Assimilation versus Acculturation: writing as a crossroad

Abstract

For many exiled and diasporic bodies, assimilation promises a safe haven under which they believe they can escape the ills and pains of discrimination, oppression and racism. Through such attempts, these people rarely think of the expenses they will find themselves paying due to complete assimilation. The daily external and internal struggles are unbearable and unconscious assimilation increases the bitterness and deformation of their dual identities. Juxtaposing Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab Fiction (2009) and Growing up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American (1999), this paper aims at presenting acculturation, or conscious assimilation, as an alternative that can help secure a true identity and voice of immigrants, especially Arab Americans. Along hand, this work sheds light on the crucial need for Arab Americans to seek a place within the American literal world and increase their narrations and documentations. Through comparing the multiple faces of assimilation found in the selected literal works, this study argues that pinpointing these negative aspects is itself positive or a form of conscious assimilation urging the Arab American identity to vocalize its existence through literature. Ultimately, this paper paves the way for future questions and further research that underscore the political rightness of acculturation and literal narration in preserving the authority and authenticity of dual identities, particularly of Arab Americans.