'WELCOME HOME, OUR BITTER HOME!': RETHINKING NATIONAL IDENTITY IN NURUDDIN FARAH'S "LINKS"
Vol.10, Issue 2, 2024, pp. 276-291 Full text
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.24.2.4
Web of Science: 001379776600006
Author:
Ayşegül Turan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0016-4748
Affiliation: İstanbul Kültür University, Istanbul, Turkey 05jvrwv37
Abstract
Nuruddin Farah's Links (2005) represents the civil war-torn Somalia, and particularly Mogadiscio, from the perspective of Jeebleh, who returns to his homeland after twenty years. The novel, through Jeebleh's exilic perspective, interrogates the implications of national identity and sense of collective belonging in a society driven by clan politics. This article examines the representation of fragmented nationhood as a consequence of the civil war along with the narrative's portrayal of other forms of belonging and collectivity to engender an alternative understanding of national identity. I contend that Links, while maintaining its focus on the national space and what the nation stands for in times of crisis, also offers ways to envision connections between the national space and what lies beyond through the implementation of exilic point of view and literary and non-literary allusions.
Keywords: national identity, nation, exile, Nuruddin Farah, Somalia
Article history:
Submitted: 7 April 2024
Reviewed: 11 May 2024
Accepted: 3 July 2024
Published: 22 December 2024
Citation (APA):
Turan, A. (2024). 'Welcome Home, Our Bitter Home!': Rethinking National Identity in Nuruddin Farah's "Links". English Studies at NBU, 10(2), 276-292. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.24.2.4
Copyright © 2024 Ayşegül Turan
This open access article is published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. If you want to use the work commercially, you must first get the authors' permission.
Funding:
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Note: This article is produced from my PhD thesis, submitted to the Committee on Comparative Literature, Washington University in St. Louis in 2015. Parts of the text also appeared in the conference presentation given at "Revolutions in Reading: Literary Practice in Transition" organized by Stockholm University in 2021.
References
Bystrom, K. (2014). Humanitarianism, Responsibility, Links, Knots. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 16(3), 405-423. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2013.798141
Coundouriotis, E. (2014). The People's Right to the Novel: War Fiction in the Postcolony. Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823262335.001.0001
Farah, N. (2005). Links. Penguin.
Gagiano, A. (2006). Surveying the Contours of 'a Country in Exile': Nuruddin Farah's Somalia. African Identities, 4(2), 251-268. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725840600761195
Garuba, H. (2008). No-Man's Land: Nuruddin Farah's Links and the Space of Postcolonial Alienation. In A. de Lange, G. Fincham, J. Hawthorn, & J. Lothe (Eds.), Literary Landscapes: From Modernism to Postcolonialism (pp. 180-197). Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230227712_11
Gikandi, S. (2001). Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 100(3), 627-658. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-100-3-627
Hawley, J. (1996). Nuruddin Farah: Tribalism, Orality, and Postcolonial Ultimate Reality and Meaning in Contemporary Somalia. Ultimate Reality and Meaning 19(3), 189-205. https://doi.org/10.3138/uram.19.3.189
Jay, P. (2010). Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies. Cornell University Press.
Juraga, D. (1997). Nuruddin Farah's Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship: Patriarchy, Gender, and Political Oppression in Somalia. Critique, 38(3), 205-220. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1997.10543176
Moolla, F. F. (2012). Reconstruction of the Subject and Society in Nuruddin Farah's Links and Knots. In J. Ogude, G. A. Musila, & D. Ligaga (Eds.), Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes (pp. 115-138). Africa World Press.
Mzali, I. (2010). Wars of Representation: Metonymy and Nuruddin Farah's Links. College Literature, 37(3), 84-105. https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.0.0124
Wright, D. (1997) Nations as Fictions: Postmodernism in the Novels of Nuruddin Farah. Critique, 38(3), 193-204. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1997.10543175
Wright, D. (2002). Introduction. In Derek Wright (Ed.), Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah (pp. xv-xxvii). Africa World Press.
Review:
1. Reviewer's name: Name undisclosed
Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons
2. Reviewer's name: Name Undisclosed
Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons
Handling Editor: Boris Naimushin, New Bulgarian University
Verified Editor Record on Publons