Crossing Boundaries: A Postcolonial Reading of Naomi Shihab Nye's Young-Adult Literature

Abstract

The paper analyzes Naomi Shihab Nye's young-adult literature in the light of central issues of postcolonialism.  Her original works dealing with the Middle East, namely the award-winning 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (1994) and Habibi (1997), a young-adult novel, are discussed as representative of minority literature for the young in the United States. Hence, her depiction of the Palestinian diaspora and related themes of identity, assimilation, marginalization and cultural conflict are discussed. Central to a postcolonial reading of Nye's works is her representation of the identity crisis of Arab-Americans as an ethnic minority uniting two allegedly hegemonic cultures, Eastern and Western. Related binaries such as "self" and "other," "centre" and "margin," alongside her revisionary versions of history reveal to what extent Nye's works are representative of the theory. Furthermore, the author's treatment of both cultural identity formation and hybridity as experienced by second generation Arab-Americans living both in the USA and the Middle East adds a fresh perspective to this focal postcolonial issue. The writer succeeds in advocating her message of building a sense of enlarged humanity through crossing racial, political, ideological and psychological boundaries among the young generation in order to achieve global peace. Her works prove the adaptability of the theory to the literature of young people; at the same time, they place great stress on the humanistic attribute of postcolonialism rather than its political aspect.