Anxious Dynamics of Exile and the Ambivalence of Arab American Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent: Critical Reflections and Contemplations

Abstract Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent is an Arab American literary piece of fiction that symbolizes the remarkable emergence of this kind of literature in the early years of the twenty-first century. The social and political atmosphere in the USA after 9/11 ushered in the rise of this ethnic literature to worldwide prominence. In addition to the desire to challenge the multi-faceted oppression that Arab Americans confront in the USA – gender-related, sexual, racial, and ethnic – the literary canon of Arab American writers also discuss the experiences of exile and displacement that Arabs go through when settling in the USA and how such experiences affect their sense of authenticity. As such, this paper examines the politics of exile as projected in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, taking the co-protagonist Han as a prototype of Arab exiles living in the USA. In addition to employing critical and analytical approaches to the novel, this paper relies on a socio-cultural conceptual framework based on perspectives of prominent critics such as Edward Said, Avtar Brah, and Svetlana Boym, to name a few. This paper argues that the politics of exile – such as nostalgia, memory, and displacement – make Arab American identity more convoluted and interlaced with the dilemma of authenticity, featuring feelings of estrangement, loneliness, and homesickness.