Familiarizing the Unfamiliar: Visual and Verbal Self-Representations of Middle Eastern Women

Abstract

This thesis examines diasporic Middle Eastern women's self-representation in Susan Abulhawa's The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015) and The Complete Persepolis (2000) by Marianne Satrapi. Although produced in different mediums, both narratives fall within the bildungsroman genre, which means they equally navigate the western readers through the growth and development of their diasporic selves, in the cultural meeting of two dichotomous worlds: the west and the global south. By dissecting the graphic and literary representations of Middle Eastern women encompassing these texts, this thesis investigates the ways in which Abulhawa and Satrapi position their female subjects in relation to feminist Orientalist discourse. The close reading of the two works offers an exploration of the narrative techniques unique to each medium to argue that, when read together with Homi Bhabha’s hybridity and feminist critiques of Edward Said’s Orientalism, communicate female realities that deconstruct feminist Orientalist stereotypes, and provide western readers with nuanced images of the female Other. The discussion places an emphasis on the ways in which Abulhawa and Satrapi’s representations foster cross-cultural understanding of women of the global south, which I argue is crucial in combatting detrimental misconceptions about Middle Eastern women.