Journal Article

Literary Trespassing in Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin and Sayed Kashua's Second Person Singular

Ebileeni, Maurice

2017

Overview

This article focuses on a rare leitmotif in literary productions by Palestinians. Both Susan Abulhawa's and Sayed Kashua's present Arab characters who, under unusual circumstances, impersonate or literally acquire the identity of the Israeli-Jewish other. In the fictional creations of Ismael/David and Amir/Yonatan, Abulhawa and Kashua, respectively, construe characters whose existence blurs the borderline between various versions of today's Palestinian Arab and mainstream projections of its Israeli-Jewish counterpart. These characters represent, as the article demonstrates, the authors' attempts to work out the implications of the idea that — as a result of the historical events of Israeli Independence and the consequent Palestinian Nakba — the collision of two national yearnings has created a liminal space in which both Israeli and Palestinian narratives gradually infiltrate one another, developing an inextricable and dynamic bond between the Palestinian identity and its counterpart.

• Publisher: University of Oregon,Duke University Press,Duke University Press, NC & IL
• Subject: Abulhawa, Susan / Culture / Fiction / Identity / Impersonations / Kashua, Sayed / Literary Criticism / Literary Theory / Literature and Literary Studies / Narrative theme / Palestinian people / Person / Writers