THE MARKERS OF IMMIGRANT’S IDENTITY IN IBI ZOBOY’S “AMERICAN STREET”

The new images and themes have emerged in recent literary works that deal with migration and relocation of people. They assume a necessary reworking of traditional and stereotypical views of immigrants and the immigration process. Moreover, they correlate with the broad topic of immigration that defi nes political and intellectual debates today. The fi ctional fi gure of immigrant problematizes such concepts, as the national/racial identity, citizenship, and nation. By evoking diff erence and interaction, literary images of immigrants deconstruct the essentialist ideas of identity and belonging. The analysis of the novel “American Street” presented in this article is supported by the theoretical works of Giorgio Agamben and Etienne Balibar. They argue that immigrants unsettle the links between birth and nation, human and citizen. The article provides a comprehensive discussion of the markers of immigrants’ identity in Ibi Zoboy’s “American Street”. It features an in-depth analysis of food, language, and clothes as the constant features of newcomers. The narrator’s identity is constructed through the diff erentiation of self and the Other. The novel’s homodiegetic narrator, FabiolaToussaint, after leaving Port-au-Prince, Haiti, arrives in Detroit. There she fi nds not the American dream but the harsh reality of the New World. She faces the same institutional racism and classism that she left behind in Haiti. Her identity is forged through her insistence on preserving her religious beliefs and eating habits. Furthermore, herself-narration creates continuity between her past and present experiences. The temporal order of the novel is largely chronological, although sometimes the chronology is broken up by fl ashbacks. They are presented in the forms of confessions of fi ctional characters. Such narratives do not simply project a referential identity but create an image of the self. Identities that were constituted from the perspective of the focalizer are reconstituted in the character’s self-narrations. Key words: identity, Ibi Zoboy, “American Street”, food and vestimentary codes, immigration, conversational narrative.