The Mosaics of National Identity in the Arab American Diaspora: Exploring Long-Distance Nationalism in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

Abstract Carol Fadda-Conrey (2014) points out that Arab American literature emerged remarkably in the early years of the 21st century, accompanying various political events and turmoil in either the USA or the Arab world, particularly the Middle East. One of the key aspects of this ethnic literature is the manifestation of the Arab national identity and the call for unity and solidarity among kin Arab communities, whether locally or across borders. This paper, as such, by taking Diana Abu-Jaber’s novel Crescent (2003) as an example of the Arab American fiction produced in the contemporary era, examines the components of nationalism as expressed from afar – long-distance nationalism. This type of national propensity has received little attention in contemporary literary studies. In addition to using critical and analytical approaches to the novel, this paper basically relies on a socioconceptual framework based on the perspectives of prominent theorists and critics, such as Carol Fadda-Conrey, Nina Glick Shiller, Gabriella Elgenius, and Tololyan Khachig, to name a few.