Nostalgia, identity, and homeland: Reading the narratives of the diaspora in Susan Abulhawa’s fiction

Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa’s novels Mornings in Jenin (2010) and The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015) capture the experience of the Palestinian community following Israeli occupation and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. This article explores the ways in which Abulhawa shows the dismantling of the national sovereignty of Palestine as having thrown the citizenry of the Palestinian Arabs into a state of disarray. Drawing on theories of nation, nationalism, and nostalgia, it discusses how Abulhawa’s protagonists have recourse to cultural memories of the homeland to conceptualize and rebuild their disrupted subjectivities. Analysing the important role of nostalgia in perpetuating love of a lost territory, it argues that, for Abulhawa, the yearning to return is fundamental to the social connectedness and nationalist struggles of the dislocated Palestinian Arab community.