Gendered Ways of Transnational Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective

Edited by Indrani Mukherjee and Java Singh

Edited by Indrani Mukherjee and Java Singh

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-3056-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-3056-0 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... viii

Preface ...... ix

Part I. Un-Belonging through Displaced Borders

‘Women of Colour’ Feminism and Poetic Post-9/11 Ethnic Identity in the Discourse of Arab-American...... Women Writers ...... 2 Omar Baz Radwan

War, Rebellion, Un-belonging: and the Crisis Representations of of Women in KhaledA Thousand Hosseini’s Splendid Suns ...... 25 Abin Chakraborty

18th Century Women Travel Writers: Their World, World View, and the Spirit of Adventure...... 37 Gatha Sharma

The Voice of Rebellion in the Poetryr Lens ... of Umpierre 52 through a Quee Gursheen Ghuman

Space, the Fiftht LiteraryPillar of Criticism: Feminist Beach Militan and Erotic Templeore inNarratives the Seashossi of Cristina Peri R and Anuradha Roy ...... 69 Java Singh

Part II. Un-Belonging through the Democratic Global

Feminism in the Time of Neo-Liberal Women Empowerment: A Study of Select IndianOnline Television/ Advertisements...... 88 Kavya Krishna K.R.

Indo-Oriental —FromTantra Knowledge in the West to Commodity: The Recourse of a Privileged...... Discourse in the Popular 106 ...... Ratul Ghosh vi Contents

Colonial Modernity, Formationentity: of the Nation-State and Tribal Id Localizing the Identity of AdibhumiBonda ... Women 124 in Pratibha Ray’s Sarat Kumar Jena

Mapping Madness when the Moon Smiles:y The Fashioning of Identit and Dis(Order) in the Female Body in Chandani Lokuge’s If the Moon Smiled ...... 142 Tara Senanayake

New Middle ClassesThe in White Aravind Tiger: Adiga’s Politicsxclusion of E ...... 158 Juan Jose Cruz

Part III. Un-Belonging through Defiant Re-Writings

Revisting Edna y,St. the Vincent Forgotten Milla Authoress who Markedeneration a G ...... 176 Ana Abril Hernández

Fairy Tales andStructures’: ‘Constraints Remappingairy of Select F Tales and Their Film Adaptations...... through a Feminist 190 Lens ...... Eram Shaheen Ansari

From Damsels-in-Distress to Indomitabledian Rebels: Women on the In Screen ...... 202 Sanghita Sen

MahaswetaImaginary Devi’s Maps: A Critique of the Native Coloniser in Postcolonial India...... 218 Pamoda Jayaweera

Refiguring of Sita:aran NotesAsan’s on Poetics Kum...... of Freedom 226 Vipin K. Kadavath

Part IV. Un-Belonging through Defiled Bodies

Raped, Mutilated, and Murdered: Gendered Bodies from the Diaz Universe ...... 242 Parichay Patra

Gendered Ways of -BelongingTransnational from Un avii Comparative Literature Perspective From Connoisseurs of Art to Victims of Flesh-Trade: The ‘Other Woman’ in ShyamMandi Benegal’s ...... 254 Sarbani Bannerjee

Reading the Politicsugh Films of Body about thro” the “Dirty War in Argentina ...... 265 Rama Paul

Reclaiming the VaginaThe throughVagina Monologues Eve Ensler’s and Responsesian Adaptations in Ind ...... 279 Anum Fatima and Ariba Zainab

Reading Nidia Díaz’ Prison Diary as Embodied Matter through Karen Barad’sw Materialism Ne ...... 292 Baishali Choudhuri and Indrani Mukherjee

Contributors ...... 307 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Prof. Prasenjitrdinator Sen, Rector, JNU and Coo of the university research grantersity under with the project UPE-II (Univ Potential of Excellence–II),rganize which made a it possible for us to o Young Scholars’Gendered Conference Myths of Conflict on and Un- belonging from August 2-3, 2016. Most of the papers included are revised versions of the conference presentations.ions from Some were later addit colleagues and scholars acrossculation the globe of in response to the cir the Call for Papers.lso like We wouldto thank aarruthers Ms. Victoria C of the Cambridge Scholars Publishinghe who saw in our programme t potential of this book and offered to take to this publish it. We would like opportunity to express our gratitudetcher, to Theo Moxham, Hannah Fle Adam Rummens, and of the the whole CSP forteam their support. Finally, we thanks and all copy the editorsreviewerapers. of these p PREFACE

