The Immigrant Writer's Representation of the Ancestral Homeland:

Abstract

This study aims at investigating whether immigrant writers, in their attempt to represent their ancestral homelands, are able to transmit accurate, vivid images of the homes they had left behind or if their literary presentation is fogged by the new identity thrown upon them in their new homes which may result in literary misrepresentation. An immigrant, especially an immigrant writer, often undergoes severe identity crises which transmission may be noticed in their work, exceptionally when producing representative literary pieces of their motherland. This often arouses astringent criticism. Khaled Hosseini is an example of these writers; through his novels, the author’s effort to pass to the world an image of the average Afghan’s life, throughout the country’s instability is noticed. Nevertheless, critics believe that his negative outlook for his birth country marks his narratives. Drawing on cultural studies and the post-colonial theory, this thesis aims at investigating whether Khaled Hosseini’s work, entitled A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), furnishes distorted truths of his ancestral homeland or if he simply depicts his society’s harsh reality. In this novel, the writer crafts the story of two Afghan women — Mariam and Laila —in a venture to describe the chaotic history of Afghanistan and the scheme through which women are mistreated under the patriarchy and the despotic regime. The study shows that Khaled Hosseini does, in fact, misrepresent his ancestral homeland. It is verily undeniable that Afghanistan has its fair share of violence, but Hosseini’s description of his people is a mere perpetuation of western beliefs. In an attempt to process his feelings of dislocations, the writer gives contradictory and exaggerated information that reinforce Western stereotypes about Afghan people.