Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

Arab American women’s literature has emerged noticeably in the early years of the 21st century. The social and political atmosphere of post 9/11 America encouraged the growth of such literature and brought it to international attention. This diasporic literature is imbued with the discourse of Occidentalism; this not only creates a set of counter-stereotypes and representations to challenge Orientalism and write back to Orientalists, but it also works as a strategy for self-exclusion—by which Arab Americans exclude themselves from wider US society—and paves the way to selfrealization. Taking Mohja Kahf’s novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006) as a sample of Arab American literature, this paper examines the extent to which Arab American characters including Téta, Wajdy, and Khadra represent and identify white Americans from an Occidentalist point of view to exclude themselves from wider American society, and promote their self-realization and recognition. The arguments and analysis in this paper are outlined within a social identity theoretical framework