MASCULINITIES IN MUSLIM WOMEN`S POST-9/11 NOVELS: MEN IN THE NIGHT COUNTER AND SAFFRON DREAMS

Year 2021, , 480 - 495, 27.12.2021

Özlem Atar

https://doi.org/10.17572/mj2021.2.480495

Abstract

This article explores the representation of masculinities in Alia Yunis’ The Night Counter and Shaila Abdullah`s Saffron Dreams. The two novels I examine represent Arab-American and Pakistani-American Muslim masculinities in the post-9/11 context. In the first part, I provide an overview of research on Arab, Arab-American, Muslim, Pakistani and Pakistani-American masculinities after defining the key terms. In the rest of the paper, I trace the representations of masculinities in the two novels. Yunis redeems Arab manhoods by underscoring diversity in Arab-American masculinities whereas Abdullah erects a metaphorical monument for a young Pakistani-American man who loses his life during the attacks on the World Trade Center, thereby arguing that some Muslim men were innocent victims of the attack.

Keywords

post-9/11 novels, Arab and/or Muslim masculinities, The Night Counter, Saffron Dreams, novels by women authors

MÜSLÜMAN KADINLARIN 11 EYLÜL SONRASI ROMANLARINDA ERKEKLİKLER: THE NIGHT COUNTER VE SAFFRON DREAMS'DE ERKEKLER

Abstract

Bu makale, Alia Yunis`in The Night Counter adlı romanı ile Shaila Abdullah`ın Saffron Dreams adlı eserindeki erkeklik temsillerini irdeler. Müslüman kadın yazarlarca 11 Eylül 2001`de gerçekleşen terör saldırısını takip eden dönemde kaleme alınan bu iki eser, Arap ve/veya Müslüman erkeklerin heterojen bir grup olduğunu ve masumiyetlerini kanıtlama çabası içindedirler. Makalenin ilk bölümünde erkeklikler literatürüne dönerek devamında kullanacağım kavramlara açıklık getiriyorum ve Arap, Arap-Amerikan, Müslüman, Pakistanlı, Pakistanlı-Amerikan eril bireylerin erkeklikleri üzerine literatürü kısaca tarıyorum. Makale, sırasıyla The Night Counter ve Saffron Dreams romanlarının incelemeleriyle devam ediyor. 

Keywords

11 Eylül 2001 sonrası romanlar, Arap ve/veya Müslüman erkeklikler, The Night Counter, Saffron Dreams, kadın yazarların romanları

References

• Abdullah, S. (2009). Saffron Dreams. Ann Arbor, MI: Modern History Press.
• Abdulrahim, S., & Ajrouch, K. J. (2014). Arab Americans and the aging process. In S. C. Nassar-McMillan, K. J. Ajrouch, & J. Hakim-Larson (Eds.), Biopsychosocial Perspectives on Arab Americans (pp. 107-125). New York: Springer.
• Ajrouch, K. J. (1997). Ethnicity, gender and identity among second-generation Arab-Americans: Growing up Arabic in America. City: Wayne State University.
• Akash, M. & Mattawa, K. (Eds.). (2000). Post Gibran: Anthology of new Arab American writing. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780965203135/
• Akbarzadeh, S., & Smith, B. (2005). The representation of Islam and Muslims in the media. School of Political and Social Inquiry, 4.
• Alsultany, E. (2012). Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11. New York University Press.
• Aslam, M. (2012). Gender-based explosions: The nexus between Muslim masculinities, jihadist Islamism and terrorism. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.
• Aslam, M. (2014). Islamism and masculinity: Case study Pakistan. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 39(3)135-149.
• Bakalian, A., & Bozorgmehr, M. (2009). Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans respond. Berkely: Univ of California Press.
• Bayoumi, M. (2010). Being young, Muslim, and American in Brooklyn. In A. Bayat, & L. Herrera (Eds.), Being young and Muslim: New cultural politics in the global south and north (pp. 161-74). Oxford Scholarship Online.
• Beasley, C. (2008). Rethinking hegemonic masculinity in a globalizing world. Men and Masculinities, 11(1), 86–103.
• Bhabha, H. (1995). “Are you a man or a mouse?” In M. Berger, B. Wallis, & S. Watsons (Eds.), Constructing masculinity (pp. 57–65). New York: Routledge.
• Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
• Bin Laden claims responsibility for 9/11. (29 October 2004). CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bin-laden-claims-responsibility-for-9-11-1.513654.
• Bosch-Vilarrubias, M. (2016). Post-9/11 representations of Arab men by Arab American women writers: Affirmation and resistance. Berlin: Peter Lang.
• Bosch-Vilarrubias, M. (2017). New Arab masculinities: A feminist approach to Arab American men in post-9/11 literature written by women. In J. M. Armengol, M. B. Vilarrubias, À.Carabí, & T. Requena, T. (Eds.), Masculinities and literary studies: Intersections and new directions (pp. 66-76). New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Bosch-Vilarrubias, M. (2021). Aging men in contemporary Arab American literature written by women. In J. M. Armengol (Ed.), Aging Masculinities in Contemporary US Fiction (pp. 139-152). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Bridges, T., & Pascoe, C. J. (2014). Hybrid masculinities: New directions in the sociology of men and masculinities. Sociology Compass, 8(3), 246-258.
• Buchbinder, D. (2012). Studying men and masculinities. Routledge.
• Cainkar, L. A. (2009). Homeland insecurity: the Arab American and Muslim American experience after 9/11. City: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Charsley, K. (2005). “Unhappy Husbands: Masculinity and Migration in Transnational Pakistani Marriages.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 11 (1), 85–105.
• Coleman, D. (1998). Masculine migrations: Reading the postcolonial male in 'New Canadian' narratives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Connell, R. (2005) Masculinities (2nd ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Connell, R. (2009). Gender: In world perspective (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity.
• Connell, R.W., Hearn, J., & Kimmel, M. S. (2005). Introduction. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 1-12). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• De Sondy, A. (2015). The crisis of Islamic masculinities. London: Bloomsburry.
• Donaldson, M., Howson, R. (2009). Men, migration and hegemonic masculinity. In Donaldson, M., Hibbins, R., Howson, R., Pease, B., (Eds.), Migrant men: Critical studies of masculinities and migration experience (pp. 210–217). New York: Routledge.
• Driessen, H. (1983). Male sociability and rituals of masculinity in rural Andalusia. Anthropological Quarterly, 56(3), 125-133.
• Fadda-Conrey, C. (2011). Arab American citizenship in crisis: Destabilizing representations of Arabs and Muslims in the US after 9/11. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 57(3), 532-555.
• Farahani, F. (2012). Diasporic masculinities. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 2(2), 159.
• Flood, M., Gardiner, J. K., Pease, B., & Pringle, K. (Eds.). (2007). International encyclopedia of men and masculinities. New York: Routledge.
• Gelfand, M. J., LaFree, G., Fahey, S., & Feinberg, E. (2013). Culture and extremism. Journal of Social Issues, 69(3), 495-517.
• Gerami, S. (2005). Islamist masculinity and Muslim masculinities. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on men and masculinities, (pp. 448-457). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Ghareeb, E. (1983). Split vision: The portrayal of Arabs in the American media. Washington, D.C. American Arab Affairs Council.
• Ghoussoub, M., & Sinclair-Webb, E. (2000). Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East. London: Saki Books.
• Halberstam, J. (2019). Female masculinity. Duke University Press, 2019.
• Harpel, W. W. (2010). Conceptions of masculinity among Arab Americans (Doctoral dissertation, Washington State University).
• Haywood, C., & Johansson, T. (Eds.). (2017). Marginalized masculinities: Contexts, continuities and change (Vol. 57). Taylor & Francis.
• Hearn, J. (2007). Masculinity/Masculinities. In M. Flood, J. K. Gardiner, B. Pease, & K. Kringle (Eds.), International encyclopedia of men and masculinities (pp. 390-394). London & New York: Routledge.
• Hilal, R. M. (2020). Mirroring Hybridity: The use of Arab Folk Tradition in Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land and Alia Yunis’s The Night Counter. Arab Studies Quarterly, 42(4), 251–271.
• hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate politics. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
• Hossain, Z., & Juhari, R. (2015). Fathers across Arab and non-Arab Islamic societies. In J. L. Roopnarine, (Ed.), Fathers across cultures: The importance, roles, and diverse practices of dads: the importance, roles, and diverse practices of dads (pp. 368-387). Santa Barbara, California: Praegeer.
• Inhorn, M. C. (2012). The new Arab man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Inhorn, M. C., & Naguib, N. (Eds.). (2018). Reconceiving Muslim men: Love and marriage, family and care in precarious times (Vol. 38). New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
• Jafar, A. (2005). Women, Islam, and the state in Pakistan. Gender Issues, 22(1), 35–55.
• Jalal. (1991). The convenience of subservience: Women and the State of Pakistan. In D. Kandiyoti (Ed.), Women, Islam and the state (pp. 77-114), Hempshire: MacMillan.
• Jamal, A. (Ed.). (2013). Feminism and fundamentalism in Pakistan: Gender and class in the secular/religious divide. New Delhi: Left World Books.
• Jamal, A., & Naber, N. (Eds.). (2008). Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From invisible citizens to visible subjects. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
• Janssen, D. (2007). Male initiation: Imagining ritual necessity. Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, 1(3), 215-234.
• Jarmakani, A. (2011). Desiring the big bad blade: Racing the sheikh in desert romances. American Quarterly 63(4), 895-928.
• Khan, A. (2018). Pious masculinity, ethical reflexivity, and moral order in an Islamic piety movement in Pakistan. Anthropological Quarterly, 91(1), 53–77.
• Khoja-Moolji, S. (2021). Sovereign Attachments: Masculinity, Muslimness, and Affective Politics in Pakistan. Univ of California Press.
• Kimmel, M.S. (Ed.) (1995). The Politics of Manhood, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
• Kimmel, M. S., Hearn, J, & Connell, R. W. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of studies on men and masculinities. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Kukreja, R. (2021). Migration has stripped us of our manhood: Contradictions of failed masculinity among South Asian male migrants in Greece. Men and Masculinities, 24(2), 307-325.
• Leonard, K. I. (2003). Muslims in the United States: The state of research. Place: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Maloul, L. F. (2014). From immigrant narratives to ethnic literature: The contemporary fiction of Arab British and Arab American women writers (Doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester).
• Marsden, M. (2005). Living Islam: Muslim religious experience in Pakistan's north-west frontier. Cambridge University Press.
• Marsden, M. (2007). All‐male sonic gatherings, Islamic reform, and masculinity in northern Pakistan. American Ethnologist, 34(3), 473-490.
• Messerschmidt, J. W. (2018). Multiple masculinities. In B. J. Risman, C. M. Froyum, & W. J. Scarborough (Eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Gender (2nd ed.) (pp. 143-153). Cham: University of Illinois.
• Morgan, D. (2005). Class and masculinity. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 165-177). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Mishra, S. (2007). Saving Muslim women and fighting Muslim men: Analysis of representations in the New York Times. Global Media Journal, 6(11), 1-20.
• Naber, N. (2000). Ambiguous insiders: An investigation of Arab American invisibility. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23(1), 37-61.
• Naber, N. (2012). Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism. New York and London: New York University Press.
• Nacos, B. L., & Torres-Reyna, O. (2003). Framing Muslim-Americans before and after 9/11. In P. Norris, M. Kern, & M. R. Just (Eds.), Framing terrorism: The news media, the government, and the public (pp. 141-166). New York & London: Routledge.
• Naguib, N. (2015). Nurturing masculinities: Men, food, and family in contemporary Egypt. University of Texas Press.
• Nash, J. (1984). Rituals of manhood. Canberra Anthropology, 7(1-2), 145-151.
• Ngai, M. M. (2007). Birthright citizenship and the alien citizen. Fordham Law Review, 75, 2521.
• Ouzgane, L. (Ed.). (2006). Islamic masculinities. London: Zed.
• Peletz, M. G. (2021). Hegemonic Muslim masculinities and their others: Perspectives from South and Southeast Asia. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 63(3), 534-565.
• Plummer, K. (2005). Male sexualities. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 178-195). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Puar, J. K., & Rai, A. (2002). Monster, terrorist, fag: The war on terrorism and the production of docile patriots. Social text, 20(3), 117-148.
• Özyeğin, G. (2016). Gender and sexuality in Muslim cultures. London & New York: Routledge.
• Qadir, F., Khan, M. M., Medhin, G., & Prince, M. (2011). Male gender preference, female gender disadvantage as risk factors for psychological morbidity in Pakistani women of childbearing age-a life course perspective. BMC public health, 11(1), 1-13.
• Riley, D. (n.d.). The three B syndrome [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://hegemonyremedy.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/the-three-b-syndrome/.
• Rizvi, S. S. (2015). Father's masculinity ideology and their adolescent s perception of father`s Love. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 5(1), 14.
• Rozan (n.d.). Understanding masculinities: A formative research on masculinities and gender-based violence in Pakistan. Retrieved from http://menengage.org/resources/understanding-masculinities-formative-research-masculinities-gender-based-violence-pakistan/.
• Said's, E. (1978/2003). Orientalism. London: Penguin Classics.
• Selod, S. (2015). Citizenship denied: The racialization of Muslim American men and women post-9/11. Critical Sociology, 41(1), 77-95.
• Shaheen, J. G. (1997). Arab and Muslim stereotyping in American popular culture. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
• Shaheen, J. G. (2001). Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people. New York: Olive Branch.
• Shaheen, J. G. (2003). Reel bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social science, 588(1), 171-193.
• Shaheen, J. G. (2007). Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press.
• Sharma, S. (2010). Taxi cab publics and the production of brown space after 9/11. Cultural Studies, 24(2), 183-199.
• Shehadeh, M. (2002). Review of the book Reel bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people, J. G. Shaheen. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 19(4), 139-142.
• Schrock, D., & Schwalbe, M. (2009). Men, masculinity, and manhood acts. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 277-295.
• Shafik, V. (2012). Rituals of hegemonic masculinity, cinema, torture, and the Middle East. In J. A. Carlson & E. Weber (Eds.), Speaking About Torture (pp. 163-188). New York: Fordham University Press.
• Sünbüloğlu, N. Y. (2013). Erkek Millet Asker Millet. Istanbul: İletişim.
• Whitehead, S. (2007). Manhood. In M. Flood, J. K. Gardiner, B. Pease, & K. Kringle (Eds.), International encyclopedia of men and masculinities (p. 380). London & New York: Routledge.
• Wright Jr., J. W. & E. K. Rownson. (Eds). (1997). Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Yunis, A. (2009). The Night Counter. City: Random House.
• Yunis, A. (2021, September 11). Early morning calls: How September 11 made me a Muslim writer [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://aliayunis.net/2021/09/11/early-morning-calls/.
• Zucchino, D. (2021, October 7). The U.S. war in Afghanistan: How it started, and how it ended. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/article/afghanistan-war-us.html.