“I Have Got Rid of, for Good, Eastern Backwardness”: Ra’fat’s Guilty Assimilation in Al Aswany’s Chicago: A Novel

Where scholars of Arab studies have asserted that conversations of integration or assimilation in Arab American and Arab immigrant literature have shifted to notions of hybridity and multiculturalism, Alaa Al Aswany’s Chicago: A Novel stresses that the question of assimilation remains relevant due to the power differentials that exist between “East” and “West.” Chicago’s Dr. Ra’fat Thabit who insists on replacing his Egyptian identity with an “American” one—and embracing highly problematic norms—offers an understanding of assimilation as an emotional process that occasions violence towards the other. This violence, in turn, brings about feelings of guilt and shame rechanneled as love and care. It is these feelings of guilt and shame that enable the Egyptian native and immigrant to cope with the other’s norms and practices. By no means an act of approval, assimilation stands to signify co-existence with norms that one cannot embrace or relate to.