Cultural Authenticity Versus Hyphenated Identities: Transnational Modes of Belonging and Citizenship in The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly

“Many Arab American immigrants and their subsequent generations have been troubled by self-identification and national belonging and citizenship. Yet they have developed strategies to cope with such issues including hybrid identities and embracing cultural authenticity in their host countries. Hence, this paper traces Susan Muaddi Darraj’s challenge to this nation-state understanding articulating transnational modes of belonging that unsettle binarism and homogenous assimilation of the nation-state in the collection of short stories The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly (2007). Darraj uses short stories as a literary form, diverse in characters, yet largely connected in themes, to extrapolate the Arab Americans’ transnational connections to their homelands without being excluded by the framework of the US nationstate. While Darraj’s collection portrays how Arab American immigrants celebrate and preserve their cultural practices and traditional values, which are heteronormative and patriarchal, it also presents the hybrid and complex texture of the subsequent generations, particularly daughters, who question what Nadine Naber calls ‘the politics of cultural authenticity’; that is, the preservation of Arab traditional values and practices.”