This book, as the title suggests,ans-national is about ‘gendered ways of tr un-belonging from a comparativeization literature and perspective’. Global neoliberal polities have ledom to all increasing over numbers of people fr the world to transit south to inland north/east-west or finance-scapes of international territories.being At the fought same time, battles today are not only on the borders betweenaste-race nations, ethnicities or class-c paradigms but also on a whole setes of new frontiers such as issu legitimacy, sexuality, trauma,aces and of terrorism amidst widening sp law-and-orderlytransnational’ societies.ricted The thus ‘ to is un- not rest belonging(s) related just tooss travel, nations, immigration, and exile acr but also plays out through multipolartities, crevices of gendered iden spatialities, and chronologiesgendered’ within as ‘nations’. a It addresses ‘ site of precarity, alterity, dispossessed fluidity, lesser, disadvantaged or though, often, enabling and agency provoking. Most of the authors of this bookaculty are research scholars and/or f members of reputed universities from India and abroad who were participants at a Young Gendered Scholars’ Myths of Conference on Conflict and Un-Belonging from a Comparative Literature Perspective (Under Project ― Potential University of with orExcellence the UPE- -- II II, Project ID 10, JNU), held fromfter, August also 2-3, 2016. We, therea invited some other scholars anditutions faculty to members from other inst write for this volume. All theiewed papers by havea been double peer rev distinguished scientific committee. The conference was a call to explore and gendered myths of conflict un-belonging against patriarchald misogyny. tropes, social hierarchies, an However, when we received all there papers, we found that they we actually addressingprocesses involved the in such alienation and struggle rather than just interpretingioms myths of as such. Un-belonging in id political and socio-economic es memories that encounter certain slippag disturb language, geography, towardsand history as habit making a push translation and erally,comparitivism. theseaces/times papers Gen track sp of real/ghost-like hybridityt inis suchforced ways that any comparativis to overcome issuesivalence of passive or samenesse, equ instead, to propos a reification of the politicalthe and scope the of personal, thus widening the study. Consequently thereyered is a heightenedand sense of multi-la x Preface rhizomic intersections of differentlence at play, kinds of gender related vio un-weaving therebyistemologies. predictable gh This ep un- new and rou weaving, cuts across fixed paradigmsr designs of institutionalized gende on one hand and deconstructs andigms problematizes on said fixed parad the other. Thus questions of global and local transnationalism in our book address how the authors work either through representations or performatives of their own geo-politicalugh those of location or often thro foreign ones but, spaces always of sitedtranslocation,sit, in and the tran transnational from where theyature can see of both sides. The unique fe this book rests on this aspectframing of the texts authors’ locations, thus from a comparative literaturethis and sense. transnational perspective in The authors in this volume are as unique they in their double operation iteratively appropriate,and hybridize reject, hegemonicmologies. episte The double bind of the writershes modifies they the theoretical approac use. Thus, the book not only providesdjusts its a reading lens but also a focal length to cast light differentially seemingly from other books with comparable headings. Hence thes they title of the book is justified a explore and expunge the idea of un- ‘gendered ways of transnational belonging fromarative a comp perspective’. The papers are arranged in four sections: Un-belonging through displaced borders, the democraticand defiled global, defiant re-writings, bodies. In the first section,rders, Un-belonging all through Displaced Bo the five papers/authors trackwithin shifting borders across nations, nations, withoutrough nations thesnational. tran or th Omar Baz Radwan writese works about of two th Arab-American women poets, Lailam ‘rage’ Halaby’s and Angele poee Blue Ellis’s’ ‘Th State Ghazals’.tle They and resist insensitive subal ways of raci discrimination, in order to exposehe post the hegemonic discourse of t 9/11 situation and puncture stereotypedst Arab and images of the Orientali the Christian American. Theirs poetryof their negotiates shifting border own citizen status, of Americansfear and and Arabs in the Iraq war, of rage of imposed patriotism, etc.orders What we see at play here are b without and within/images/consciousness. nations Abin Chakraborty’s paper takes us to Afghanistan, in Khaled Hosseini’sA Thousand Splendid Suns, where women were caught in a double contradiction. While they a result mourn those who were killed as of fighting against the Russians, regressive they are pushed back into the regime of the USan. supported ‘Can the Talib white brown man save the woman from the brownmes a man?’ transnational beco matter. Gendered Ways of -BelongingTransnational from Un axi Comparative Literature Perspective Gatha Sharma explores two travelary writings, Lady Montagu’s and M Wollstonecraft’s. Women travellingth century, when and writing in the 18 any venture into the public sphere’, was was a considered as ‘intrusion very rare case of breach. Butat they is inbreak spite another border too, th of the orientalist gaze, Lady personalMontagu finds the harem as a safe space for women, gvery in the much European wantin Mary world; while Wollstonecraft is fierce in wealth her criticism and of Europe’s lust for slavery. The Euro-centrics become tainted bordertions. with contradic Gursheen Ghuman’s paper argues how the poetry of Luz Maria Umpierre locates the queer ine, trans-locations which of a ‘Third’ spac becomes the voice of rebellion.sonal It and negotiates the realms of the per public with respect to one’s xilesexuality, within in terms of bodies in e heteronormative . knowledge The borders systems that her poetry draws/breaks are fluid and unstablernative as they adventure with alte cartographies of bodies and spaces,n-ness of thus destabilizing the give dominant narrativess, normativity, of hierarchie. and knowledges Java Singh positionsfulcrum ‘space’ to weigh asted a in on selec writings of Cristina Peri Rossiheoretical and Anuradha Roy. The paper’s t approach, built upon the axioms Bakhtin, of Elaine Showalter and Mikhail concentrates on the the seashore. portrayal Peri oftwo Rossi, with nationalities – Spanish and Uruguayan,er location is always conscious of h at the borders and Roy’s narrativeuts of starts the with the tragic fallo creation of a new nation. Singhetical analyses the play of the antith Bakhtinian chronotopes of thresholde texts of and the Gothic castle in th these writers. The emergence theof a writers common literary technique of suggests a gendered alignmentns. through un-belonging across natio The authors/papers in the second global part and sit on the edges of the the local to examinen globally the breaks mandatedhat i on thecircuits t one hand, seek new products andxclude new markets and on the other, e groups that do not conform to theirircuits, economic agenda. In these c imprinted with democratic codes, the a movement from the margins to centre, such as fromly less an economical developedan country to advanced one or of the centre totion the of margin, such as the imposi dominant national paradigmsogress. on tribal The populations, signifies pr papers in this section contest the notion of ‘progress’. Kavya Krishna K.R. attempts to ts, understand, through advertisemen the paradoxical reconciliationl logic of diametrically of opposed cultura feminism and of global capitalism.advertisements The paper analyses selected that were widely discussed and apparent shared on social media for their ‘feminist’ stand point. The “Top symbolise Girls” in these advertisements the gender-sensitive attitudeeking to women empowerment of profit se xii Preface corporate entities. However,rtisements, her analysis reveals that the adve as mouth pieces of global capitalism,cabulary merelyof appropriate the vo feminism without any attempt to address its politics. Ratul Ghosh traces the processes as a that have framed Indian tantra transnational cultural commodity.gh the His paper explains that throu scholarship of numerous religiousthe first and philosophic scholars, by half of the 20th had century, been established tantra as an emancipatory discourse to Western materialismcientific by explicating it as a quasi-s body of knowledge. Subsequently,channels celluloid, media, and digital were deployed for marketing sexualsh pleasure as a commodity. Gho explores how, in this strategy,in the the class consumer becomes a student of esotericism offered by the global culture industry. Sarat Kumar Jena gleans the remnantstruct of of coloniality in the cons modernity foisted by the centreentation on the periphery.of The misrepres indigenous societies does notettisoned end when the colonial elite are j from power structures. The exclusionaryted by democratic systems adop the decolonised nation-stater perpetrate institute a local elite who furthe the misrepresentation. Jena’sThe Primal Landreading of Pratibha Ray’s (Adibhumi) reveals that Ray’s construction of the sexuality of Bonda women propagates a reductive collectiveous identity of the indigen community and the translation ofthe the text in English broadcasts hegemonic representation of the Bonda to a global readership. The last two papers in Part II itingsare commentaries on diasporic wr from Australia.views Tara Senanayakethe Sri Lankan-Australian writer, Chandani IfLokuge’s the Moon Smiled as a contributory element in the invention of migrant identitiesybridity. and the The creation of diasporic h convergences betweenl and feminist postcolonia approaches,eby wher both formulations attempt a defenceare brought of the marginalised other, to bear on the ‘mapping’ of thee protagonist’s paper body and mind. Th considers the question whetheress” the and protagonist’s eventual “madn transgression of sexual taboos confirm are emancipatory or whether they that the migrant woman’s sub-altern as she condition remains unchanged moves from a traditional, lessconomically developed country to a modern, e advanced society. Juan José Cruz studies the enumerationtoll of of the inevitable human economic growthThe White Tiger in, by Aravind Adiga -- the Indo- Australian, Man Booker winnere (2008). novel The epistolary form of th establishes a direct trans-nationalitically communication between a pol invisiblepícaro Indianand a global political leader. The letters foreground the struggles of the underclassf the asoligarchs. it contests the centrality o The gleaming veneer of modernityporations espoused by multi-national cor Gendered Ways of -BelongingTransnational from Un xiiia Comparative Literature Perspective barely concealsiminality the mercenary uponrimposed. whichcr it is supe Jose Cruz focusesddle-class’ on the ‘new portrayed mivel to in the no divulge that despite its “newness” of it perpetuates the dominance traditionally hegemonic groups. Part three, ‘Un-belonging throughs Defiant Rewritings’, comprise papers whose authors consciouslyh textual choose, address or read throug memories of generic and/or traditionalt different tales, to re/de-construc kinds of comparitivisms of genderedl spaces. identities navigating globa Ana Abril Hernández,xplores a poem e ‘The Penitent’t from Vincen Millay’sA Few Figs from Thistles (1920) against its graphic adaptation in theGraphic Canon Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest (2013). She argues how an evolving and embodied subject of the poem struggles through heraining public/personal to anxieties appert her desires of freedom and equalityiarchal from set- within a stifling patr up. The graphic rendition of thef- poem, however, sounds more sel indulgent and less she seems stressful to bear asout no her regrets ab sexual adventureser domesticated nor of h spaces. Eram Shaheen Ansariting begins that fairy by noe tales perpetuat gender roles and that Walt Disneyrarchies renditions as reinstate such hie they infantilise issues of sexualityject has no and gender. The female sub agency as she is docile and demure‘noble waiting for redemption by a prince’. She contrasts these engage with their in recent adaptations that critically undoing the patriarchales. order through feminist stanc Likewise, Sanghita Sen addresses how most Indian films end up replicating prescribedereotypes; gender yet argue some st actually in do favour of women’s agency, in spiteps. Such of predatory masculine set-u set-ups exist not just on-screenhe censor but also off-screen, such as t board, community vigilante groupsalyses or two even unfair courts. She an films of the parallelMirch Masala, cinema: set in colonial times and Bhawandar, the account of India, a rape retold in rural by an American Indian. Thus filmic retellingsord forbidden of fictional or real stories rec tales throughsnational tran modes. Pamoda Jayaweera, a Sri Lankan herself, chooses to work with Mahasweta Devi’s Imaginary Maps text to explore questions of un- belonging in theate. Indian Jayaweera nation-stn mediates concepts betwee of the nation as a homogenous ort critical plural entity through differen discourse and submits Devi’sn texts order to to a post-colonial reading i articulate subaltern un-belonging.in the The indigenous are excluded programme of the nation-stated through ‘non- slavery, prostitution, an information’ in ways that sanitizeational neo-colonial drives as the n prescription. xiv Preface

