Exploring Representations of Self by Diasporic Muslim Writers

This paper highlights four completed graduate research projects conducted at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics in the area of Muslim identity in fiction. The four writers chosen are Palestinian-Egyptian-Australian Randa Abdel-Fattah, Ethiopian-Yemeni Mohamad Abdul Wali, Greek-American Jamilah Kolocotronis and Afghani-American Khalid Hosseini. These writers are part of the ever growing diasporic Muslim canon that continues to explore issues of self and the politics of diaspora. The discussion investigates each writer's representation of the Muslim Self with themes which include confronting identity crisis of a minority adolescent, challenging the fractured identity of a minority migrant, defying religious identity representation of a revert, and exoticizing identity of the Muslim landscape. In conclusion, we contend that the Muslim fiction writers problematize the issue of identity of Muslims in the world today given their heterogeneous landscapes and social/cultural contestations.