Old Age in Arab American Literature: A Reading of Frances Khirallah Noble’s and Joseph Geha’s Short Stories

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2025.e105213

Keywords:

Old Age, Arab American Short Stories, Frances Khirallah Noble, Joseph Geha

Abstract

This essay[1] aims at examining old age in short stories by the Arab American writer Frances Khirallah Noble (2000) and the Lebanese writer Joseph Geha (1990). For such, it takes into account the Arab migration to the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. Moreover, it discusses the dualism between disseminating and reinforcing traditional practices from the place of origin and, on the other hand, a tendency toward assimilation as the way to a successful settlement in the new country. As portrayed by the analyzed literary texts, the tension between perpetuating traditions and embracing foreign traits directly affects elder members of Arab American communities, who may be either pushed to the margin by younger generations or respected for holding a set of values and memories which can be used for the benefit of their communities.

Keywords: old age; Arab American short stories; Frances Khirallah Noble; Joseph Geha.

[1] Part of this essay has been published in Portuguese in Author #1; Author #2 (ed.). Title of the Book, 2022.

Author Biographies

Gláucia Renate Gonçalves, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Gláucia Renate Gonçalves is a Full Professor of Literatures in English at the Federal University of Minas Gerais - UFMG, in Brazil. In 1995 she received a Ph.D. in Romance Languages, with a minor in English, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US. She has been teaching at UFMG since 1996, and her research interests are mainly the literary representation of migration, diaspora and aging. She co-edited The Art of Elizabeth Bishop, New Challenges in Language and Literature, and Prospero and Caliban Revisited: Brazilian Critical Perspectives on World Literatures in English, and has translated into Portuguese, among other titles, Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture and Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions. She is the founder and coordinator of the Center for the Study of Literature and Age Studies at UFMG

Letícia Malloy, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte

Letícia Malloy is an Adjunct Professor of English Language and Literatures in English at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte – UFRN, in Brazil. In 2017 she completed a Doctoral Program in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the Federal University of Minas Gerais – UFMG. She is an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State Study of the U.S. Institute (SUSI) for Scholars on Contemporary American Literature, held by the University of Montana in 2023. She has been researching and publishing works in Comparative Literature, and is particularly interested in the representation of aging in literatures written in English. She has co-edited Na literatura, os espaços and Notícia atual da literatura brasileira (vols 1 and 2). She is the founder and coordinator of the Center for the Study of Literature and Age Studies at UFRN.

References

Abu-Jaber, Diana. Crescent. Norton, 2003.

“Ageing and Health.” World Health Organization, 2024, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health#:~:text=At%20this%20time%20the%20share,2050%20to%20reach%20426%20million. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Ajrouch, Kristine J. “Arab American Elders: Network Structure, Perceptions of Relationship Quality, and Discrimination.” Research in Human Development, vol. 2, no. 4, 2005, pp. 213-28.

Ajrouch, Kristine J. “Arab American Immigrant Elders’ Views About Social Support.” Ageing & Society, vol. 25, 2005, pp. 655-73.

Ajrouch, Kristine J. “Social Isolation and Loneliness Among Arab American Elders: Cultural, Social and Personal Factors.” Research in Human Development, vol. 5, no.1, 2008, pp. 44-59.

Barry, Elizabeth, and Margery Vibe Skagen. Literature and Ageing. D. S. Brewer, 2020

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.

Brennan, Zoe. The Older Woman in Recent Fiction. McFarland, 2005.

Butler, Robert N. Why Survive? Being Old in America. Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.

Dyussenbayev, Akhmet. “Age Periods of Human Life.” Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, vol. 4, no. 6, 2017, pp. 258-63.

Fakhouri, Hani. “Growing Old in an Arab American Family.” Age Though Ethnic Lenses: Caring for the Elderly in a Multicultural Society. Edited by Laura Katz Olson, Rowman, 2001, pp. 160-70.

Geha, Joseph. Through and Through: Toledo Stories. Graywolf, 1990.

Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. Aged by Culture. U of Chicago P, 2004.

Hooyman, Nancy, et al. Aging Matters: An Introduction to Social Gerontology. Pearson, 2015.

Kristeva, Julia. “Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner.” Strangers to Ourselves. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia UP, 1991, pp. 1-40.

Majaj, Lisa Suhair. “New Directions: Arab American Writing Today.” Arab Americans: Literary Entanglements of the American Hemisphere and the Arab World. Edited by Ottmar Ette and Friederike Pannewick, Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2006, pp. 123-136.

McGlynn, Cathy, et al., editors. Ageing Women in Literature and Visual Culture: Reflections, Refractions, Reimaginings. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Noble, Frances Khirallah. The Situe Stories. Syracuse UP, 2000.

Orfalea, Gregory. “The Chandelier.” 1984. Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land. Edited by Wesley Brown and Amy Ling, Persea Books, 2002, pp. 345-55.

Pickard, Susan. Age Studies. Sage, 2016.

“Resilience in Older Age.” Center for Policy on Ageing, 2014. www.cpa.org.uk/. Accessed 6 Jul. 2024.

Salaita, Steven. “Arab American Literature.” The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature. Edited by Rachel C. Lee, Routledge, 2014, pp. 202-12.

Twigg, Julia, and Wendy Martin, editors. Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Routledge, 2015.

Downloads

Published

2025-07-02

Issue

Vol. 78 No. 1 (2025):

Section

Literary and Cultural Studies

Categories

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Gláucia Renate Gonçalves, Letícia Malloy

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.