The Continuity of Identity in Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin

Abstract

Identity has been central in diasporic Palestinian literature since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948. However, the concept of continuity in personal identity remains in the shadow in scholarly works. Based on the significance of the interplay of personal identity’s social, psychological, and physical continuity and the lack of focus on this triangulated perspective of identity in previous studies of Palestinian literature, this paper explores personal identity’s social, psychological and physical continuity as depicted in the novel Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian diasporic writer. With a particular focus on Abulhawa’s perception of personal identity, the current study examines the juxtaposed projections of personal identity for Palestinians after the Nakba. The dialectics of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, by Georg Hegel, guide the discussion of the triangulated continuities of personal identity. Our findings disclose that Abulhawa manifests a continuation of the ancestors’ thesis; solidity and continuity are projected before Nakba. As a result of the Palestinians’ disconnection from their homeland, the physical continuity is crushed. Shatat is becoming increasingly psychologically and socially antithetical to Palestinian personal identity as the Palestinians get deeper into Shatat. Attempts to assimilate with American culture are projected as the most aggravated antithesis of crushed psychological and social continuity in the United States. Furthermore, commitment to nonaggression, regardless of the intensity of conflicts, appears as a vital thread keeping a sense of interrelated psychological continuity to humankind. Therefore, the synthesis of personal identity is unreachable due to the still ongoing Shatat.