Exile, Hybridity and Cultural Negotiation in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent and Arabian Jazz

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Current Perspectives in Social Sciences
Cilt: 29 Sayı: 3
Exile, Hybridity and Cultural Negotiation in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent and Arabian Jazz

Exile, Hybridity and Cultural Negotiation in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent and Arabian Jazz

Pages : 452-462

View : 154 | Download : 189

Publication Date : 2025-09-12

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This study explores the evolving Arab-American identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s influential novels, Crescent (2003) and Arabian Jazz (1993), through the interconnected lenses of exile, hybridity, and cultural negotiation. Drawing on postcolonial theory, particularly the insights of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, the study examines how Abu-Jaber’s protagonists inhabit liminal zones shaped by gender, race, diaspora, and memory. Through food, music, language, and storytelling, the characters resist cultural essentialism and reconfigure identity as a dynamic, improvisational process rooted in everyday life. Crescent presents exile as an ontological fracture, with culinary ritual and sensory memory functioning as acts of self-reclamation and cultural continuity. In contrast, Arabian Jazz offers a polyphonic exploration of diasporic improvisation, intergenerational tension, and cultural dissonance. The female characters reject both patriarchal and racialized standards and assert autonomy through affective, narrative, and embodied modes of resistance. Ultimately, the article argues that Abu-Jaber’s fiction reframes identity as a performative space of becoming by subverting dominant Orientalist narratives and articulating the layered, contradictory, and resilient nature of Arab-American belonging.
Keywords : Kimlik, sürgün, melezlik, postkolonyalizm, oryantalizm

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