عنوان المقالة:"موقع الثقافة" الشتات وملامح الهوية الثقافية الهجينة في رواية "من الصومال مع الحب" للكاتبة نعيمة ب. روبرت The Location of Culture", Diaspora and the Hybrid Culture in Na'ima B. Robert's From Somalia with Love
Muslims in the West face numerous challenges in that not only westerner assumptions
including many different stereotypes and communal prejudices influence Muslims’
lives, but diaspora affects their identity as well. These challenges make Muslim identity
unstable amid on one hand, a sense of belonging to the culture of origin and on the other
hand, a sense of adaptation to the host culture. They are, consequently, trapped between
two contrasting and conflicting cultures, constantly negotiation their cultural entities.
This paper aims at analysing diaspora and its effects on Muslim youth's identity in
Na'ima B. Robert's From Somalia with Love, and exploring the postcolonial key
concepts of identity, diaspora and hybridity. Its purpose is to explore the challenges
Muslim characters face and explicate how diaspora influences their religion and culture
by mean of identifying the reasons and how identities are negotiated. To do so, this
qualitative and non-empirical study is conducted in a descriptive-theoretical analysis.
This paper finds that diaspora makes Muslim youths live in-between two cultures and
that this third space has created a hybrid culture, affecting cultural uniqueness. This
effect is reflected in the features of hybridization that appeared in a sense of alienation,
lack of original cultural knowledge, practice of homeland and grandparents' customs
and traditions and ancestors' history. The importance of this study lies in enabling the
reader to understand the basic terms of the topic: diaspora, hybridity and hybrid culture.
This is reinforced by the analysis of Homi Bhaba’s view of hybrid culture in his book
‘The Location of Culture’.