Destroyed houses as repositories of memories
Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels
Dados Bibliográficos
| ID | 23037882 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Sarah Chabane Chaouch (Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou, ALGERIA, autor correspondente), Yousef Abu Amrieh (0000-0003-1443-7054, The University of Jordan, Jordan) |
| Ano | 2026 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Fascículo | 2 |
| Páginas | 3 |
| Data de publicação | 2026-06-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sim |
| Open Access | Sim |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Periódico | Feminist Encounters A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores do periódico | ISSN: 2468-4414 • E-ISSN: 2468-4414 |
| Editora | Lectito Publications (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.20897/femenc/18742 |
| OpenAlex | W7164318321 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referências citadas | 14 |
Over the past half century, numerous Arab diasporic writers have depicted the detrimental impacts of civil wars on Arab nations as some individuals are (in)voluntarily displaced internally and externally, where they experience feelings of anxiety, unbelonging and loneliness. In most cases, they strive to reconstruct their own identities and their past through memories. The purpose of this paper is to examine Syrian novelist Shahla Ujayli’s female protagonists’ experiences of displacement as a result of the Syrian civil war in A sky so close to us (2015 [2019]) and Summer with the enemy (2018 [2021]). It focuses on two female characters, Joumane Badran and Lamees, who live in Amman, Jordan, and Cologne, Germany, respectively. In presenting their feelings of dislocation and unease to adapt in the host countries, Ujayli vividly portrays their attachments to their native Syrian city of Raqqa, which was sadly destroyed during the war. Eventually, in each narrative, the protagonist’s destroyed house in Raqqa and those of her close kinsfolk emerge as sites over which memories, displacement and adaptation converge. Thus, by narrating the history of specific houses in Raqqa, both female protagonists remain connected to their roots, and hence, they resist alienation, loss and dislocation. In this sense, this paper argues that in Ujayli’s novels, houses, even if they are destroyed, are not just spaces that people live in, but they are symbols of a home that the two protagonists carry in their memories as they navigate (un)familiar diasporic spaces.
Adversary · Dislocation · Displaced person · Displacement (psychology) · Feeling · Invisibility · Spanish Civil War · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Middle East Politics and Society · Spatial and Cultural Studies
| Velocidade de citação | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | Não |