Voices of Errancy, Spaces of Silence and Traces of Writing in the Narratives of Fadia Faqir, Leila Aboulela and Assia Djebar

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine some Anglophone and Francophone writings produced by Arab women writers, namely Fadia Faqir, Leila Aboulela, and Assia Djebar, whose recent novels reveal an unremitting recall to the past to connect the self to the present and future in relevance to home/homeland. In Faqir’s (2014) Willow Trees Don’t Weep, Aboulela’s (2011) Lyrics Alley, and Djebar’s (2002) La Femme Sans Sépulture (The Woman Without a Burial Place), these writers point out their concern with gender, trauma and identity; wherein the memory joins the imaginary to resurrect the past and rekindle its vividness. Then, this paper endeavors to show the way “home” as an object of quest is figured in these writings in order to conceptualize a locus of identification for Arab women. It also touches on some issues relevant to the portrayal of home/homeland, the quest for newly-established spaces and voices in terms of exile, traumatic memories, patriarchy and matriarchy. It seeks then answers to the central question as how these writers of the diaspora would re-cognize the fragmented subjects’ voices, re-present their in-between spaces, and re-identify their home (s) in the selected narratives.     .