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Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

Hasnul Insani Djohar

English Department of FAH, Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Jl. Juanda, Ciputat, Indonesia

and University of Exeter, UK

Keywords: Crescent, Diana Abu-Jaber, Contemporary Arab-American Women’s Fiction, Homes.

Abstract: This paper examines the portrayal of how immigrant Americans create their own space or homes in a Lebanese

restaurant, which is a symbol of their minority kingdom, in order to negotiate questions of belonging and

exclusion from U.S. society in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (2003). By engaging with postcolonial studies,

this paper investigates how Immigrant-Americans, such as Arab, Mexicans, Hispanic, and Malaysia work

together to establish their own home by using a Mediterranean café as a symbol of their minor palace, to show

their existence in a modern global space and to challenge Anglo-American dominion in the U.S. and in the

world. This community uses the Mediterranean café as a place to share their feelings and their stories as exiles,

refuges, and immigrants to substitute a sense of loss and home, which is taken them in. Indeed, this paper

investigates how Abu-Jaber expands the notion homes through symbols of food and the Mediterranean café

in order to negotiate American belonging. Thus, this text illustrates how Arab/Muslim-Americans, who can

also represent other marginal groups, have struggled to search for homes, especially after the invasion of Iraq.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the past few decades, especially after Edward

Said’s monumental book, Orientalism (1978), many

scholars, both from the Orientalist world and the

Muslim world have been interested in discussing and

expanding the binary and the dichotomies of

Occidental and Oriental, the center and periphery, the

empire and the colonized, the oppressor and the

oppressed, and the self and the other. Homi Bhabha

magnifies Jacques Derrida’s theory of how “binary

oppositions structure Western thought, arguing that

such dichotomies are too reductive because they

imply that any national culture is unitary,

homogenous, and defined by fixity or an essential

core” (Steven Leitch, 351). Based on Derrida’s

analysis, Bhabha creates his theory of “Hybridity” in

his seminal book The Location of Culture (1994). He

defines hybridity—“is new, neither the one nor the

other,” which rises from a “Third Space” (Bhabha

19). Bhabha contends that the binary oppositions

might not be relevant in the modernity and global

culture since it cannot represent the whole identities,

but is limited to certain identity or nationality. Bhabha

suggests innovative discourses to substitute the

traditional dichotomies, in order to reinforce a new

sense of nationality and identity, which are: “dialog,

translation, negotiation, in-between, cross reference,

and ambivalence” (9). A wonderful novel, Crescent

(2003), written by a Jordanian-German-American

woman writer, Diana Abu-Jaber, offers various

examples of what Bhabha’s Location of Culture

argues about a culture in a new space, which is able

to mix all different kinds of identities and

nationalities. This paper argues that Diana Abu-

Jaber’s Crescent challenges Orientalist dichotomies

by exploring Mediterranean restaurant where various

identities and ethnicities mingle in one place.

2 MAKING HOME IN THE

MEDITERRANEAN

RESTAURANT

Abu-Jaber’s Crescent tells the history of an Iraqi-

American woman, Sirine, who has been an orphan

since she was nine years old. Her parents passed away

when they worked at Cross Red Nation in Africa. By

losing her parents in an unknown country at an early

age, Sirine understands how her identity is broken

from her origins: Iraq, where her parents were born

and Africa where her parents died. Both Iraq and

Africa are places that Sirine never visits. By having

this broken bond with her parents, Sirine understands

that she does not belong to any countries, including

Djohar, H.

Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent.

DOI: 10.5220/0009984600830089

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on English Language Teaching, Linguistics and Literature (ELITE 2019) - Promoting Global Diversity, Partnership and Prosperity through

English Development, pages 83-89

ISBN: 978-989-758-459-6



the U.S., where she was born, as she says: “I guess

I’m always looking for my home” (132). The sense of

“un-belonging” can also be seen through the fact that

Sirine does not see her uncle’s home, where she has

lived since she was orphaned, as her home. For Sirine,

home is just a mysterious and uncertain place, where

she feels alien and unwelcome. Therefore, she needs

a place where she can be taken in as like in the

Mediterranean restaurant, where she works and

spends almost her days.

In Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, Sirine has been raised by

her uncle for almost thirty years and has worked at

various restaurants in Los Angeles, yet she still feels

lonely and unhomely while living in the U.S. Only

when she works at the Mediterranean café does Sirine

feel at home. She can join together in the loneliness

of the various immigrants, especially Arab

immigrants. Sirine’s uncle is a story teller and a

professor at UCLA in the North Eastern Department.

Sirine is now 39 years old and working as a chef at

the Mediterranean café. She imagines her work space,

the café, as a missing home as the narrator describes:

Arabs feel everything—larger than life, feelings

walking in the sky. And sometimes when she is

awake in the centre of the night, the night cool and

succulent as heart of palm or a little chicken kabob.

