University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 8-2014 Transnational Historical Fiction in a Postsecular Age: A Study of the Spiritual Theses in the orW ks of Luis Alberto Urrea and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani Mary Anna Sobhani University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Latina/o Studies Commons Recommended Citation Sobhani, Mary Anna, "Transnational Historical Fiction in a Postsecular Age: A Study of the Spiritual Theses in the Works of Luis Alberto Urrea and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 2217. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2217 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]. Transnational Historical Fiction in a Postsecular Age: A Study of the Spiritual Theses in the Works of Luis Alberto Urrea and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani Transnational Historical Fiction in a Postsecular Age: A Study of the Spiritual Theses in the Works of Luis Alberto Urrea and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies by Mary Sobhani Arkansas State University Bachelor of Arts in Spanish, 1996 University of Pennsylvania Master of Arts in Spanish Literature, 1998 August 2014 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ______________________________ Dr. Steven Bell Dissertation Director ______________________________ _____________________________ Dr. Kirstin Erickson Dr. Susan Marren Committee Member Committee Member Abstract This study, employing a postsecular theoretical prism, analyzes the spiritual theses given expression through the historical fiction of Mexican-American, or Chicano, author Luis Alberto Urrea and exiled Persian Bahá‘í author Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. This study examines three novels: Nakhjavani‘s The Woman Who Read Too Much, Urrea‘s The Hummingbird’s Daughter, and its sequel Queen of America. These novels express world-views in which the spiritual has particular importance, not as a supersession of quotidian reality but in an integral partnership with it, the baseline upon which postsecular thought is built. This study concludes that such an expression of world-views signals towards the change in socio-political philosophy which philosopher and scholar Jürgen Habermas iterates in ―Faith and Knowledge,‖ his acceptance address for the 2001 Peace Prize awarded by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. As per Habermas, a significant change is occurring in twenty-first century Western society; this change, I argue, is evident in the spiritually charged transnational historical fiction of Urrea and Nakhjavani. Acknowledgments The origins of this study go back to Dr. Steven Bell‘s course on U.S. Latino Literature offered at the University of Arkansas. It was through this course that I became familiar with Luis Alberto Urrea. I owe further thanks to Dr. Bell for his thought-provoking guidance in the tightening of arguments and the clarification of points. Likewise, my sincere thanks to committee members Dr. Kirstin Erickson and Dr. Susan Marren. Dr. Erickson‘s expertise on the Yaqui was invaluable, as was Dr. Marren‘s thoughtful commentary. This committee‘s dedication was extraordinary and their encouragement unfailing. Special thanks to my professors, brilliant all: Dr. Mohja Kahf, Dr. Luis Restrepo, Dr. Nicolás Kanellos, Dr. M. Keith Booker, Dr. Reina Ruiz, Dr. Sergio Villalobos, and Milcha Sanchez-Scott. I am also grateful for my colleagues at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith and the administration thereof, whose support and guidance I deeply appreciate. Thank you, especially, to Jacqulyn West, Dr. Henry Rinne, Dr. Joe Hardin, Dr. Gregory Armstrong, Dr. Brenda Ross, Dr. Rosario Nolasco-Schultheiss, Madeline Martínez, Dr. Francesco Tarelli, Dr. Ray Wallace, and Dr. Paul Beran. I feel a special debt of gratitude to Bahiyyih Nakhjavani who generously provided me with the original English-language excerpts from her unpublished manuscript of The Woman Who Read Too Much, and who exchanged numerous emails with me throughout this project. A big thank you, too, to Dr. Holly Hanson, who first brought my attention to Nakhjavani‘s novels at the Texas Bluebonnet Conference in Austin in 2011. Thank you, also, to Dr. Dorothy Iwanski, Juliet Genge, and Miriam Purdue, friends of the heart who walked this path with me. Big thanks also to my sister, Elaine Bieber, who kept things real with discussions of the latest fantasy and science fiction novels. Humor is priceless, and my husband Behi Sobhani knows the power of laughter. I thank him in particular for that precious gift during this process. Behi‘s humor, along with