Inhabiting the Hyphen: (Re)Negotiating Arab-American Identity in Poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Laila Halaby and Suheir Hammad

Like the many ethnic literatures in the United States, Arab-American literature is often caught up in attempts to define the migrant subjectivities of its authors. Focusing on a selection of poems by Arab-American women writers, this article looks into how such writers negotiate their hyphenated being, and how they view identity not as a fixed category, but rather as an interplay between its performance and its perception. This essay analyses how these writers express their own sense of being in order to highlight, destabilize, and/or reconcile the often assumed paradox inherent within their double identity, especially after the rise of anti-Arab sentiment following the events of 9/11. This article, thus, focuses on a reading of a selection of poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Laila Halaby, and Suheir Hammad in search of the poetics of subjectivity their work performs.

Automated summary

This article examines how Arab-American women writers negotiate their hyphenated identities and view identity as a fluid concept, rather than fixed. It focuses on a selection of poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Laila Halaby, and Suheir Hammad, analyzing how they express their sense of being and deal with the assumed paradox of their double identity, especially after the rise of anti-Arab sentiment following 9/11.