While there have been many retellingsRamayana, of Sita in the epic mostly framed within the nationalistninity, bourgeoisie ideals of femi Vipin K. Kadavath dwells onChinthavishtayaya Kumaran Asan’s poem, Sita to address how the national iconer in is a given agency by locating h prohibited dialogic zone ofas introspection. a thinking Sita is re-imagined subject who can seee injustices through all she and th has who suffered thereafter decidesurn to thenever palace to ret of Rama. Part four is the climaxing ofateriality all ways of un-belonging to the m of the body. Lav Diaz’ cinematic space is filledviolently with women’s bodies of the raped and mutilated, dead or hethe purgatory survived who transit through t trans-spaces acrosss films. and It beyond connectsually hi with intertext sound tracks of whiplashes in theh a films of Pere Portabella, wit distraught lone woman in the workñuel’s of Ritwick Ghatak and with Bu repertoire. It also intersectsJosé with Rizal, Dostoevsky, Glauber Rocha, and the biblicalary characters Magdalene of among M. many others Parichay Patra argues that eventually consumes only cinema remains as it the world it sets out to inspect. over Un-belonging into all of bodies spills spaces without borderst remains so is that onlynd wha light. the sound a In contrast to disappearing andegal’s spilled over bodies, Shyam Ben Mandi is a film full ofactice women their who pr artlture of courtesan cu but refuse to sell their bodiese argues as prostitutes. how Sarbani Banerje the market pulls everything towardsmen’s itself as it commodifies wo bodies like any e other women object. craft their Thto resistance commodification, by seeking recoursebonds to traditions of familial among the brothel women as wellmbination as to the courtesan role – a co of artful (re)presentation andcustomers. sex work, they perform for their Rama Paul’s paper dwells on bodiesions and that write back as inscript that are located in Argentina’sed bodies‘Dirty War’. Dead and disappear are spread all over the nation.es de But la the Plaza living ones of the Madr de Mayo silently mourn the ‘disappeared’al gaze. As before the internation bodies are tortured, defiled,ed and markers mutilated, they become embodi of history and containers of knowledge.enied the Yet, these bodies are d role of knowledge makers. The spaper context examines three films in thi of violated bodies as knowledgeThe Night of the Pencils makers/markers. (1986),Imagining Argentina (2003),Death and and the Maiden (1994) show how the body foregrounds itselfhich a in repressive regimes on w counter-narrative of resistance in no is way played out. While this essay refutes the violence suffered violentby men during such oppressive and regimes, itscted scope to isthe restri female body. Gendered Ways of -BelongingTransnational from Un axv Comparative Literature Perspective Anum Fatima and AribaThe Vagina Zainab Monologues look and at its Indian adaptations. In patriarchaly is reduced systems, the woman’s bod only to its reproductive and sexuals the organs. The paper interpret transition of the body from a mereal one reproductive as organ to a sexu effectedThe Vagina in Monologues . Though intended as a monologue, the paper argues that the play isween actually the a dialogic narrative bet woman and the prohibited zone of It her is own pleasures and desires. about her reckoning with itsThe being writers cast as ‘ugly’ and ‘dirty’. subsequently examine culturaloducing and linguistic the challenges of repr play for Indian audiences. Thete Indian through production had to negotia different local societal taboos.onservative It also had to encounter the c and regressive forces of theme traditionalists. a huge Yet the play beca success as the ‘vagina’ exposednd pleasures the histories of violence on, a of, women’s bodies. The last paper in this book readsough Nidia Diaz’ prison memoir thr Karen Barad’s concept of new materialism,isibility focusing on the indiv of matter and meaning or that ofiaz’ the body and the mind. Nidia D prison memoir was years written after twenty she actually faced imprisonment and torture. Choudhuri and Mukherjee show that the memoir is an embodied narrativeDiaz and materially agency laden as vividly recollects the eventshe of and torture her and humiliation that s comrades faced. The body thats was back’ written as upon, actively ‘write it rejects any kind of conformitya or submission. The memoir is performative so that it recodesand subvertand reprocesses itself to defy any matters of societalc habit of or language generiritual as of a mere representation. Entangled performativitymoir of the body and the me expose how representation hasc beenhabit reduced of to a mere ritualisti the mind and a semiotic of body movements. Thus gendered subjects in the , selected texts face displacement discrimination, defilementimmigration and/or death due to forced exile or to vile spaces such as distantdue lands, to prisons, and brothels or compulsive breakawaysliar ensconced from fami spacesd of home an domesticity. At the same time,cientiously all the authors (of papers) cons take a threshold position as theyexts plough that through their chosen t negotiate across either historical,time-space- fictional, and/or mythical materialities, so that a trans-national un-belonging gendered perspective of is further reiterated. It oubleis this bind, un-belonging result that is like a d of the texts consciously chosenciously and the threshold position cons taken by the authors, towards a he new etiquette of empathy with t dislocated and the dispossessed.f any They labour from the outside o national literature and are criticalms of of any patronising paradig xvi Preface prescribed/approved theoretical-politics templates informed by a new geo of knowledge. The threshold positioningthors of the texts and the au disrupts the epistemologicalf order exiled as they resist stereotypes o and/or diasporic subjects,xed of hybridtextualities or queer identities, of fi and often simply of an imaginedoral- self and the other. Spatio-temp material borders of nostalgia,ies aspirations are and immediate realit reconfigured in very unique leways a different as sites of struggle that enab kind of actionable thinking aimedon. Such at delinking and decolonizati borders are also informed by gendery and troubles so that masculinit femininity are articulatedThe as fluid, papers variegated, are and unstable. now presented before you for your approval.