Dalton and Martha Juliana‘s escapades, helped me keep a life-balance which such an engulfing project makes necessary. Finally, this study would have remained a massive collection of post-it notes on my wall had it not been for my parents John and Martha Bieber. I find myself daunted at trying to encapsulate their vast support, their unfailing faith, their never-fazed confidence into one sentence. They gave me the gift of knowing our children were well-looked-after on countless weekends and summer holidays. Last but never least, deep gratitude for all the prayers, especially those of Abuelita, my grandmother Flavia Teresa Steel, may she rest in peace. Dedication For my students, past and future; and for my dear family and friends in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida, Ohio, Texas, New Mexico, Costa Rica, Bolivia, and England. This is for you. Alláh-u-Abhá! Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction: Postsecularism and Transnational Historical Fiction….…1 Urrea, Nakhjavani, and the Historical Novel ……………………………………. 7 Urrea, Nakhjavani, and Postsecularism…………………………………………...14 Urrea and Nakhjavani‘s Historical Novels in Context……………………………22 Chapter Overviews………………………………………………………………..27 Chapter 2: A Postsecular Look at the Reading Motif in The Woman Who Read Too Much ……………………………………………………30 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………..30 Historical Context and the Bahá‘í Subtext………………………………………...37 The Reading Motif: A Postsecular Analysis………………………………………48 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………58 Chapter 3: ‘God, too, has his jests’: The Postsecular Role of Humor in The Hummingbird’s Daughter ………………………………………62 Introduction………………………………………………………………………..62 Curanderismo ……………………………………………………………………. 65 To Laugh, Divine: Humor in The Hummingbird’s Daughter ……………………. 71 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………94 Chapter 4: Religion, Fanaticism, and Magic: A Postsecular Analysis of Queen of America……………………………………………………………96 Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 96 Religion‘s Disempowerment and the Critique of Fundamentalism………………103 Postsecular Abracadabra and the Disappearing Binary…………………………. 112 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..119 Chapter 5: Epilogue: Some Concluding Thoughts…………...…………………….…121 Avenues of Further Research…………………………………………………….123 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..131 Chapter 1: Introduction: Postsecularism and Transnational Historical Fiction This study, employing a postsecular theoretical prism, will analyze the spiritual theses given expression through the historical fiction of Mexican-American, or Chicano, author Luis Alberto Urrea and exiled Persian Bahá‘í author Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. My purpose is to demonstrate how the postsecular theory is a favorable mode of criticism for works of contemporary, spiritually-charged transnational historical fiction. I choose to use the historical fiction of these two authors because of the distinct religious traditions from which their stories emerge. Both Urrea and Nakhjavani weave their historical tales so as to underscore spiritual aspects of human reality. Spirituality is a loaded word. Often conflated with religion in general, spirituality in this study refers to all matters pertaining to the qualities of the soul and the practices of belief, including prayer, faith, altruism and world-views which privilege these aspects over purely material or worldly ones. I will compare how these authors approach spirituality in their novels and problematize traditional ideas of the religious and the secular. I find the similarities in the authors‘ powerful representation of spiritual aspects of reality particularly striking precisely because of the patent differences between the two authors and their styles: Urrea, a male Chicano writer, a Christian of bicultural heritage and poor economic background, writes fiction in the U.S. Latino tradition; Nakhjavani, on the other hand, is a female Persian writer of self-proclaimed postmodern leanings, a Bahá‘í, raised in Uganda, and educated in Great Britain and the United States. Yet both authors‘ historical narratives express world- views in which the spiritual has particular importance, not as a supersession of quotidian reality but in an integral partnership with it, the baseline upon which postsecular thought is built. This study concludes that such an expression of world-views signals towards the change in socio- political philosophy which philosopher and scholar Jürgen Habermas iterates in ―Faith and Knowledge,‖ his acceptance address for the 2001 Peace Prize awarded