An Oriental Version of Otherness: English-Speaking Writers of the Arab Diaspora

Abstract

Our purpose has been to draw on the representation of otherness by selected writers of the Arab American diaspora, with a stress on two representative authors of this community: Gibran Khalil Gibran and Edward Said. Viewed from a postcolonial perspective, most of the writers considered for our analysis have written as a response to the artificial East/West dichotomy, almost defying their assumed hyphenated identity. If the African slave Omar Ibn Said first wrote in Arabic, Edward Said preferred to write his books in English, Gibran Khalil Gibran wrote both in English and Arabic, while the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif – educated in England and Egypt, writes in English and Arabic. In the cultural and geographical space of the United States, the Arab American immigrant experience mirrors that of other ethnic groups, and it is demonstrated in their literatures.

Keywords

• arab american
• edward said
• exile
• khalil gibran
• orientalism
• otherness
• postcolonial
• split identity