PART I.

UN-BELONGING THROUGH DISPLACED BORDERS ‘WOMEN OFCOLOUR ’ FEMINISM ANDP OST-9/11 ETHNICIDENTITY IN THEPOETIC DISCOURSE ARAB OF- AMERICANWOMEN W RITERS

OMARB AZR ADWAN

Abstract

Resistance to the appropriationural of roles Arab women’s bodies and cult has been a cornerstone of Arab-American three feminisms over the last decades. Sincest the attacks, 9/11 terrori ther beneed written”1 to “write o has assumed a greaterith the urgency, rise ofry, wanti-Arab the bigot sweeping deployment of neo-OrientalistMuslims narratives of Arabs and in the service of U.S. foreignacial policy, and and the sanctioning of r religious profiling vis-à-viset Nathaliethe Patriot Act. Arab-American po Handal writes, “Who are you,others still if you find answer it and necessary to redefine your identity] How do without your permission? [… you define yourself when you’re hyphenated, or maybe even bi- hyphenated, whene incessantness you exist in ses?”th of2 In in-betweenes this article, I will analyse,hodological using literary imagology as a met approach, the identity politicsl/transnational within rubrics of intersectiona feminist discourse in the identitytal images construction and ensuing men evident in the post-9/11 poeticrab- discourse of two contemporary A American poets, namely Laila Halaby’slis’s’ poem “rage” and Angele El “The Blue State Ghazals”.

1. “Write or be written” forms onethe ofItalian the guiding principles of American Writers Association,e as foreword Barbara to Nimri Aziz notes in th Scheherazade’s Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing. It is a principle, Aziz argues, thatnew has works informed by Arab- the proliferation of American writers, xii. 2. NathalieThe Handal, Poetry of Arab ed., women: A Contemporary Anthology (New York and Northampton: Interlink Books, 2001), 158. Omar Baz Radwan 3

Key Terms: Intersectional/Transnational feminism, Arab-Americans, American ethnic literature, imagology, political poetry.

