Cultural References and the Issue of Identity in the Works of Najat El Hachmi

Authors

  • Maja Zovko Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu

Keywords:

migrant literature; Najat El Hachmi; cultural references; identity; Catalan literature

Abstract

The paper analyses the use of cultural references in the prose of the Catalan writer of Moroccan origin Najat El Hachmi. For this purpose, three novels were chosen, L’ultim patriarca, La filla estrangera and Mère de lait et de miel, where the meeting and collisi­on of different worlds and the heroines’ aspiration to build their own hybrid, unique, free identity are clearly shown. Special attention is given to the study of intertextual elements in the presentation of the emergence and development of the multi-layered, complex, but also conflicting identity of the homodiegetic narrators, in whose features numerous similarities with the author herself can be seen. In the context of Amin Maalouf’s understanding of identity, Homi K. Bhabha’s interspace as well as transcul­turality, this paper investigates how cultural references give a new dimension and contribute to a clearer understanding of the issue of migrants growing up on the bor­der between two cultures. At the same time, in this context, the role of these references in depicting and critically assessing the subversion of the patriarchal hie­rarchical order, inter-family relations, domestic violence and sentimental relationships is the subject of research.

References, among other things, can be from the Bible, both old and recent Catalan li­terature, as is the case with the novel of chivalry by the anonymous author Curial e Güelfa and the novel of the twentieth-century Catalan writer Montserrat Roig, Ramo­na, adéu, they can also be works of world literature (James Joyce’s Dubliners and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, an American writer of Mexican origin), achievements from the world of film (Poltergeist) as well as from the field of psycholo­gy (The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm).

Published

2025-07-31

Issue

Section

Pregledni rad

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