Place, Culture and Identity in Leila Aboulela's Novels: The Translator and Minaret

Abstract

Most of Leila Aboulela’s works explore the complex cultural perceptions between East and West in migration, often dealing with the challenges of migration, particularly in carving a space for belonging. When migrants move from their homeland to a new country, they carry their memories, beliefs, traditions, feelings of belonging with them. Arab Anglophone literature is a genre that deals with the distresses and difficulties of the Arab and African migrants, including cross-cultural conflicts and western perceptions and misconceptions of their identity, which lead to feelings of dislocation, alienation, and depression. This study discusses two contemporary novels, The Translator (1999) and Minaret (2005) which are written by Aboulela. These novels provide authentic and rich content to explore the Muslim Arab woman’s struggle over creating a modern yet religiously traditional identity. What makes these novels stand out is the fact that the Muslim protagonists are capable and successful in overcoming alienation and displacement by creating a new identity, largely due to their commitment to Islam. She portrays how religious actions such as praying and fasting can help facilitate this process. The study, thus, aims at discussing place, culture, and identity in the formation of these narratives and the challenge the protagonists face to negotiate and the freedom to decide their own identity within this diasporic setting. What the two characters in the novel find is that ‘Muslim’ is an identity that not only has the power to transcend national borders, but also signifies a communal set of beliefs, something that neither Sudan nor Britain is able to provide them with. One of the most important results of the research is that the place to which the protagonists of the two novels long and belong represents a significant role despite the spatial factor, and that the identity of the two characters is not affected by the place and culture of the former colonizer with the presence of freedom and the ability to make decisions without supervision or accountability. The researcher recommends that since literature is enriching, entertaining and educational it should be taught to students at different levels as well as providing university and public libraries with version of Leila Aboulela’s books in low prices.