Arab-American woment, writing, speaking and ousistance mobilizing in re to American hegemonic culturalr they and political are discourses, whethe neo-colonialist,eropatriarchal, nationalist,inist, or het indeed, is not a fem recent phenomenon, a floweringacks. in3 the aftermath of the 9/11 att Arab-American feministsng understood have that losion gender oppres cannot be divorced from other tedly,forms of that oppression or, more poin “an oppressive cannot gender [emphasis system in original] work without the collaboration of other systems4 The need of to power and oppression.” identify and investigate intersecting at the heart oppressions has also been of women-of-colour-feminism andve many Arab-American feminists ha claimed feminism of colour ase. their When political and spiritual hom U.S. governments use the ‘plight’enerate of Arab and Muslim women to g support for war, when Arab nationalistreedoms leaders revoke women’s f in the name of ‘cultural authenticity’,en’s when the mainstream wom movement takes it upon itselfrab to sisters,voice the struggles of their A the bounding of genderwith racial, struggle colonial,onal and nati oppressions is clear. StrategiesAmerican of resistance, then, for Arab- feminists over thees have last predominantly two decadiculated been art within intersectional and transnationaltransnational feminist frameworks. A feminist visionerogeneous prioritizes voices hets and and the experience “hybrid culture of5 This all paper communities”. will examine how Arab- American feministso re-envision have sought Arab-Americanntity t ide through intersectional and transnationald will feminist frameworks an explore some of the struggles encounteredy from in trying to move awa identity politics to a conception, shifting, of identity and as hybrid, plural continually negotiated. This logical analysis will then inform an imago

3. As Amira Jarmakani notes, “Sinceade Center the attacks and on the World Tr the Pentagon in 2001,sic] feminism Arab American has been [ portrayed and perceived, from a mainstreamor perspective, newly forming,” as suddenly relevant 231. 4. Rebecca Aanerud,gain: “Thinking This Bridge A and Called the my Back Challenge to Whiteness,”This Bridge We Call Home: in Radical Visions for Transformation, eds. G. Anzaldúa and A. Keating (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 70. 5. Ella Shohat,Talking Visions: ed., Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Pressf and New York: New Museum o Contemporary Art, 1998), 56. 4 ‘Women of Colour’nd Post-9/11 Feminismhnic Identity a Et reading of post-9/11 identityrary construction texts by in the selected lite Arab-American women poets. Using imagology as a literary two tool, I will analyse the works of contemporary Arab-American poetsge” namely Layla Halaby’s poem “ra and Angele Ellis’s “The Blue Stateogical Ghazals.” Building on imagol constructions of cultural hetero-imagesand as well as auto-images feminist studies theories,esentations this article of addresses cultural repr Arab-Americans evident in theresented subjective in textual negotiations p the relevant literary discourse.

Feminism and the Poetry of Arab-American Women: Double Marginalisation

The terrorist attacks of September Arab- 11 and the ramifications for Americans on a discursive, experiential,an and psychic level had immediate and far-reaching impact Arab- on the cultural production of American women’siting poetry. of personal The wrdentities and cultural i for Arab-Americans been poets inextricably has alwaypolitics. shaped by According to Arab-Americant and critic Hayan poegement Charara, “enga with the political, especiallyiddle in termsEast, of U.S. policy in the M seems to bring Arabsic] together Americans more [ than any other experience.”6 Imagologist Joep Leerssen defines collective identities as “the awareness of a shared past the […]. very Historical awareness is at root of group7 The identity.” shared historical awareness of the role of U.S. foreign policy in fomenting crises in the Middle East and representing thean Arab alien peoples ‘other’litical as to further ends po has been deeply felt in the poetryed, ofthe Arab-American women; inde political nature of identityhe has emergence been a recurring theme since t of Anglophone poetry by women poets 9/11 in the 1960s. The events of brought home a culture of mistrust, against intimidation, and prejudice Arabs and Muslims on a scale never society, before witnessed in American spurring Arab-American women poetsre to become more daring and mo direct in resistingthe written through and spoken word. Challenging stereotypesomen and men of Arabin Americanral w cultu and political discourse and highlighting of sexism the interconnectedness

6. Hayan Charara,Inclined to Speak: ed., An Ant hology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry (Fayetteville: of ArkansasThe University Press, 2008), xxiv. 7. Manfred Beller andImagology: Joep The Leerssen, Cultural Construction eds., and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey (Amsterdam andrk: NewRodopi, Yo 2007), 336. Omar Baz Radwan 5 and racism that inform them has Arab- been a central preoccupation of American women poets. The poetryms both deconstructs and transfor cultural representations of the Arab community through diverse stratagems, so that resistingfiant is never stance simply a defensive or de but an opportunityency to through reclaim asking tions ag larger of ques American society and ethnic identity.of The need to find a space belonging in a culture that marginalisesilate them them or seeks to assim has seen Arab-Americants chart women a history poes and of rebellion accommodations vis-à-visnd Arab culture. Americanked An a over-loo aspect of this work is the humour, sarcasm, and irony commonly employed to ridicule mainstream visions of Arab women and men. Feminism of colourl theory intersectiona becomesr the instructive fo reading of Arab-American poetry precisely women’stance because to resis oppression is on multiple fronts,efies an oppositional stance that d attempts to posit a unique Arabrgues or Arab-American for identity and a a multiplicity of readings. Indeed, in 2004, Barbara Nimri Aziz, writing charged that “we [Arab-Americaneal writers] expose little of the r conflicts we face we […] can I really doubt advance ifopenly without confronting the ills that afflictt us, internal us, the and barriers that confron external. We are the opposite point of the in angry our young artist at this journey.”8 While it remains true that Arab-American women poets, as citizens of the United States, have emphasised external prejudices and injustice in their work over explorationers, a of intra-communal matt number of contemporary poets initionsare challenging of essentializing def Arab womanhood and Arab masculinity emanating from both private (intra-communal) and public (Islamist-nationalist)often discourses, contextualizing through these discoursesa relationalon of neo- examinati colonial and neo-Orientalist discourses.

