Homesickness and Displacement in Arab American Poetry

Wafa Yousef Alkahtib

Modern Applied Science, 2019, vol. 13, issue 3, 165

Abstract: The aim of this study is to address the nostalgic elements found in the Writings of the Arab American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Nye is an American Palestinian poet whose works are mainly concerned with revealing her father’s homesickness and detailing his lomging for his homeland and childhood memories. The study makes an attempt to prove that the overwhelming nostalgia bonds the person with his lost homeland, and prevents him from forgetting his past; therefore’ these feelings stand as a barrier between him and his new world. Displacement and homesickness are the main elements that increased the nostalgia of the immigrants for their homelands. To emphasize this, the current paper analysed some of Nye's poems which handle the sever nostalgia that Nye's father started suffering since the early beginning of his arrival to San Antonio, Texas in the United States of America. Besides, the study argues that the nostalgic feeling for the homeland has been transmitted from father to son/ daughter, although the later doesn't have any memories in his/ her ex- homeland. Thus, Nye herself started feeling the nostalgia for a past she has never lived and to a homeland she has never seen.

Date: 2019
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