FEMALE GENEALOGIES OF PLACE: NATION, CITY AND REFUGEE CAMPS IN SUSAN MUADDI DARRAJ’S "THE INHERITANCE OF EXILE"
Abstract
This paper aims at analyzing the ways in which the differential treatments of human bodies that are played out in the “permanetntly exceptional” space of the refugee camps emerge in Palestinian-American author Susan Muaddi Darraj’s 2007 short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly. In particular, the focus will be on how such differential – gendered and racial – treatment of bodies is articulated into a differential form of memory and of genealogy, in narratives that are passed on, in the stories and through the stories, from women of different generations. This gendered genealogy, in turn, serves to re-configure the space (or non-place?) of the refugee camp as a problematic alternative to the militant equation of the temporary refugee camp as the potential Palestinian nation waiting for its people’s return. The space of the refugee camp will also be pitted against, or read in parallel to, the urban space and its migrant communities, as construed in Muaddi Darraj’s collection of short stories.
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