Women of colour consciousness: “write or be written”

Laila Halaby: rage. In the poem “rage” fromMy her poetry collection Name onHis Tongue (2012), Laila Halaby emphasises the outsider status of the Arab-American in mainstream American society through an unflinching dissection of liberal-poet projects multiculturalism. The speaker a particular feminist readingthe of white liberal multiculturalism onto middle-class mother, which isiousness. underpinned by the logic of obliv

8. Nimri Aziz,Scheherazade’s “Foreword,” Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing, ed. Susan M.port Darraj CT: (West Praeger, 2004), (xv). 6 ‘Women of Colour’nd Post-9/11 Feminismhnic Identity a Et

While the thematic scope and variousaby’s poetic voices found in Hal debut collection, together withnd nostalgia, her frequent recourse to homela belie attempts to situate herAfrican- as a protest poet in the vein of American feministsnd June Audre Jordan, Lorde n a her of condemnatio U.S.-led wars in the Middle EastPalestine and the are Israeli occupation of commonly infused with the palpableblack anger and call to action of protest poetry. a “[R]age” first-person employsential embodied experi approach (Dowdy) of in the the exchange unfoldingpeaker- between the s poet and the liberal mother; of yet, embodied there is a concomitant strain authoritative agency in the strategyertakes, of so resistance the poem und that the text can be understoodleng[ing] as a confrontational poem “chal […] readers to act and to redefine9 I will argue their that consciousnesses.” this challengeite is liberaldirectede readers, femal lingat wh oncal them to recognise that their effortsbedded at multicultural within solidarity are em an ethnocentric mind-set. Arab-American identity is primarilyof affirmed through negation, what one is not: the hetero-imager whose of the liberal American mothe culture and values are white.ess Bell as hooks an has argued that whiten ethnicity has not been prioritisedduction: in “In academic and cultural pro far too much contemporary writingf […] race is always an issue o Otherness that10 Halaby’s is not white.” resistance turns the mirror onto white women through what Renae Moorela Bredin has termed “guerril ethnography”. Halabys the “white” delegitimise concernsliberal of the mother’s anti-war position byhies situating of them within the hierarc power that inform them. A guerrillae liberal ethnographic portrait of th mother is consolidatedher own speech, through herwhich true lays bare misgivings about the war, anduction through of the speaker-poet’s constr her whiteness in imagotypes. the accretion of “[R]age” is sub-titled: war, day 6”, “the immediatelyextualizing Iraq cont the rage within the post-9/11 lusionArab-American of experience. The inc “day 6”, a war ineaks its to infancy, all the still sphorror to comethat is and marks this particular day as being significance ofpeaker-poet’s in the s relational experience of the war.ing “I” “[R]age” opens with the speak denouncing the war and registeringect her own powerlessness to aff change:

9. MichaelAmerican Dowdy, Political Poetry in the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 27. 10. As quoted in Chela Sandoval,e “U.S.Theory Third and World Feminism: Th Method of Oppositional ConsciousnessinGenders 10 in the Postmodern World,” (1991): 22. Omar Baz Radwan 7

I am angry at everyone for not doing enough to stop this I am numb with fear and sadness for everyone11 involved

The speaker-poet inculpates failingsWestern society as a whole for its “to stop this” and her empathyders; crosses the cultural and psychic bor repetition of “everyone” wouldand appearsadness” to signal that her “fear is directed bothople at and the the Iraqi Americancompelled pe soldiers to perform their duty.

mostly I am impotent

which is why this safe school for little children is a blessing

where people say how are you? and mostly mean it

the Brazilian teacher leans outside, smiles you guys okay? my rage quiets throughout the sweet morning filled with giggles

digging and singing crackers and popsicles stories and12 cuddles

The public realm of “school”on is as domesticated a “safe” in its significati space, a “blessing”, where theowledge speaker poet’s impotence, her kn that there is nothingeaningfully one can do m inr, the is face of wa assuaged by the innocence and simplicity and of childhood, “digging singing / crackers and popsicleseaker-poet / stories and cuddles”. The sp

11. Laila Halaby,My Name “rage,” on His Tongue in (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012), 97. 12. Ibid., 97-98. 8 ‘Women of Colour’nd Post-9/11 Feminismhnic Identity a Et infers that children and theout spaces the best in which in they reside bring people, orfaces their, “where best people how are you? say / and / mostly mean it”. The politehow are you? greeting” goes beyond “ a surface reading to a “mostly” sympatheticet’s recognitionArab of the speaker po ethnicity and hence, engagementd in with the the war, which is reflecte Brazilian you teacher’s guys okay?” It “ is significant that the one unquestioned act of solidarityperson in the of poem comes from a fellow colour. As such, for Halaby, genuiner Arab- inclusion and communion fo Americans is embodied in transnationalin the affiliations understood shared strugglece of by racial global injusti racialisedts. It is “the subjec sweet morning / filled with giggles”anger to that helps the narrator’s subside, but it is the plightes of the children narrator “over there” that mak finally snap and direct her feelings target. ofThe impotence at a tangible sanctuary of children’s spacesn”13 whereinis war “is all but forgotte shattered when the political infiltrates the domestic sphere:

we are headed to the car and I am ambushed not by a right-wing pro-war evangelical Christian parent who questions my nationality worries about our connections

but by a well-traveled liberal mother who stops me puts her hand on my arm

as you would to someone who is grieving and quivers I’m outraged14

The interplay oft work hetero-images here positsarcation a a binary dem of white America along socio-politicalmind-set lines, the conservative with its externalised prejudicesociety and and fears a of a multicultural s liberal anti-war anti-racisto-multicultural consciousness, righteous in its pr enlightenment. The successionconservative of tropes in the creation of the parent imagotype (“right-wing,”an”) “pro-war,” is “evangelical Christi

