Scheherazade and the Limits of Inclusive Politics in Arab American Literature

Abstract

Scheherazade is a site of contested meaning for Arab American writers negotiating the politics of representation and their cultural citizenship in the United States. The three texts under discussion in this article—Scheherazade’s Legacy: Arab and Arab American Women on Writing (2004) edited by Susan Muaddi Darraj, E-mails From Scheherazad (2003) by Mohja Kahf, and The Night Counter (2009) by Alia Yunis—respond to Orientalism and anti-Arab racism by reconfiguring Arab American women’s gendered and sexual subjectivity. Each text uses Scheherazade’s normative femininity and sexuality to negotiate inclusion, but only for subjects whose identities are constituted by a similar normativity. Each author proposes different modes of subjectivity for Arab Americans navigating Orientalism, anti-Arab discrimination, and the politics of cultural authenticity. Using Scheherazade’s historical and literary legacy, they attempt to create an “authentic” Arab subject who can belong to the US nation. Yet in doing so, they produce new forms of exclusion and marginality among Arab Americans. Centering Arab American representational strategies via the example of Scheherazade, this article exposes the limits of inclusive politics for both the discursive and material lives of diasporic Arabs.