
(10).
The second meaning of home that appears in the diasporic milieu is what Nasta bases on Brah's notion of "homing desire". Nasta offers a meaning of home which helps to shape a new identity. In other words, home would imply a new definition in order to match diasporic space condition. So, Nasta claims that "[f]or diaspora, […] a 'homing desire' [is] a desire to reinvent and rewrite home as much as a desire to come to terms with exile from it" (7).
According to Nyman, the 'homing desire' is the main reason behind reconstructing the diasporic identity. Nyman explains this as follows: "diasporic identity is based on what its theorist Avtar Brah refers to as 'homing desire', defined as a way of negotiating between 'the discourse of home' and 'dispersion'" (Home 25). In this sense, the binary opposition between home and abroad (diaspora), leads diasporic identities to emerge.
The third relevant concept is tension. It is an important feature that dominates the relationship between home in diaspora and that of homeland concerning both, 'physical and metaphorical' home conceptions. In this context, Agnew refers to the situation of "the individual living in the diaspora experiences a dynamic tension every day between living
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'here' and remembering 'there', between memories of places of origin and entanglements with places of residence, and between the metaphorical and physical home" (4).
Homesickness is the fourth feature which emerges in diaspora and creates personal identities via the feeling of missing home of origin. It is what Nyman (following Buikema's argument) reads as: "emphasizing a place, marks the loss of stories, cultural memories, and myths" (Home 25). In this context, homesickness, according to Nyman, is the feeling of missing all the memories out of which the notion of home is recreated in diaspora; it does not exactly mean longing to home of origin as place, but it means the feeling of cultural loss including all the cultural fields (Home 25).
In these remote places, the sense of homesickness urges to build new identities which are reflected in the narratives of the diasporic writers. Nyman notes that
"homesickness […] plays a central role in narratives of diaspora, these also reveal exciting and exquisite attempts to reconstruct identity in new locations" (Home 26).
Thus, it is important in this context to refer to nostalgia as a remarkable feature of diasporic literature, which many Anglophone Arab women writers try to free themselves from. In fact, their past in their home of origin is often connected to the domination of the patriarchal hierarchy which used to be a burden in their lives:
Yet not all diasporic communities remember the past with longing and nostalgia.
For example, women's recollections of the past are often tinged with a desire to resist the patriarchal norms of their cultures and class; these norms constitute the cultural baggage brought from 'back home' into the new societies of settlement […] in the nation state do not recall the past with nostalgia; rather, solace for them lies in the act of forgetting. (Agnew 188)
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It should, therefore, be taken into account that the conceptual meaning of home sometimes changes into a negative direction. Such negative results have been noticed by some academics when they have deconstructed and rewritten, as Cohen mentions, the notions of home and homeland on the basis of ethnic religious and ethnic community. On this ground, when minority groups from a certain homeland melt together to form the so- called 'home' in diaspora on a basis of 'gender, class and race', the notion of home may change into an awful notion. Regarding these negative consequences, Cohen states that:
'Home' became increasingly vague, even miasmic, while all ethnicities, they suggested, had to be dissolved into their component parts and surroundings contexts – divided by gender, class and race and other segments and enveloped by a world by of intersectionality, multiculturality and fluidity. (9)
Another negative meaning of home is offered by Weinberg and Nwosu. They suggest that home may signify a dangerous place where it is not safe anymore to stay in;
rather, it is the place from where someone steps onto a negative stage further, since it generates a sense of instability and fear. As a result, one will lose the sense of belonging and manage to run away and escape from. In this sense, Weinberg and Nwosu suggest that home sometimes becomes "a place to avoid, to leave, run away from, reject, be afraid of or be afraid in" (40).
