The Non-National in Contemporary American Literature: Ethnic Women Writers and Problematic Belongings [Paperback]

In this wide-ranging study, Gomma examines contemporary migrant narratives by Arab-American, Chicana, Indian-American, Pakistani-American, and Cuban-American women writers. Concepts such as national consciousness, time, space, and belonging are scrutinized through the non-national experience, unsettling notions of a unified America.

Introduction
1. The Non-National Subject in The Language of Baklava and An American Brat
2. Re-imagining the US National Time in West of the Jordan and The Last Generation
3. Moments of (Un)belonging: the Spatial Configuration of Home(land) in The Time between Places: Stories that Weave in and out of Egypt and America and The Namesake
4. Transnational Allegories and the Non-national Subject in The Ag?ero Sisters and The Night Counter
Afterword

The book proposes the concept of imagined transnational communities and positions Arab American literature as a field that can broaden, deepen, and complicate the meaning of Americanness. Gomaas study will be of particular relevance to scholars of multiethnic studies, American studies, Arab American studies, and womens studies. (American Literature, Vol. 89 (3), September, 2017)

Dalia M.A. Gomaa is an Associate Lecturer of Women Studies at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, USA.

This study examines contemporary narratives by Arab-American, South-Asian American, Chicana, and Cuban-American women writers. Gomaa argues that the disparate histories of Arabs, South Asians, Chicanas, and Cubans in the U.S. unfold new non-national sites for affiliations and identifications that unsettle notions of a unified American national space. In each chapter a South-Asian American, Chicana, or Cuban-American text is paired with an Arab-American text to examine sites of ambivalence, which problematize an individual's sense of belonging tolã(