A disoriented homecoming: the scattered identity in Inaam Kachachi's The American Granddaughter

Abstract

The novel challenges the derealization loss in the context of Iraqi war fiction by trying to portray the dark reality of the US invasion. The American granddaughter is not only about war trauma, memories, atrocities, and the huge loss caused by an endless and unjust war waged against a sovereign country. It is about, as the paper argues, a disoriented homecoming and the scattered identity of Zeina, the protagonist, who appears to be a dissociative personality. This paper also explores how the protagonist’s dual identity crisis is of a unique type as it is being questioned through three stages. Exile and the coming back on an American military truck as a translator for the invaders’ army attacking her origin homeland and finally returning to the United States only to find herself unfit for both homes.