Zainab's Project Proposal
Professor Katie Logan
Arab Literary Travels E324
7 March 2016
Project Proposal
In Miral al-Tahawy’s Brooklyn Heights, the main character Hend recounts memories associated with different family and friends in her past that she uses to define what home means to her. For my project, I will select the main people that Hend encounters, either in her past or present, as points on her map. Each person will have one or more memories or representations of home connected to them. Hend often refers to different groups of people too, so I might include them as individual points as well. The points will be arranged in order in which she mentions them, but an arrow will also indicate the order of which she has met that person in her life.
I will start off by using Hend’s son as a point, who represents Hend’s new home in America in the present and the future. The order of the points that follows is subject to change according to the ones I finalize on, but I have a few key ones in mind. This includes Hend’s mother, grandmother, father, husband, uncle, Mohammed the waiter, Abd al-Karim, and more. Perhaps I could include a younger Hend as a point as well.
The chronology of the memories will help show how Hend’s thoughts and ideas of the meaning of home develop over the course of the novel. I think that home is primarily defined by the people who live in it, so I felt that this would be an appropriate way to map out how Hend’s definition of home is formed in al-Tahawy’s book.
Works Cited
Ṭaḥāwī, Mīrāl. Brooklyn Heights: An Egyptian Novel. Trans. Samah Selim. Cairo: American U in Cairo, 2014. Print.