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The Journey Away from Home in Afaf Kanafani's Nadia the Captive of Hope
Abstract
Fay Afaf Kanafani's memoir, Nadia the Captive of Hope, is a real life narrative that addresses the issue of displacement and alienation the writer/protagonist, Nadia (the writer chooses a pseudonym for her narrative), goes through amidst the political turmoil in Lebanon and Palestine. The memoir traces personal and political developments,starting with the establishment of the colonial mandate of Britain and France in the region and ending with the establishment of the State of Israel and the beginning of the Lebanese civil war. Displaced multiple times, from Lebanon to Palestine to Iraq to the U.S, then finally back to Lebanon, Nadia describes these displaced journeys, while recounting her struggle resisting social conventions and constraints, both patriarchal and familial, imposed upon her by both the females and males of her household. Nadia's actual and self determination journeys were fraught along the way with feelings of fear, alienation, and insecurity from home both in Lebanon and Palestine, so that only when she gains a scholarship to the U.S, she feels as if she is "free from the fear of insecurity that complicated [her] past." I analyze how the actual journeys Nadia goes through become a controlling trope of Kanafani's narrative, which serve as catalysts for her own self-perception and complicates her multi-layered identity. Informed by 3rd world feminism and Arab feminist discourse, I also investigate how Kanafani negotiates the political and social displacements she experiences that lead to the construction, reconstruction, and formation of her multi-layered identity.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
None