Parents and Daughters in Two Novels by Arab American Authors: “Khalas, Let Her Go”

Abstract

Multiple intersecting pressures bear upon immigrant parent-child, and especially
immigrant mother-daughter relationships depicted in Randa Jarrar’s novel, A Map
of Home, and Mohja Kahf ’s novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. Each of these
novels is a Bildungsroman story, the protagonist of each being a budding artist. As
the growing daughters struggle toward autonomy and parents react from complex
pressures upon them, the reader gains insight on the interconnected structural and
psychological factors in the intergenerational dynamics these novels portray, often
with humor. The personal psychological history of the parents, as well as their
displacement through immigration, in addition to anti-Arab racism in their U.S.
settings and how each of these factors relates also to gender, complicate the parents’
relationships with their daughters. Through a close reading informed by postcolonial
and psychological approaches, this article argues that these novels do not depict
only one category of oppression but also offer multiple layers of critique.