Towards a new mode of reading Muslim diaspora writing: Muslimness and the homing desire in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent and Shafak’s The Saint of Incipient Insanities

Abstract

This chapter draws on diaspora studies to offer a literary analysis of two novels by writers of Muslim and Middle Eastern origin, Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (2003) and Elif Shafak’s The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004). In the two novels, the notions of Muslimness, home and cultural identity are entwined with the theme of diaspora. By examining the intersection of Muslimness and the politics of homing desires as depicted in these novels, this study seeks to forge a new conceptual framework, ‘Muslim diaspora space’, as a lens for reading Muslim narratives, which broadens the various ways in which Muslim diasporic subjectivities can be theorised and used as an analytic tool in reading literary texts writers of Muslim origin.