Locating Identities: Narratives of Place in Multiethnic, Immigrant and Diasporic Literature Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Modarres, Andrea M. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 08:32:23 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/308904 LOCATING IDENTITIES: NARRATIVES OF PLACE IN MULTIETHNIC, IMMIGRANT AND DIASPORIC LITERATURE by Andrea M. Modarres __________________________ Copyright © Andrea M. Modarres 2013 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2013 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Andrea Modarres, titled Locating Identities: Narratives of Place in Multiethnic, Immigrant, and Diasporic Literature, and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________________________________________ Date: April 30, 2013 Dr. Suresh Raval _______________________________________________________________________ Date: April 30, 2013 Dr. Maribel Alvarez _______________________________________________________________________ Date: April 30, 2013 Dr. Yaseen Noorani _______________________________________________________________________ Date: April 30, 2013 Dr. Franci Washburn Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: April 30, 2013 Dissertation Director: Dr. Suresh Raval 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Andrea M. Modarres 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My work is profoundly influenced by the personal and professional networks which I have been so lucky to develop during graduate school, and there is no way to adequately thank everyone for their contributions here. First and foremost, however, I would like to recognize my committee members. Dr. Suresh Raval encouraged my interests from our first meeting over tea in the Student Union, and also provided a wonderful example of how to combine scholarship with professionalism and practicality. Dr. Maribel Alvarez validated my belief in the importance of our everyday lives to our theoretical approaches as scholars, and Dr. Franci Washburn reinforced my deep commitment to examining the role of storytelling in our lives and our work; both of them paid me the compliment of closely reading and critiquing my work, while Dr. Yaseen Noorani always asked tough questions that pushed me to think harder and provide more clarity in my expression of my ideas. I was unfortunately never able to study directly with Dr. Susan Hardy Aiken, but her unflagging support of my work has been unfailingly inspiring. I would also like to acknowledge the debt I owe my earlier teachers, especially Dr. Sandra Stanley and Dr. Dorothy Clark at California State University, Northridge, without whose encouragement I might never have attempted further graduate work. The help I received from the departments at both my graduate schools, including the support of administrative staff, was instrumental to my success. I hope I can provide the same kind of encouragement and assistance to others that was key to my reaching this point. 5 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family and friends, who often believed in me when I did not believe in myself. My colleagues shared my exhilaration and despair in ways that no one else could: I especially thank Kim, Jennifer, Mike, Amy, Kevin, and Deb for listening and generously sharing their own woes, so I never felt completely alone on this crazy journey. Besides my academic friends, Kim and Dan have served as a safety net for many years, helping raise my children when I wasn’t around and nagging me to finish already; Mina and Lillie have loved and supported me since high school and are even willing to listen to me expound ad nauseum on my academic work. My parents, Clyde S. and Letitia R. Adams, modeled the importance of a lifelong education, filling our homes with books and intelligent dinner table conversation; I regret that they were not able to see me achieve this final goal. My siblings, however, stepped in to nurture my academic dreams after my parents were no longer with us, and I cannot express how significant their unwavering support has been to my continuing progress. My final and deepest thanks go to Ali and our sons, who have grown to young adulthood over the course of my academic journey and always seemed to accept my absences with such amazing equanimity and good humor. I am inexpressibly fortunate to have a life partner who is an intellectual and academic role model, who told me I could do things I never thought possible, and who encouraged me to be my own person even when my work curtailed his own. I can truly say that I would never have achieved this goal without him or any of the others who acted as my support system and patiently waited for me to reach the finish line. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................8 I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................10 Narrative and Identity ...........................................................................10 American Identity and Place .................................................................17 Terms and Limitations ..........................................................................20 II. LANGUAGE AND SPACES OF EXPRESSION ............................................35 Language, Place and Identity ................................................................35 Language and Diaspora.........................................................................38 Language Tools in Under the Feet of Jesus ..........................................46 Identity, Language and Hybrid Identity in Faces in the Moon and “My Elizabeth”...............................................................................61 Conclusion ............................................................................................83 III. GENDERED SPACES AND REPRESENTATION .......................................90 Introduction ...........................................................................................90 The Harem: Real and Metaphorical, Representations and Realities .....97 The Harem Trope ..................................................................................122 Solar Storms: Gendered Spaces and the Quest Narrative .....................128 So Far From God: Gendered Spaces and Narratives of Trauma ..........140 Crescent: Gendered Spaces and Stereotypes of Oppression .................152 Conclusion ............................................................................................166 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS - Continued IV. MOBILE SPACES AND RECURSIVE IDENTITIES ...................................168 Introduction ...........................................................................................168 Movement: Terminology and Representation ......................................174 Recursive Identity and the Place of Home in Arabian Jazz ..................187 Conclusion ............................................................................................200 V. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................205 WORKS CITED ...............................................................................................209 8 ABSTRACT This dissertation is a comparative study of ways in which women writers from Latina, Middle-Eastern and Native American backgrounds narrate their identities as a function of the different locations they inhabit, and the manner in which these places inform their subject positions and their everyday lives. Some of the key questions explored concern how these writers deploy spatial stories as a tactic to construct textual spaces within which their identities may be expressed, especially since they are often faced, as immigrants or members of diasporic or ethnic populations, with negotiating the contradictory expectations of multiple locations and cultures; it asks what is at stake in constructing particular narrative spaces of identity within categories such as immigrant, exile, migrant, or hyphenated American. The dissertation