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Female Homosexuality and (Non)Performativity in the 21 st -C. Syrian Novel: Queerness as/at Home in Samar Yazbek's Ra'ihat al-Qirfa (2008) /Cinnamon (2012).
- Source :
-
Journal of homosexuality [J Homosex] 2023 Aug 24; Vol. 70 (10), pp. 2050-2071. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Mar 15. - Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- Given the regression in empowering representations of queer women in the literary and, more generally, the cultural life of the modern Arab world, this article spotlights the hitherto under-researched literary portrayals of female homosexuality as a site of redemptive and/or reparative, queer(ed) home in 21 <superscript>st</superscript> -century Syria. Through a close reading of Samar Yazbek's Ra'ihat al-Qirfa (2008), and, for added nuance, its English translation Cinnamon (2012), the study explores the novel's curation of home in and through the protagonist Aliyah's same-sex relationship with her employer Hanan al-Hashimi. Using Roberta Rubenstein's and Sara Ahmed's notions of fixing past homes, and of queer(ing) home, respectively, the article shows how the sense of home cushioned by the same-sex affair transcends social class and domination/submission binaries. I thus argue that even as the same-sex relationship in Yazbek's novel may not be performative from a contemporary lesbian feminist perspective, it kneads hope, not desolation, into the plot and the real-life setting it extrapolates, since it responds to the local context the characters inhabit.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1540-3602
- Volume :
- 70
- Issue :
- 10
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Journal of homosexuality
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 35289733
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2048166