Sirine senses these feelings rushing in her own blood.

But she was also born with an abiding sense of

patience, an ability to live deeply and purely inside

her own body, to stop thinking, to work, and to simply

exist inside the simplest actions, like chopping an

onion or stirring a pot (21-22).

Indeed, Sirine understands how being an Arab is

being part of a bigger group that can walk throughout

the world, including the U.S. By understanding that

she is surrounded by the Arab people in the café,

Sirine feels like she is at home, where she finds

warmth, represented by “onions” and “a stirring pot”

(22). When Sirine feels the cool of the night

representing her loneliness, she just remembers a

little chicken kabob, which is warm and delicious,

that she cooks at the restaurant. By contrasting the

feeling of cold with the warmth of the chicken meat,

Sirine can create a sense of comfort, like feeling at

home, where she belongs. This can be understood as

the reason for her preference for working as a chef at

the Mediterranean café to create a sense of warm

feeling. She also enjoys her work as a chef because

her work is “to simply exist inside the simplest

actions, like chopping an onion or stirring a pot” (22).

Onions can create a sense of warmth and can make

food more delicious, so she stirs them together with

other ingredients in a “pot.” Indeed, the pot represents

Sirine’s empty heart, which is longing for her parents,

homeland, and heritage. Indeed, onions need to be

cooked to make Sirine warm and comfortable. All

these symbols can be understood as the reason why

Sirine works as a chef to find a “homely” place to live

and to share her loneliness with other immigrants who

also search for a sense of belonging, loving, and

warmth in the café.

Significantly, there are some scholars, such as

Amelia Montes (2006), Lorraine Mercer and Linda

Strom (2007) who examine Crescent from various

perspectives, such as womanhood, immigration, and

food culture, but not many of them focusing on the

idea of making homes, which this paper seeks to

explore. Montes argues that “The spice-filled aromas

within Nadia’s Café bring expatriates, immigrants

into a place that allows for a respite from longing as

well as a matriarchal community of sorts” (21).

Although Montes discusses the café in her review, she

mainly focuses on how women in the novel, such as

Um-Nadia, Merieli, and Sirine, are depicted in such a

way as to defy common stereotypes in the media:

submissive and hidden. Indeed, Arab and Muslim

women are depicted as financially and socially

independent: Um-Nadia is the owner of the

Mediterranean café (UM-Nadia), Meriliene is a

strong-willed woman, and Sirine, the protagonist, is a

single woman at 39.

Sirine also uses her work space, especially the

kitchen, as her own room, to connect with her

boyfriend, Hanif. Hanif, who is often referred to Han,

is a new and young professor in Near Eastern Studies

at UCLA, where Sirine’s uncle also teaches. The

narrator writes, when Han asks Sirine: “What makes

a place feel like home for you, then?” (132), she

replies: “Work,” and “Work is home” (32). By

referring to her work as a home, it can be understood

that Sirine is longing for her own space to understand

where she belongs to. In the kitchen, she can explore

many recipes and create various kinds of meals and

desserts, exploring her own sense of self. The need

for Sirine to establish her unique identity while living

in the U.S. can be understood through the way she

feels that her “real” home is uncertain. Thus she needs

to find someone who can understand her situations

and feelings to establish her own identity. In doing so,

Abu-Jaber represents Sirine as sharing her longing for

home: “I guess I’m always looking for my home, a

little bit. I mean, even though I live here, I have this

feeling that my real home is somewhere else

somehow” (132). Indeed, Sirine does not feel that the

U.S. is her home, despite the fact that she was born

there. She not only searches for a homely place, but

importantly a person who is in a similar “root” to her,

with whom she can build a new home and family.

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Moreover, the kitchen is represented as a place,

where Sirine can explore her parent’s legacy through

their traditional food and recipes. This can be related

to Virginia Wolf’s A Room of One’s Own (2001).

Wolf argues that “A woman must have money and a

room of her own if she is to write fiction” (1). Wolf

uses the term of money and a room as powerful tools

for women in creating pieces of art; novels being

written mainly by men at the beginning of the

twentieth century. By relating to Wolf’s assertion, we

can understand how Abu-Jaber not only produces her

own room for Arab-American writing, but also

creates another piece of art in cooking, through her

protagonist, Sirine. Indeed, Sirine struggles both to

find her own home and to establish her own identity

while living in the U.S. In order to fulfil her basic

needs of home and actualisation, Sirine uses the

kitchen as her own space to earn a living and share

loves.