13. Ibid., 98. 14. Ibid., 98. Omar Baz Radwan 9 mirrored in theng imagined of the speaker profilinationality” poet, whose “ and “connections” speak to ati-American, neo-Orientalist portrait of the an Muslim/Arab ethnotype fanatic, an that reached new levels of hysteria after 9/11.ed The conservative imagin parent alterity: performs a surface Muslim/Arab culture as inimicalistian to the democratic values of Chr America begets an inability tofellow recognise the speaker-poet as a American. While the conservativence, parent the cannot see past differe liberal mother refusesedge difference to acknowlope at of all. the The tr “well-traveled connotes / liberal a mother” middle-class and status feminist areas of concern relatednce, freedom to this of status, in this insta movement. The liberal mother’s with conspicuous solidarity is imbued theatricalityself-aggrandisement and (“puts her hand on my arm / as you would / to someone who is grievingto the / and quivers”) in contrast Brazilian teacher’s easyyou guys exchange okay?”), a of sympathy (“ disparity further emphasiseded in opening the liberal mother’s self-focus salvo:I’m outraged” “ . The liberal mother never asks the speaker-poet how she is feeling; she presumeshe same their narratives are one and t because of their shared opposition to the war:

then tells me about the gourmet dinners she arranges with fellow liberals to discuss her disgust

I need like-minded people what an awful, sickening, grotesque display …

though I see her anger is genuine perhaps a reflection of my own her designer words make me want15 to spit

The imagotype of the middle-class liberal American mother is consolidated through the tropesner of “gourmet dinners” and “desig words”. Her utter failure to comprehendstarvation, the realities of war – homelessness, displacement, “ sickening,death – render her oblivious to the grotesque display” of discussing “her disgust” with “fellow liberals” at the dinner parties she organises.ignificant The inclusion of “grotesque” is s here as it connotes an image of mask the liberalof mother as wearing a

15. Ibid., 98-99. 10 ‘Women of Colour’nd Post-9/11 Feminismhnic Identity a Et solidarity that is comicallyc misshapen,caricature a guerrilla ethnographi holding a mirrore to of the white ugly liberal façadhe liberal empathy. T mother assimilates the speaker-poetotesquerie within this dinner party gr when sheI needsays, like-minded “ people”, eschewing racial differences in favour of class solidarity. the The liberal speaker-poet recognises that mother’s anger at the Iraq Waron is of “genuine my / perhaps a reflecti own” but it is the incongruitykes of her me “designer words” that “ma want to spit”. However, the perceptione from the that their anger may com same place is quicklyd in the ensuing dispelle stanzas:

bundles of toddlers climb then equipment woode in front of us she points and shakes righteously these children she says and you can is see struggling she with her own fury

these children will not be able to travel

her words have found the keyhole to my locked-up anger which is purple in color

red in volume

children just like these won’t be able to live! shouts my voice16 in puce

The unmasking of the liberal mother’sar true concerns about the w speaks to the consumeristat the heart drive ofociety a neo-liberal and of s the attendant divide between and the third preoccupations of first world world feminists. The individualistimage of ethos underpinning the auto- American identity prioritises ne’s choice, the agency one has over o property and capital. For liberalsts in thefeminists, pre- this choice manife eminence of agency over one’s body.es of The universalizing principl mainstream liberale enacted feminism from ar a ge: place of privile resistance conforms to the prioritiese middle-class and interests of the whit woman, an ethnocentric ideologycial that order. ultimately supports the so

16. Ibid., 99. Omar Baz Radwan 11

According to Leti Volpp, the motivations focus behind Western women’s on specific gender-oppressive practicesbe in the Third World may ultimately self-directed,ection of “what aneself”. proj one17 In fears for o this instance, the “well-traveled”t the war liberal mother’s “fury” abou does not even stretch to womenry or chiefly children “over there”; her fu relates to the acquisitive ve(object-oriented) on middle- effects it will ha class Americansthese children will (“ / not be able to travel”). It is this willfully self-servingof the war that readingthe finally speaker ignites poet’s “locked-up anger”. Thession liberal is to mother’s gravest transgre make middle-classren American the victims childsumes of war. She sub the speaker poetss-based within this consciousness cla“these of war ( children”), absorbing ethnic differences in the service of Western consumerist interests. The speaker-poett, has been who, up until this poin denied an opportunity to enterce the of dialogue, a breaks the semblan maternal class-based solidarityack to by those re-orienting the narrative b children who are actually suffering,es between assimilating the differenc “our children”children and just “theirs”: like these /won’t be “ able to live!” Young children the make world sense and of explore their surroundings through play (“bundlesden of toddlers / climb the woo equipment / in front of us”), aranscends commonality of innocence that t boundaries of class, race or is nationality. compelled The rage in this poem by a transnationalthat maternal comprehends gazehe literal war as both t destruction ofe decimation children and of th childhoodce. innocen The speaker-poet by is the denied liberal agency never mother (she is once asked about her views on theother’s war) because of the liberal m assumption that their anti-warthe consciousness same is emanating from white middle-class consciousness. liberal The mother “points and shakes righteously”, adding anotherc layer portrait: to the guerrilla ethnographi the preachy middle-class feminist.S. foreign loud in her denunciation of U policy, deaf to the voices of e Others. of a The assimilatory principl multicultural logicebration whereby of differencethe a cel systemic elides inequalities that continue tore oppress in this the Other comes to the fo poem and points to the way in whichrab- the silencing of Arab and A American voices can operate on multiplet levels. The speaker-poe reaffirms her agencyng the by liberal decenteri ive, mother’s narrat transforming it from a middle-classo a consumerist consciousness t transnational, Other-directedconsolidate consciousness. The final stanzas the hypocrisy atral work mother’s in the anti-warlibe stance:

17. Leti Volpp, “FeminismColumbia versus Law Review Multiculturalism,” 101.5 (2001): 1181-1218.JSTOR, accessed December 11, 2012, url: http:// www.jstor.org/stable/1123774. 12 ‘Women of Colour’nd Post-9/11 Feminismhnic Identity a Et

decorum broken I carry my three-year-old to safety

away from my unfolded fury

away from abstract visions of war and destruction

away from liberal mothers and their intellectual outrage financed by

working husbands American dollars and discussed over white china plates of marinated18 kebob

