Claims of memory: Transgenerational traumas, fluid identities, and resistance in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses

ABSTRACT

Displacement from one’s homeland and the inability to return problematize definitions of diaspora, belonging, and identity. Palestinian American Hala Alyan’s 2017 novel Salt Houses reconfigures these terms in its recapitulation of Palestinian history as traumatic memories. This article explores the importance of home both as private space, temporal or spatial, and as an embodiment of social texture and cultural identity. Trauma theory has been challenged for its treatment of the Palestinian experience. This article assesses its usefulness in tracing Alyan’s portrayal of the Yacoubs, a middle-class Palestinian family, and their reaction to wars and catastrophes, mainly those known as the 1948 exodus and the 1967 setback. Salt Houses suggests that such traumatic events can be transmitted to future Palestinian generations and define their transnational identity in diaspora. It illustrates how traumatic memories can serve as a form of resistance against the erasure of the personal and collective memories of Palestinians.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory
• resistance
• decolonizing trauma theory
• postmemory
• displacement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Nakba, translated as “the catastrophe”, refers to the Palestinian exodus when hundreds of thousands of Arabs residing in historic Palestine fled or were forced out of their homes during the 1948 war and were relocated to neighbouring Arab countries. The Naksa, translated as “the setback”, refers to the displacement of Palestinians inside the occupied territories and to Arab neighbouring countries in the aftermath of the Arabs’ defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War.

2. Settler colonialism refers to the colonists’ forceful expulsion of the aboriginal people from their homeland and relocation of settlers in the confiscated lands. The Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad (2006) uses this term to describe “Israel’s sectarian, racialist character [which] was ensured by the expulsion of the native Palestinians from their homeland” (301). See also Khalidi (2020).

3. Alyan’s experience in clinical psychology has helped her incorporate this knowledge into the aesthetics of the novel to propagate the state of landlessness caused by wars and crises and stress the Palestinians’ right of return. In an interview with John Stintzi (Alyan 2018), she states: “I definitely found myself inundated by clinical material, particularly traumatic stories of displacement and asylum seeking, and had some brilliant supervisors and peers.”

4. For more information on the use of “postcolonial” when referring to Palestine, see Shohat (2000).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wael J. Salam

Wael J. Salam is an assistant professor of American literature and comparative literature in the Department of English at the University of Jordan in Aqaba. His research and teaching interests include American literature, world literature, comparative literature, trauma theory, ethnicity, diaspora, and postcolonial literature. His articles have been published in several international journals, including The CEA Critic.

Safi M. Mahfouz

Safi M. Mahfouz is an associate professor of modern American literature, global Shakespeare and comparative literature in the Department of English at the University of Jordan in Aqaba. A former Fulbright postdoctoral visiting scholar and fellow at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Centre, the City University of New York (2012–14), he is (with Marvin Carlson) co-editor and co-translator of Theatre from Medieval Cairo: The Ibn Dāniyāl Trilogy (2013) and Four Plays from Syria – Sa’dallah Wannous (2014). His articles have been published in international journals such as Theatre Research International, New Theatre Quarterly, and Journal of Semitic Studies. He also serves on the editorial advisory board of several international journals, including Arab Stages.