Sherine Fouad Mazloum
Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
This paper
seeks to explore the complex representation of Muslim women characters in two
texts by two Muslim writers who live or have lived in Britain namely Monica Ali
and Leila Aboulela. Since the two writers come of Asian and African/ Arab
backgrounds, their delineation of their “Muslim” female characters allow for a
more comprehensive view of the daunting experiences of migrant ‘ordinary’ women
who find themselves triply displaced as women/ Oriental / Muslim. Both novels
reflect the empowerment of the female characters Nazneen and Najwa who grapple
with their migrant experience. This paper seeks to read the two novels as
offering alternative forms of knowledge of Muslim women ‘displaced’
experiences. It acknowledges that the two novels trace the processes of
transformation of the female protagonists in a metropolitan context, but
focuses on how this process entails several reflections on their experience as
triply displaced. The paper relies on Spivak’s concept of displacement and uses
its insights to reflect the case of Muslim women’s displacement. The paper
refers to Talal Asad’s discussion of the idea of Islamic tradition to highlight
its argument that Islam is part of the tradition that influences Muslims’
subjectivities whether they embrace the religion or not. Hence, to work out
their displacements, both protagonists undergo a process of empowerment and
agency during their journey of finding a place in the world.
Keywords:
Spivak’s displacement, Muslim women, Leila Aboulela, Monica Ali, contemporary
British fiction.
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