Giving Voice at a Price: Imagining The Arab World in the Work of Elizabeth Laird

Mas'ud,M.Pd.I., Muhammad (2022) Giving Voice at a Price: Imagining The Arab World in the Work of Elizabeth Laird.

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Abstract

This article examines two of Elizabeth Laird’s young adult novels that are set in the Arab world: A Little Piece of Ground and Oranges in No Man’s Land. It shows that despite occasionally relying on some of the stereotypical themes and subjects in books about the Arab world, Laird’s novels manage to interrogate relevant and pressing issues about the region, including the question of Palestine. The article further surveys a number of children’s and young adult books about the Arab world that are written by western authors. It explores how these texts rely on stereotypical constructions that cast the region as a place of ultimate violence, poverty, religious oppression, and patriarchal tyranny. The article concludes with highlighting the urgency to disrupt these generalizations, diversify thematic foci, and present readers with heterogeneous Arab characters and settings.

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