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Historicizing Muslim American Literature University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2018 Historicizing Muslim American Literature: Studies on Literature by African American and South Asian American Muslim Writers Wawan Eko Yulianto University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, and the Islamic Studies Commons Recommended Citation Yulianto, Wawan Eko, "Historicizing Muslim American Literature: Studies on Literature by African American and South Asian American Muslim Writers" (2018). Theses and Dissertations. 2702. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2702 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Historicizing Muslim American Literature: Studies on Literature by African American and South Asian American Muslim Writers A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies by Wawan Eko Yulianto Universitas Negeri Malang Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature, 2004 University of Arkansas Master of Arts in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, 2011 May 2018 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council Mohja Kahf, Ph.D. Dissertation Director M. Keith Booker, Ph.D. Yajaira Padilla, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member Abstract In response to the challenge of understanding Muslim Americans in a way that highlights their integral role in the United States through literature, this research starts with two questions: 1) how should we read Muslim American literature in relation to the lived experiences of Islam in America? and 2) how does Muslim American literature contribute to the more mainstream American literature. To answer those questions, this research takes as its foundations the theories by Stuart Hall and Satya Mohanty on, firstly, the evolving nature of diaspora identity and on the epistemic status of identity. Following Hall’s argument that every expression of art is also a reformulation of identity, artistic expressions by Muslim Americans are parts of Muslim American identity. Following Mohanty’s argument of the epistemic status of identity, literature by Muslim Americans can help us see the lived and intellectual experiences of Muslim Americans. Inspired by Fredric Jameson’s argument for historicizing a literary work and interpret it against its historical background, this research discovered that the at the core of the Muslim American literary works selected for this research lie political causes that underlie the aesthetic of Muslim American literature. For African American Muslim literature, such underlying historical spirit is the tension between ‘asabiyya (or peoplehood and community building among African Americans) and ummah (or the sense of belonging to the global Muslim community). This spirit, I argue, manifests in Marvin X’s Land for My Daughters and Murad Kalam’s Night Journey. Meanwhile, for works by South Asian American Muslim writers, the historical spirit lies in the tension between the essentialist view of identity and the acceptance of American identity. This tendency manifests in different ways in the Wajahat Ali’s The Domestic Crusaders and Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced. The discussions on literary works by African American and South Asian American Muslim writers here highlight the collective concerns that underlie the literary works by the two different demographic groups. In doing so, the research places Muslim American literature as a political niche in American literature. This tendency of being political makes Muslim American literature align more with works from marginal cultural communities. ©2018 by Wawan Eko Yulianto All Rights Reserved Acknowledgement I’d like to thank my family and my parents, first and foremost, for supporting me in uncountable ways. When it comes to the dissertation itself, I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Mohja Kahf for her insights, suggestions, and considerations during the planning, drafting, and revising stages of this dissertation. Dr. M. Keith Booker and Dr. Yajaira Padilla have also been very helpful with their thoughts and comments during the third part of my comprehensive exam (when I presented the idea of this dissertation for the first time), during the writing process, and during the dissertation defense. I thank them for those. However, without the generous support from King Fahd Center for Middle East studies, through Dr. Joel Gordon and Dr. Tom Paradise, my doctoral program would never have materialized. I truly thank them for that. Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to Nadia and Avis. Table of Contents Introduction Historicizing Muslim American Literature ..................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 The Tension between Community Building and Global Kinship in African American Muslim Literature ....................................................................................... 20 Chapter 2 Marvin X’s Land of My Daughters: Being More Universalistic on the Same Particularistic Ground ................................................... 45 Chapter 3 Murad Kalam’s Night Journey: The Precondition to Solving the Structural Urban Poverty .......................................................... 76 Chapter 4 Dispelling Essentialism and Building Alliance in South Asian American Muslim Literature .............................................................................. 102 Chapter 5 Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced: Putting Essentialism in the Spotlight .......................................................................................... 121 Chapter 6 Wajahat Ali’s The Domestic Crusaders: Purging the Model Minority Status............................................................................................. 138 Conclusion Towards the Investigation on Wider Muslim Experiences through the Epistemic Status of Muslim American Literature ................................................... 154 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 166 1 Introduction Historicizing Muslim American Literature The Kite Runner is the first work of fiction by an American writer with Muslim background that achieved a significant success in the United States and internationally, not only as a novel, but also as a major Hollywood movie. There had been movies about American Muslims before The Kite Runner, including Today’s Special, written by and starring Aasif Mandvi, an Indian American comedian; however, none of them had enjoyed a massive success comparable to that seen by The Kite Runner. The novel tells the story of Amir, an Afghani immigrant in California who hides a guilt from his childhood and makes a journey back to Afghanistan to make up for the childhood sin. After going through a dramatic trouble1, Amir eventually succeeds in redeeming his childhood guilt, saving his best friend’s son from the hand of a local Taliban figure, and becoming a more religious American Muslim person. Published not long after the start of U.S. Invasion of the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the story shows that there are at least two types of Muslims: the good Muslims and the bad Muslims. The notion of good Muslims and bad Muslims itself is not unique to The Kite Runner. Mahmood Mamdani discussed this notion in relation to the American policy in discussing the presence of Muslims both within the U.S. borders as well as internationally. As Mamdani observes, the roots of the notion of good and bad Muslims could be traced to the proponents of the “Culture Talk,” the theory that “assumes that every culture has a tangible essence that defines it, and it then explains politics as a consequence of that essence” (17). Under this notion, a 1 The Kite Runner’s story, especially the second part, the adventures of Amir in Afghanistan, is so dramatic that Stephen Chan even comments that the second part is “all Hollywood,” which constitutes the book’s “great fault,” i.e. “it was Hollywood even before it was acquired” (832). 2 person’s cultural background is the strongest cause for his or her views and actions. This notion is most prominent and famous in the work of Samuel P. Huntington on the “clash of civilizations,” a phrase that Huntington borrows from prominent orientalist Bernard Lewis, whose use of “civilization” here can be substituted by the word “culture” in Mamdani’s sense above. For Huntington and Lewis, the 9/11 events were the proof of such theory. However, realizing that the act of a few people cannot define an entire religion, George W. Bush said in a formal statement made after the 9/11 events that only a bad minority of Muslims—instead of the entire global Muslim community—were to be blamed for such crime. In short, some Muslims are bad and some others are good. Regardless, the notion is strong that, to be considered a regular member of the U.S. community, Muslims must pass a certain type of litmus test, the good/bad test. This dichotomy of “good Muslims and bad Muslims” implies that Muslims are not yet considered an ordinary part of the American fabric. The regular Gallup poll results
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