Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

Hasnul Insani Djohar

2019

Abstract

This paper examines the portrayal of how immigrant Americans create their own space or homes in a Lebanese restaurant, which is a symbol of their minority kingdom, in order to negotiate questions of belonging and exclusion from U.S. society in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (2003). By engaging with postcolonial studies, this paper investigates how Immigrant-Americans, such as Arab, Mexicans, Hispanic, and Malaysia work together to establish their own home by using a Mediterranean café as a symbol of their minor palace, to show their existence in a modern global space and to challenge Anglo-American dominion in the U.S. and in the world. This community uses the Mediterranean café as a place to share their feelings and their stories as exiles, refuges, and immigrants to substitute a sense of loss and home, which is taken them in. Indeed, this paper investigates how Abu-Jaber expands the notion homes through symbols of food and the Mediterranean café in order to negotiate American belonging. Thus, this text illustrates how Arab/Muslim-Americans, who can also represent other marginal groups, have struggled to search for homes, especially after the invasion of Iraq.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Djohar H. (2019). Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent.In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on English Language Teaching, Linguistics and Literature - Volume 1: ELITE, ISBN 978-989-758-459-6, pages 83-89. DOI: 10.5220/0009984600830089

in Bibtex Style

@conference{elite19,
author={Hasnul Insani Djohar},
title={Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on English Language Teaching, Linguistics and Literature - Volume 1: ELITE,},
year={2019},
pages={83-89},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009984600830089},
isbn={978-989-758-459-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on English Language Teaching, Linguistics and Literature - Volume 1: ELITE,
TI - Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent
SN - 978-989-758-459-6
AU - Djohar H.
PY - 2019
SP - 83
EP - 89
DO - 10.5220/0009984600830089