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The Non-National Subject: Ambivalent "Americans" In Contemporary Narratives By Women Writers In The Us, Dalia Gomaa

Theses and Dissertations

This study argues that the notion of Americanness is constructed nationally within the U.S. geographic space, as well as transnationally outside that space. The transnational perception of the U.S. nation-space and Americanness makes possible ambivalent positionings which I call non-national and through its lens I examine migrant narratives by Arab-American, Chicana, Indian-American, Pakistani-American, and Cuban-American women writers. I explain in my study that the non-national subject does not merely occupy a liminal space between home-country and host-country but rather reconfigures the implications of the "foreign" and the "domestic"; "home" and "abroad" within that interstitial space. I also argue that the …