Open AccessBeyond the Veil: Exploring Muslim Women’s Multidimensional Identities in Laila Aboulela’s The Translator and Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
Author(s) -
Nawel Meriem Ouhiba
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
international journal of english and comparative literary studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2709-7390
pISSN - 2709-4952
DOI - 10.47631/ijecls.v2i5.340
Subject(s) - girl , hegemony , narrative , gender studies , homogeneous , sociology , aesthetics , art , literature , psychology , political science , law , developmental psychology , mathematics , combinatorics , politics
The article presents a critical analysis of two novels by contemporary Arab Muslim women writers, Leila Aboulela and Mohja Kahf. The article examines how these authors critique, resist, and disrupt the hegemonic discourse that presents Muslim women as a monolithic and homogeneous category. In The Translator and The Girl in Tangerine Scarf respectively, the female protagonists’ religious experiences and identities are studied with reference to resistance narratives and disruptive postcolonial strategies. The unsettling of the monolithic image of veiled Muslim women is hereby pursued through providing an analysis of the cultural imagery of Muslim women, to deconstruct the image of the veil in today’s world.