THE REPRESENTATION OF ARAB MASCULINITY IN THE FICTION OF THE ARAB-AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY NOVELIST SOHIER KHASHGGI

 

Huda B. Al-Matrafi

Associate Prof. Dr., Taif University, Saudi Arabia, dr.hudamatrafi2014@hotmail.com

 

Abstract

Contemporary Arab-American women's fiction is preoccupied with the Arab male's image. Analyzing Sohier Khashoggi's novels, this paper examines Arab masculinity from the point of view of an Arab-American female writer. It explores her portrayal from a feminist, religious, traditional, and social perspective. Using these paradigms to understand her way of representation, this paper illustrates how this Arab-American novelist introduces specific key themes concerning the relationship between husband and wife, father and daughter, brother and sister such as individuality, marriage, marital rape, violence, and honor. A key feature of Khashoggi's texts is the manner in which her fiction highlights the negative representation of the Arab male.

Furthermore, this paper draws attention to how the author's fiction, following the stereotypical mainstream, demonstrates the Arab male's supremacy and wickedness by frequently referring to negative traditional practices which Khashoggi introduces as authentic religious laws. It therefore, aims to show how as an Arab-American female writer, who is of a hybrid identity, and whose ideology was passed on either by personal experience or by historical, literary, political, cultural, and mass media discourses, has boldly highlighted in her writings the patriarchal mode of the Arab male by questioning religious and traditional concepts of masculinity.

Hence, this paper evaluates Khashoggi's fiction by shedding light on the way the novelist reshapes the reader's mind through depicting the fierceness and viciousness of the Arab male living in a world governed by patriarchal precepts.           

Keywords: Arab-American fiction, Arab male, Patriarchal Power, Religion, Tradition