Therefore, in her explanation concerning the previous negative attitudes towards reconstructing home and identity, and in defending the ethnic attitude towards their identity, Al Maleh draws the reader's attention to the tragic events of 11th September 2001, which have led to an increase of the ethnic identity awareness among the Arab- Americans. Thus, to add a sense of solidarity, the reaction of the tragic events has
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strengthened their ethnic attitude against the discrimination they have experienced. In this climate, Al Maleh notes that:
Arab-Americans' growing awareness of their ethnic identity does not correlate with racial issues but is the outcome of 'coalition' and 'solidarity' in the face of increasing discrimination and abuse, particularly in the wake of the abominable events of September 11. ("From Romantic" 424)
In fact, diasporic identity, can to a large degree, be constructed in the imagined concept of home which have been created in the in-between space. However, the way through which the notion of home is depicted, whether it is a positive or negative representation, reflects on the author's way to cope with the present location behind the borders and witnesses the development of hybrid identity in its transitional stages and in certain liminal and transitional spaces. Sometimes, these features contribute to the process of forming the notion of home in diaspora. At other times, home emerges as a place to escape from instead.
2.4.2 The Role of Food, Taste, and the Culinary in Shaping Diasporic Identities After crossing borders, and in the in-between space, Arab American women writers shed light on food and food preparation, as well as on the kitchen and the culinary, as they seek to depict the ethnic tradition of their authentic culture. They, therefore, depict, by means of food, the way that diasporic members in general, and diasporic women in particular, build their culinary identity which forms an essential part of their diasporic identity. This section consists of two parts. The first one deals with diasporic identity formation via food and food metaphor. The other deals with the kitchen, as a space to prepare food, as well as cookbooks and recipes, as being essential elements of the culinary. In the first
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part, I will analyze food, as it becomes a device, loaded by emotion and love, to articulate the diasporic identity. I will explain how taste, food preferences, and food rejection define many social issues which contribute in the process of the person's identity formation.
Then, I will focus on the food signifiers and food messages, such as calling upon memories, bridging the distance between the immigrants' present culture and the past one and depicting nostalgia and tension. Then, I will concentrate on food as it becomes a representation of family bonds and relationships, with a particular reference to the mother-daughter relationship. I will borrow from Mannur two expressions: "culinary citizenship" (20), and "establishing one's Americanness" (184), as they both form the hybrid identity in the American milieu. However, I will draw the reader's attention to the power of hunger in articulating one's diasporic identity.
Pazo draws the readers' attention to the fact that "when people migrate, their culinary culture and foodways travel with them" (230). Such an idea loads food and culinary customs with a clear insight of emotions that immigrants hold in their hearts, it seems, because food is one main part of the cultural context of origin which migrate with them. In this sense, the act of, to use the words of 'Fuller et al., "loading eating with a lot of emotional baggage" (277), symbolically, becomes an effective power for the immigrants' own way to embrace their culture of origin and uncover the formation of their hybrid identities which is affected by diaspora.
It should be not surprising that food has a symbolic meaning in contemporary women's fiction since food identifies a large number of social issues as well as plays a role in shaping personal identities. In this context, "food and eating are essential to self- identity and are instrumental in the definition of family, class, ethnicity" (Sceats 1).
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In Food and Culture, food is explained as a key issue which leaves its distinctive effects on all the features and walks of life. It also defines people and cultures. In this sence, "[f]ood touches everything. […] Food makes social differences, boundaries, bonds and contradictions […] men and women define themselves differently through their foodways, and […] women across cultures so often speak through food and appetite"
(Counihan and Van Esterick 1). In the same vein, Katharina Vester refers to what the philosopher Deane Curtin declares concerning food and food habits. They are not only connected to the 'biological needs', but they are also reflected in most of the different aspects of life. Food, in fact, shapes one's identity in a given culture:
Food consumption habits are not simply tied to biological needs but serve to mark boundaries between social classes, geographical regions, nations, cultures, genders, life-cycle stages, religions and occupations, to distinguish rituals, traditions, festivals, seasons and times of day. Food structures what counts as a person in our culture. (Curtin qtd. in Vester 1)
In a similar vein, Lorna Piatti-Farnell summarizes the meanings of food and cuisine in The Book of Salt, suggesting that food and cuisine define the individuals and identify their identities. Thus, they indicate what social values are followed by each social group and what specific taste such a group have in common. Piatti-Farnell notes out that
"[f]ood preferences and cuisine in The Book of Salt become a means of self-definition, a source of social value and an embodiment of 'taste'" (106). In fact, food, according to Nick Fiddes, is a way to identify one's personality by analyzing his/her food preferences and taste, since food functions as an embodiment of one's and other's self-definitions (qtd.
