Between Rootedness and Alienation: An Ecological Reading of Hala Alyan's Salt Houses

The overlapping of the theoretical framework of Ecocriticism and Postcolonialism highlights the interdisciplinarity between the environment and literature and the possibility of using elements of either of them to reflect and overwhelm the other. This overlap becomes a significant case study in depicting Anglophone writers' yearning in the diaspora or at home while writing about their homelands, reflecting their longing to belong while suffering from alienation and up-rootedness. It is worth mentioning that most widely different literary works that blend ecocriticism with postcolonialism concentrate on the idea of devastation or mishandling of nature because of colonialism and other causes. However, this research will attempt to deviate from these critical readings in handling this interdisciplinarity, as it will examine the reflections of the environmental elements with postcolonial concepts of alienation and rootedness on people's feelings and emotions in the diaspora by offering a critical reading for Hala Alyan's Salt Houses (2017). The novel reveals the role of natural environmental elements like plants, gardens, and trees in reflecting the characters' senses of rootedness and belonging, while water, seas, and oceans describe their senses of alienation and estrangement. Salt Houses draws on how the dispossessed Palestinians' cultivation and regeneration of their gardens and plants drive their struggle, resistance, and existence against the Israeli occupation.