Abstract
Over the past half century, numerous Arab diasporic writers have depicted the detrimental impacts of civil wars on Arab nations as some individuals are (in)voluntarily displaced internally and externally, where they experience feelings of anxiety, unbelonging and loneliness. In most cases, they strive to reconstruct their own identities and their past through memories. The purpose of this paper is to examine Syrian novelist Shahla Ujayli’s female protagonists’ experiences of displacement as a result of the Syrian civil war in A sky so close to us (2015 [2019]) and Summer with the enemy (2018 [2021]). It focuses on two female characters, Joumane Badran and Lamees, who live in Amman, Jordan, and Cologne, Germany, respectively. In presenting their feelings of dislocation and unease to adapt in the host countries, Ujayli vividly portrays their attachments to their native Syrian city of Raqqa, which was sadly destroyed during the war. Eventually, in each narrative, the protagonist’s destroyed house in Raqqa and those of her close kinsfolk emerge as sites over which memories, displacement and adaptation converge. Thus, by narrating the history of specific houses in Raqqa, both female protagonists remain connected to their roots, and hence, they resist alienation, loss and dislocation. In this sense, this paper argues that in Ujayli’s novels, houses, even if they are destroyed, are not just spaces that people live in, but they are symbols of a home that the two protagonists carry in their memories as they navigate (un)familiar diasporic spaces.
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APA 7th edition
In-text citation: (Chabane Chaouch & Abu Amrieh, 2026)
Reference: Chabane Chaouch, S., & Abu Amrieh, Y. (2026). Destroyed houses as repositories of memories: Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 10(2), Article 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/18742
AMA 10th edition
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Chabane Chaouch S, Abu Amrieh Y. Destroyed houses as repositories of memories: Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. 2026;10(2), 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/18742
Chicago
In-text citation: (Chabane Chaouch and Abu Amrieh, 2026)
Reference: Chabane Chaouch, Sarah, and Yousef Abu Amrieh. "Destroyed houses as repositories of memories: Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels".
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics 2026 10 no. 2 (2026): 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/18742
Harvard
In-text citation: (Chabane Chaouch and Abu Amrieh, 2026)
Reference: Chabane Chaouch, S., and Abu Amrieh, Y. (2026). Destroyed houses as repositories of memories: Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels.
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 10(2), 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/18742
MLA
In-text citation: (Chabane Chaouch and Abu Amrieh, 2026)
Reference: Chabane Chaouch, Sarah et al. "Destroyed houses as repositories of memories: Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels".
Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, vol. 10, no. 2, 2026, 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/18742
Vancouver
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Chabane Chaouch S, Abu Amrieh Y. Destroyed houses as repositories of memories: Navigating diasporic spaces in Shahla Ujayli’s novels. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. 2026;10(2):3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/18742