in Piatti-Farnell 106). It also mirrors their thoughts and desires (qtd. in Piatti-Farnell 12).
Therefore, taste and food choices are no more than an essential part of one's cultural perceptions (qtd. in Piatti-Farnell 12). In this context, Fiddes declares that "'the foods we
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select reflect our thought, including our conception of our actual or desired way of life and our perceptions of the food choice of people with whom we wish to identify. We eat nothing but as part of our culture'" (qtd. in Piatti-Farnell 12).
Nonetheless, a number of social and cultural values are strongly embodied in what we like or dislike to eat. It is "what we choose to eat or reject mirrors the intricate framework of values of our culture and society, as well as matters of age, personality and, of course, lifestyle" (Pazo 214). Within these cultural matters, food preferences will offer a well-organized picture of one's own personality as well as his/her specific cultural context and social community.
Therefore, Vester explains the roles of food and its preparations in literature. Such a process enables the writer to offer a diversity of perspectives which add new meanings to the literary work such as narrative relations, race, gender, class, ethnicity as well as religious ideas:
Food is given significance by how it is narratively framed […] Food instructions, discussions of meals in literature […] generate knowledge in which power relations are inscribed and produced. They are embedded in and play a part in the production of gendered and racialized subjects, as well as class, ethnic, regional national, and religious ones. (Vester 2)
While food, as a traditional theme, represents an important value of the ethnic features of an authentic family in diaspora, the kitchen, as a place, presents also a family value as it creates the sense of caring and, for women, to show their responsibilities towards family's members. In fact, food would call upon a chain of memories from the ideal imaginary home of origin. In this respect Marta Cariello summarizes the importance of food in postcolonial literary studies as "a vehicle for memory and the kitchen as a space
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of custody and at the same time of the passing on of family and ethnic traditions are frequent topoi in postcolonial literature" (333). However, the food topos and its cultural markers emerge and almost dominate the narratives of Arab American female writers.
For Arab American women authors, food and culinary rituals play a sacred role in reconstructing their identity and affirming their subjectivity in a new milieu. The immigrants past as well as their cultural traditions would be presented in their everydays' life, so "the role of food is important as it links the immigrants with their past and tradition" (Nyman, "Cultural" 284). In other words, food traditions and preparations bridge the present location and culture of the diasporic members with their home location and culture.
In their attempt to protect their identity, and to create a community that imitates the traditional one at homeland, and in order to represent the same atmosphere of the Arab families and ties, Arab American women authors, to follow Nyman's argument, use food and culinary traditions in their narratives to focus on ethnic features of authentic identity.
In this context, food plays an important role in strengthening the family ties and friendships in diaspora, and it calls upon their memories which strengthen the ethnic family ties. Nyman puts this: "[t]he importance of food and the meanings attached to it can be seen in the writings of present-day descendants of immigrants, women in particular, as the culinary is affected by issues of class, ethnicity and memory" ("Cultural"
284).
Since food and culinary rituals, as Mannur notes, are " most associated with domesticity" (20), they allow the memories of home to flow and reflect nostalgia. Food as well as cooking help Arab American authors to reconstruct identities in a diasporic milieu:
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the desire to remember home by fondly re-creating culinary memories cannot be understood merely as a reflectivity nostalgic gesture; rather such commemorative acts must be read as a commentary on what it means to inhabit different diasporic locations. (Mannur 20)
To follow Nyman's argument, food, nevertheless, may play a negative role in creating a huge gap between the values of the host American society and its food habits, and those of the Arab society and its food traditions. It plays a positive role when it gathers the family members and friends around the dinner table to unify them as one unit. Nyman states "that the functions of food are both to unify and to separate: while it holds together the members of the immigrant family, it separates them from the values and eating habits of mainstream Americans" ("Cultural" 297).
