Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
This paper challenges the thought that the term ‘Muslim woman’ connotes submissive or backward and is in need of rescue by the West through a literary analysis of the work by Mohja Kahf (b.1967), a leading contemporary Arab-American Muslim woman writer. In her novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Australian International Academic Centre
2013
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| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/1/37952.pdf |
| _version_ | 1848845981281419264 |
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| author | Alkarawi, Susan Taha Bahar, Ida Baizura |
| author_facet | Alkarawi, Susan Taha Bahar, Ida Baizura |
| author_sort | Alkarawi, Susan Taha |
| building | UPM Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This paper challenges the thought that the term ‘Muslim woman’ connotes submissive or backward and is in need of rescue by the West through a literary analysis of the work by Mohja Kahf (b.1967), a leading contemporary Arab-American Muslim woman writer. In her novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), Kahf focuses on the oppressive and discriminatory practices Muslim women encounter when wearing the hijab or veil where the main character and narrator experiences a type of identity split, or fragmentation, when assimilating into mainstream American culture. As a tool for analysis, the notion of liminality by Victor Turner (1920-1983), a British cultural anthropologist, is used to analyze the narrator’s choice of being ‘betwixt and between’ the state of things, or being ‘neither here nor there’. The resolution of social and personal conflicts portrayed is mapped to the stages of liminality. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-15T08:55:27Z |
| format | Article |
| id | upm-27952 |
| institution | Universiti Putra Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-15T08:55:27Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | Australian International Academic Centre |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | upm-279522016-03-07T02:18:30Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/ Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Alkarawi, Susan Taha Bahar, Ida Baizura This paper challenges the thought that the term ‘Muslim woman’ connotes submissive or backward and is in need of rescue by the West through a literary analysis of the work by Mohja Kahf (b.1967), a leading contemporary Arab-American Muslim woman writer. In her novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), Kahf focuses on the oppressive and discriminatory practices Muslim women encounter when wearing the hijab or veil where the main character and narrator experiences a type of identity split, or fragmentation, when assimilating into mainstream American culture. As a tool for analysis, the notion of liminality by Victor Turner (1920-1983), a British cultural anthropologist, is used to analyze the narrator’s choice of being ‘betwixt and between’ the state of things, or being ‘neither here nor there’. The resolution of social and personal conflicts portrayed is mapped to the stages of liminality. Australian International Academic Centre 2013-03 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/1/37952.pdf Alkarawi, Susan Taha and Bahar, Ida Baizura (2013) Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 2 (2). pp. 101-106. ISSN 2200-3592; ESSN: 2200-3452 http://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL/article/view/911 10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.2p.101 |
| spellingShingle | Alkarawi, Susan Taha Bahar, Ida Baizura Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf |
| title | Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf |
| title_full | Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf |
| title_fullStr | Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf |
| title_full_unstemmed | Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf |
| title_short | Negotiating liminal identities in Mohja Kahf's The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf |
| title_sort | negotiating liminal identities in mohja kahf's the girl in the tangerine scarf |
| url | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/27952/1/37952.pdf |