Where the Heart Is: The Concept of “Home” in Leila Aboulela’s Short Fiction
Abstract
In most of her works, Leila Aboulela focuses on Sudanese characters in the diaspora. Her protagonists are usually young Sudanese migrants who had left home in search of a better life abroad, or to escape a desperate reality at home. In this journey, they live in a constant state of exile: the new abode fails to become home, and they are left existing in a state of suspension between the new reality and a past they are emotionally and spiritually stuck in. This paper tackles the concept of home in its actual and virtual manifestations through the lives of her short stories protagonists, their quest for one’s identity and keeping (or losing) it when confronting the other.
The female characters are found to be more solid than their male counterparts in their nostalgia and attachment to the original home and its values. This enabled them to keep the fabric of their identity intact. When confronting the other, or when engaging in a relationship, “things do not fall apart” in this encounter. In fact, the other has to compromise to be accepted. This contrasts with the male characters, who are easily assimilated in the new environment, but not without a faint sense of guilt and a fair share of self-deception.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Anonymous. (2014). Exclusive Interview: Leila Aboulela – Perspectives of a Literary Artist. 500 Words Magazine. [Online]. Retrieved from http://500wordsmag.com/interviews/exclusive-interview-leila-aboulela-perspectives-of-a-literary-artist/#sthash.T2pI9GLA.dpuf.
Aboulela, L. (2005). Coloured lights. Edinburgh: Polygon.
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities. London: Verso.
Jones, E. (1983). Recent trends in the novel. African Literature Today, (13).
Jones, E. (1983). Critical theory & African literature today. London: James Curry.
King, B. (1992). The Commonwealth writer in exile. In Rutherford. (1992), pp.39-43.
Killam, G. D. (1984). The writing of east and central Africa. Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books.
Makuchi, J. N.-A. (1997). Gender in African women’s writing. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Rutherford, A. (Ed.). (1992). From Commonwealth to post-colonial. Sydney: Dangaroo Press.
Sethi, A. (2005, June 5). “Keep the faith” (interview with Abouela). The Observer. [Online]. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/05/fiction.features2
Stratton, F. (1994). Contemporary African literature and the politics of gender. London: Routledge.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/8756
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2016 Eiman El-Nour
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Reminder
- How to do online submission to another Journal?
- If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
- Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/ccc/submission/wizard
- Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
- We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org
Articles published in Cross-Cultural Communication are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net
Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture