Metafiction Meets Migration
Art From the Archives in Rabee Jaber's Amerika
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13049697 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Joseph Wrisley (0000-0002-0355-1487, American University of Beirut, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 109-132 |
| Publication date | 2017-05-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Mashriq & Mahjar Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2169-4435 • E-ISSN: 2169-4435 |
| Publisher | Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.24847/11i2013.16 |
| OpenAlex | W2616879473 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
The subject of this article is Rabee Jaber’s novel Amerika (2009) recounting the migration of a group of Syro-Lebanese to the United States on the eve of the First World War. It demonstrates how metafictional techniques—ironic narrator figures, flashbacks, dream-like scenes—allow Jaber to address the fine, yet shifting, line between fiction and history in the accounts of Arab migrations to the Americas. The article explores the creative rewriting of an essential intertext for Jaber, Kafka’s Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared) and asserts that the novel’s reflective uncertainty pervades both the way that a historical past can be represented and the way that the past is presented to a contemporary Lebanese audience. The article concludes by suggesting that the contrast between the two main characters, Martā Ḥaddād and Alī Jābir, is not only indicative of distinct kinds of migration, but, more abstractly, points to contrasting ideas about reading and writing the past
Art · Dream · Linguistics · Literature · Metafiction · Narrative · Reading (process · Subject (documents · Computer Science · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |