Resistenza e ritorno nella letteratura palestinese americana

Arguably the most prolific sub-genre of Arab American literature, Palestinian-American literature is the product of post-Nabka and post-Naksa diasporas and sets itself apart from the larger tradition of Arab American writing in its “continual (and ardent) emphasis on the motherland” (Salaita). Emerging after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, mostly among first-generation intellectual expatriates, and flourishing immediately before and after the events of 9/11, Palestinian-American literature has provided over the last five decades incisive counternarratives to the dominant pro-Israel and Islamophobic rhetoric of American public discourse. Focusing on texts by Edward Said, Susan Abulhawa, Naomi Shihab Nye and Lisa Suhair Majaj, among others, this essay discusses the globalization of the Palestinian text, by tracing a double trajectory emphasizing both resistance to the Zionist design of territorial occupation and expropriation as well as vindication of a Palestinian Right of Return to the lost homeland.