STRUCTURE OF FEMALE BILDUNGSROMAN IN THREE NOVELS BY AFRICAN AMERICAN AND ARAB AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS

Diana Abu-Jaber (1959- ) is a pioneering Arab American novelist, who is deeply concerned with awakening Arab American women to their ethnic heritage. In her second novel, Crescent (first published 2003), she focuses on this objective, and employs a certain structure whereby she portrays the ethnic development of the heroine. But no study has been conducted with the view of integrating her creative endeavour into the American critical tradition. The present study deals with this gap, assuming that the structure which she uses parallels in a substantial way that which Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison develop in the context of their writing convention of African American female bildungsroman. Both Hurston and Morrison use a tripartite structure, by means of which they explore the development of their heroines against the background of their African American ethnic legacy. This is particularly clear in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (first published 1937)and Morrison's Sula (first published 1973). The following comparative study of structural parallels in Abu-Jaber's Crescent and the above-mentioned two novels would show that Abu-Jaber uses their tripartite structure, which she invests with a greater emphasis on the ethnic maturation of the heroine.
The study is graded in thoroughness of treatment, which is commensurate with the three novelists' development of their tripartite structure. Since Morrison elaborates and improves upon the structure used by Hurston, her Sula will be treated in more detail. Crescent will receive the bulk of analytical attention, because the main objective of the study is to show how Abu-Jaber not only adopts the tripartite structure but also adapts it in order to serve her more ambitious ethnic purpose.