The once “safe school / for littleessing”, children” a is no longer a “bl maternal-domestic sphere in whichs”.19 The rage is dissipated by “giggle liberal mother’s cognitive dissonanceo have no towards Other children wh safe havens hastranquility disruptedchildhood any that can spaces bring to the speaker-poet and so “[sheto safety”, carries] her three-year-old / away from this now-politicisedpace, “away from fury”. s [her] unfolded The code of polite middle-classtus society quo – – conforming to the sta has also been shattered (“decorumbles on broken”). the Halaby turns the ta dominant culture by creatingeral a portrait mother of the middle-class lib that renders her both hypervisiblehrough and a invisible (objectified t series of hetero-images:aveled”, “gourmet “well-tresigner dinners”, “d words”, “intellectual“working outrage”, husbands”,ollars”, “American d “white china plates / of marinatedalism kebob”). for Liberal multicultur Halaby becomes ah vehicle which white throug peopletter can feel be about themselves in and the their world. actions Theof ethnic embracing food, gentrified communities,e war, “intellectual and outrage” towards th solidarity with those affected,cting engenders as a a smug superiority, a foil for the imperialist intenty “financed behind theby invasion of a countr / working husbands / Americantiplicity dollars”. of The potential for a mul identifications with the Iraqrn appropriation, War are erased in an act of Weste

18. Halaby,ge,” 99-100.“ra 19. Ibid., 97. Omar Baz Radwan 13 what the speaker-poet identifies/ and destruction”. as “abstract / visions of war However, the speaker-poet’s agencyses to buy will not be erased; she refu into the logic of multiculturalf belonging harmony and affirms her place o is with the ethnic Other and “away from liberal mothers”. The speaker-poet uses the languageoperate of the oppressor culture to in the service of the oppressed; indict the liberalher mother’s own words and, together withof hetero-images the accretiony the put forward b speaker-poet, hold up a scathingle audience. mirror to a white liberal fema Halaby’s wounded mother contrastsntity sharply of with the maternal ide Angele Ellis’s speaker-poet ind in“The the Blue State Ghazals” analyse upcoming section; where Halaby’shood mother in figure finds only false the outreach of liberal feminism,the potential Ellis’s activist mother sees for feminist solidarity acrossAmerican the divide. In the former, Arab- identity is affirmed throughite negation cultural – the repudiation of a wh identity; in thespaces latter, of belonging pluralanger open is up as mobilised in theross-cultural service of anity”. “politicized c 20 mater

Angele Ellis: “The Blue State Ghazals”. “The Blue State Ghazals” from Angele Ellis’s firstArab on Radar book (2007), of poetry, draws on socio- political affiliations in contemporaryculate a American society to arti gendered re-imagining of nationalefer to identity. The ‘blue states’ r Democratic Partythe strongholds espousal oftical and a liberal ethos poli that supports federal interventionand that has, in civil rights legislation since the 1960s, consistently voting drawn on the support of minority blocs across race, gender, andublican class Party lines. The red states, Rep strongholds in the South and Mid-West, are seen to adhere to a conservative political philosophylimited of free-market economics and government that originally appealed the 1964 to white voters who opposed Civil Rights Act. The red state with mentality has become synonymous neo-colonialistlues. white The Christian blue, andthen, vared are states symbolic of dueling visions ofnational America’s cultural identity and character. Ellis’s poem ishe both nation a state lament ofation t and of an affirm communities of solidarity beyondon, ethnicity, tribal identifications of nati race, class, oropening politics quote as ofthe clear: the I’m poem “ makes crying for all the other mothers”.21 It is significant, therefore, that Ellis chooses the form of the ghazal, be a traced love poetry whose origins can back to pre-Islamic Arabian verse,ut from to the bear witness to the fallo

20. The term “politicized maternity”osi. comes from Ann Marie Nicol 21. Angele Ellis, “TheArab Blue on Radar State (Pittsburgh, Ghazals,” PA: in Six Gallery Press, 2007), 26. 14 ‘Women of Colour’nd Post-9/11 Feminismhnic Identity a Et

Iraq 22 War. A preoccupation with an unobtainable love interest, which grew from the ghazaluin ‘Udhrī of the schoolBedod era in the Umayya and is exemplifiedth-century in the poetry poet Jamīl of 7 and his lifelong devotion to hisa, beloved has come Buthayn to define in the the ghazal popular imagination. Ellis’sl are overtures on the to the traditional ghaza level of theme rather than form, idea most of love clearly delineated in the as unconditional and unceasing.s of Ellis recasts the central theme romantic love and loss in termschild, of the that love between mother and love shared by mothers “over here” and “over there”. The formal properties of theer, ghazal the refrain – the the met introduced first in couplet and repeatedof the at second the end lineeeding in each succ couplet, the internal rhyme preceding the refrain, and inclusion of the poet’s name or pseudonym – are in dispensed the final couplet with in Ellis’ free verseof fifteen interpretation unrhymed couplets. “The Blue Statens Ghazals” with the following ope quote:

I’m crying for all the other mothers.23

The import of this quote for Ellisntext must of be understood in the co Sheehan’s stated the solidarity Iraqi peoples,l with the other so that “al mothers” can be read as grievingthere”; mothers “over here” and “over maternal solidarity enactingality. a bridge Sheehan to transnational relation has become the mostgure prominent in the anti-war fispeaking movement, out first and foremost24 and, as thereby, a “peace mom”, following in a long tradition of women’s activismNicolosi that invokes what Ann Marie has called the “cultural25 Nicolosi currency argues of motherhood”. that this currency has provided a framework to for the media and public interpret women’serms activismthat reinforce inder t roles26. accepted gen Ellis does not choose to problematise mother, the trope of the activist nor indeed to investigate politicisedthe service maternity of carried out in the state, as her overriding concern difference is with how communities of can unite in a common cause:other mothersto act has in recognition of the potential for alliance buildingd national outside of closed ethnic an

22. On the ghazal’snd thematics origins see a Allen Ali. 23. Ellis, “The Blue State Ghazals,” 26. 24.Peace Mom became the title of Sheehan’s memoir. 25. Ann Marie Nicolosi,heehan and “Cindy the S Politicserhood.” of Moth Genders 58 (2013): 1, accessed July 16,library.com 2014, url: https://www.thefree /Cindy+Sheehan+and+the+politics+of+motherhood%3A+politicized+maternity +.-a0356353843. 26. Ibid., 1.