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" Racing Sheherazade: Arab-American women's translations of Sheherazade in writing and performance "
Somaya Sami Reda Saber Sabry
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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54284
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TL24238
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| Call number
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NR54335
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| Main Entry
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Somaya Sami Reda Saber Sabry
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| Title & Author
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Racing Sheherazade: Arab-American women's translations of Sheherazade in writing and performance\ Somaya Sami Reda Saber Sabry
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| College
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The University of Western Ontario (Canada)
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| Date
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2009
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2009
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| Page No
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215
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| Abstract
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This dissertation contributes to the burgeoning field of Arab-American Studies, through an exploration of the revival of the narrative and orality of the narrator of The Thousand and One Nights, Sheherazade, in Arab-American women's writing and performance. The study traverses the junction of Orientalist and stereotypical racial discourses, with which Arab-American women writers and performers contend, as members of the Arab diaspora. Consequently, in this race over representation these women are interpellated in a race over race, as they confront and subvert prevalent representations of themselves and their culture. This rac(ing) is further complicated by its being shaped against the backdrop of the Iraqi war, the "war on terror" and hostility against Arabs, Muslims and Arab- Americans post 9/11. Historically, the "oriental" woman has represented a particularly contested terrain in representations of the "Other"; she is translated as the space upon which many prejudices and preconceptions about the East are mapped out. Contemporary Arab-American women writers and performers recast Sheherazade's narrative and orality in an attempt to negotiate their affiliations. In an introduction and four chapters, this study addresses the following questions: how do genres such as the novel, poetry and performances - like one woman shows and Stand-up - negotiate affiliations in the current polarized and historical moment? How do Arab-American women writers and performers recast Sheherazade and how is recasting troubled by the exoticized/oppressed representations of Arab and Muslim women in early translations of the frame tale of The Nights and American popular culture? Through close readings and critical analyses of texts and performances, I argue that writers like Diana Abu-Jaber and Mohja Kahf and performers like Laila Farah and Maysoon Zayid offer a productive examination of identities and representations, forging a location for cultural translation through their writings and performances. The study explores how the Sheherazadian narrative is adapted to cultural translation in Crescent, and E-Mails from Scheherazad. In Living in the Hyphen-Nation and Maysoon Zayid's Stand-up comedy routine, Sheherazadian orality is analyzed as a conduit for cultural negotiations. Through novel, poetry, one woman shows and Stand-up comedy, these artists reshape their identities in relation to a dispersed spectrum of Arab-American identitie(s), opening up rigid categories of collective identity, so that Sheherazade inhabits twenty-first century America. Keywords: Arab-American Literature; Arab-American Women's Writing; Arab-American Women's performance; Cultural Translation; Race Studies; Diaspora Studies; Performance; Cultural Studies; Diasporic Identities; One Thousand and One Nights; Arabian Nights; Sheherazade; Storytelling; Diana Abu-Jaber; Mohja Kahf; Maysoon Zayid; Laila Farah; Fashion and Identity; Food and Identity; Stand-up comedy; One woman shows; 9/11; Arab Diaspora; Narrative; Orality.
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| Subject
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Social sciences; Language, literature and linguistics; Abu-Jaber, Diana; Arab diaspora; Arab-American; Arab-American literature; Arab-American women's performance; Arab-American women's writing; Arabian Nights; Cultural studies; Cultural translation; Diaspora studies; Diasporic identities; Farah, Laila; Fashion and identity; Food and identity; Kahf, Mohja; One Thousand and One Nights; One-woman shows; Orality; Performance; Race studies; Sheherazade; Stand-up comedy; Storytelling; Translations; Zayid, Maysoon; Middle Eastern literature; Womens studies; American literature; 0453:Womens studies; 0591:American literature; 0315:Middle Eastern literature
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| Added Entry
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The University of Western Ontario (Canada)
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