Browsing by Author "Brahimi Samia"

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    Women’s Empowerment in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land (2007)
    (Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou, 2023) Brahimi Samia; Tamlikecht Yasmine
    This dissertation explores the complex experience of Arab-American identity and gender roles through the analysis of Laila Halaby’s novel Once in a Promised Land (2007). Focusing on the main character, Salwa Haddad, the study investigates how diasporic Arab women negotiate cultural displacement and patriarchal structures in a post-9/11 American context. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity and Third Space (1994), Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity (1990), this research examines how Salwa, as a diasporic woman, becomes both a subject of cultural fragmentation and an agent of transformation. While she struggles with her uprootedness and marginalization, Salwa actively engages in a process of identity reconstruction—one that challenges stereotypical Western representations and resists patriarchal expectations within her own heritage. The novel portrays her as a mediator between two cultures, who gradually redefines her place through negotiation, resistance, and self-assertion. By highlighting Salwa’s shift from vulnerability to empowerment, this study demonstrates how diasporic Arab-American women can reframe trauma into agency and marginality into strength.