We need to take into consideration that the home of origin and the memories of childhood are connected directly to culinary rituals. In this respect, Nyman claims that culinary traditions have helped post-colonial women writers to reconstruct their identities.
Not only would the Arab cuisine pass from one culture to the other, but it has also preserved the remains of Arab identity in the in-between space. Nyman suggests that:
The culinary memoir is thus a part of identity-construction. It is linked to both private and public settings, to ideas of home and childhood, and also to the ways in which they affect the formation of the subject – and even more so that of a subject crossing from one culture to another, occasionally forced to dwell between the two words. ("Cultural" 284)
In other words, the culinary memoir, as well as food rituals and food preparations in Arab American narratives, form a bridge that links together the home of origin and the adopted home. Food and food metaphors help, to some degree, to pass on memories, subjects, and
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other key materials that are related to the homeland's culture. All of these create a place of living for Arab Americans, which locates between the Arabic and American cultures.
By realizing the social significance of food and cooking as being the language of expression within a social context, Mehta claims that "[c]ooking, as a highly expressive language […] becomes a form of social praxis" (205). In another sense, food becomes one form of social practices where women can use to express whatever they feel.
The main traditional concepts of food and taste are employed, to some extent, in American culture to portray the domestic relationship between daughters and mothers.
However, following what Parkin writes about the relationship between food and women, food is closely connected to gender in a social context. For her, food and food rituals reflect mothers' love towards their families. Parkin notes out that: "American culture in the twentieth century bound women, food, and love together […] the belief that food preparation was a gender-specific activity and that women should cook for others to express their love" (52). In other words, mother's main role within a family lies in preparing and cooking food. Yet, food can, to some extent, recreate various meanings within the narrative discourse.
Among the meanings that can be attributed to food, "culinary citizenship" (Mannur 20) and "establishing one's Americanness" (Mannur 184) are two distinctive phrases offered by Mannur to explain the major functions of food within different narratives. In the first place, "culinary citizenship" shows the role of food to construct identities that preserve some features match the ones of the home of origin. In this sense, Mannur explains that "culinary citizenship [means] the ability to articulate national identity via food" (20). Though, and in the second place, Mannur points to another role of food as considering some "particular foods [become] tied up with the act of establishing one's
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Americanness" (184). In this context, food can maintain the remains of the national identity as well as create a new American one for an individual who lives in American diaspora.
Finally, and as a troubling structure, as Mannur claims, food therefore, "[f]or many other immigrant communities […] becomes a tool to articulate tensions that emerge through the chaffing of identity vectors of 'home' and 'diaspora'" (Mannur 185). Food is a focal point through which tension is portrayed and clearly shown in the Arab-American narratives.
In addition to the previous representations of food, hunger, on the other hand, stands as one important representation connected with the lack of food. For diasporic writers, hunger signifies not only the physical aspect, but it also implies different meanings connected to the main ideas of the narrative discourse:
Beyond the thought of physical hunger, one can identify different types of hunger that need to be considered; examples of 'emotional' or 'psychological' become metaphorical interpretations for 'memory, history, voice and sexual appetites' […] hunger [also] associated to maternal love. (Piatti-Farnell 79) Hunger, to a great extent, implies the metaphorical approaches towards all cultural details associated with the homeland. Hunger highlights the emotional and the psychological needs out of which the immigrant's self-definition and identity will be constructed in the diasporic space. Since depicting the lack of food and hunger in fiction leads a character to choose a different path that signifies his/her own conducts. In this vein,"[e]ach story revealed the power of hunger to shape human behavior, and beyond this the connection between food knowledge and social relations" (Diner 220). Hunger touches at the same
