Space, Mobility, and Agency in Palestinian American Poetry

Abstract

This article proposes a framework for exploring the role of mobility in the rearticulation of agency relating to white and minority identities in poems by Lisa Suhair Majaj, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Suheir Hammad. In this context, we show how the political poetry of Majaj, Hammad, and Nye employs mobility to destabilize racialized structures and definitions underlying ethnic and white identities and challenge the invisibility of related power hierarchies and hegemonic discursive formations. Through translational representations of mobility, we argue, the poets and poetic subjects unmask racialized locations and map transformative itineraries shaped by choice and affiliation; the resulting identities are constantly negotiated and reshaped in relation to struggle, justice, and global concerns. The examination of mobility in this context also reveals the conditions of existence and circulation of white privilege to unmask its influence on ascriptions of human value and worth.