Palestinians’ Displacement and Identity Crisis in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses (2017) and Shahla Ujayli’s A Sky So Close to Us (2019)
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Date
2025
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Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi ouzou
Abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to examine how displacement, identity, and cultural memory
are represented in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses and Shahla Ujayli’s a Sky So Close to Us. It seeks
to explore how both authors portray the impact of exile and migration on personal and collective
identity, particularly within the context of Arab societies marked by war, diaspora, and
generational fragmentation. By comparing these two narratives, the study aims to highlight the
ways in which literature functions as a space for negotiating belonging, and reconstructing
fragmented identities in the face of loss and displacement.
Through the theoretical framework applies Amin Maalouf’s concept of plural identity
from in the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to belong (1998) and Edward Said’s Out
of Place following Orientalism and the Other’s concepts to analyze Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses
(2017) and Shahla Ujayli’s A Sky So Close to Us (2019). Maalouf’s notion that identity is
hybrid, dynamic, and shaped by cultural interaction helps explain how characters negotiate
belonging amid exile and displacement. Said’s use of the two concepts exposes how western
narratives construct the East as inferior and exotic, offering a lens to understand how both
authors challenge stereotypical images of Arab identity. Together, these theories reveal how
Alyan and Ujayli portray identity as a space of resistance and reconstruction.
In conclusion, this dissertation demonstrates that both Salt Houses (2017) and A Sky So Close
to Us (2019) explore identity as a multifaceted construct shaped by exile, displacement, and
memory. Through Amin Maalouf’s theoretical lens, the novels reveal how personal and
collective identities evolve through cultural encounters and historical disruption. Hala and
Shahla reimagine belonging not as a return to a lost homeland but as a process of continuous
negotiation and self-redefinition.
Description
52p. ; (+CD-Rom)
Keywords
displacement, exile, belonging, struggle, diaspora, identity crisis.
Citation
Literature and Interdiscipliniary Aproaches