Arabs Imagining Communities: how privileged writers restore Arab public and private space to anglophone places

• Author / Creator

  Moghrabi, Jihad

• This thesis argues that recent Arab-anglophone literature can swell or shrink the private and public space which real-life Arabs inhabit in anglophone societies. Gendered and economic privileges change how Arab-anglophones tell stories, which changes, in turn, Arabs’ status in an- glophone readers’ imaginations. And, Arabs’ status in readers’ imaginations affects the spaces they have available for political action and thought. But, lack of privilege limits some Arab-an- glophone women - like Leila Aboulela and Fadia Faqir - to narrating cultural clash, which af- firms in the anglophone imagination that the West opposes Arabs. Still, through work on Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place and Hisham Matar’s novels In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance, this thesis also aims to show that privilege can be extended to Arabs without. Arab-anglophone storytellers can recover the privacy and public respect that Arabs require to be politically active in anglophone societies.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Matar, Hisham
  • Arab-anglophone
  • Faqir, Fadia
  • Cultural clash
  • Arab
  • Aboulela, Leila
  • Said, Edward
  • Privilege
  • Private and public space

• Graduation date

  Spring 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R34Q7R16F

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.