Significantly, Abu-Jaber quotes the poem,

“Mourning in Andalusia,” which tells a story of loss

and was written by Abu il-Hasan al-Husri, an Arab

poet, in the eleventh century. The narrator states, “If

white is the colour / of mourning in Andalusia, / of

white hair / in mourning for my youth” (200). This

poem tells the defeat of Andalusia in the sixteenth

century. This lamentation is discussed by a literary

scholar, Nouri Gana (2015) in her essay “In Search of

Andalusia”. Gana argues that “In the history of Arab

consciousness, Al-Andalus reverberates like a

melancholic wound, fissuring chaotically between

narcissistic cultivation and elegiac vulnerability”

(203). Gana suggests that Al-Andalus reminds the

Arab world both of their agony and their glory in the

seventh century. In that era, the Arabs dominated a

Medieval Muslim territory in Andalusia or Islamic

Iberia. However, this territory has lost its status as

“key” in the global land since the loss of the Ottoman

power. Arguably, the idea of experiencing loss,

especially the loss of “home” becomes the central

characteristic of Muslim immigrants in the U.S. In

order to highlight this sense of loss, Abu-Jaber’s

Crescent explores how these immigrants make home

in the Mediterranean café to unsettle Anglo-

American’s dominance both in the U.S. and in the

world.

Indeed, Abu-Jaber uses the symbol of the key as a

home for immigrants and exiles. The omniscient

narrator describes when Han gives his key’s

apartment to Sirine, she lifts her hand to accept the

key and says, “You want to give me your key” (115).

Here, key can represent Han’s home and life, which

is endangered and in need of someone else, Sirine, to

keep it safe. The key is also a symbol to open the door

of the home, which makes the exile comfortable as

Han says, “Somehow I was thinking it would make

me feel better … knowing that you had this [key}”

(115). In this sense Abu-Jaber emphasises how

sharing the key, which represents home, is significant

for her characters in order to make them “feel better”

and feel homely. Additionally, Sirine, is also holding

a new silver key: “She squeezes the key in her hand”

(115). By squeezing this key, Sirine reveals her

deepest emotion, which dreams for a real key or

home, but it is a real sense of being loved by an Arab

Muslim Professor who is rooted to her Arab heritage.

Relevantly, Gana discusses the significance of the

key and the home in Arab-American writings. She

argues that Al-Andalus “persist as an unjustly but

irrecoverably lost key to a rightful home, a not-so-

distant legacy of cultural and political devastation, an

allegorical recall of a lost Jerusalem, a

compartmentalised Arab world of petty stateless and

pettier leaders—a lasting reminder of the remainder

that can neither be mourned nor disregarded because

it has not been completely lost” (203). Andalusia can

be seen as a symbol of the lost key to the gate of

Jerusalem since the area was separated from the Arab

world. This separation can be an agonizing reminder

for the Arabs that this key has not actually been lost

but no longer belongs to the Arab world. However,

although Andalusia is lost, its power to remind

Muslims of their glory and their agony remains, and

can be understood in how the Arab world has longed

for their sense of homeliness to return.

Moreover, Crescent not only explores the

function of food as “a complex language for

communicating love, memory, and exile” (Mercer

and Storm, 33), but also questions boundaries of

cultures, classes, and identities. I investigate further

how the Mediterranean café works as a place to blend

these various immigrants in a natural and “homely”

space. Similarly, Carol Fadda-Conrey (2006) argues

that Crescent “raises an important question about the

overriding ethnic ambiguities that often engulf people

of colour in the U.S. This novel, moreover, creates a

physical and psychological ethnic borderland with

different ethnic communities coexist and

communicate” (204). People of colour are often

depicted as ethnically uncertain, in this case

American Muslims who are often excluded both in

mainstream American society (Anglo-Americans)

and in ethnic Americans as they are often considered

as religious groups, instead of various cultural

identities. Indeed, many Muslims communities are

derived from around the world, such as Africa, Asia

with their diverse cultures. In order to establish their

multiple and hybrid identities, Arab or Muslim

Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

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Americans in this novel work together with various

ethnic groups, such as Mexicans and Latinos. Thus,

Conrey’s analysis allows me to explore how the

creation of ethnic borderland through different groups

can establish their commonality as a multiple identity.

Indeed, these different communities use the

Mediterranean café as their home to ascertain their

connecting identities as ethnic Americans. Thus, this

paper explores how the restaurant functions as a place

where many immigrants can come and share their loss

and their harmony. For example, the narrator

describes, “always there are the same groups of

students from the big university up the street, always

so lonely, the sadness like blue hollows in their

throats, blue motes for their wives and children back

home, or for the American women they haven’t met”

(19). Indeed, the students are depicted as both longing

for a sense of home and sharing their commonality.

Blue hollows in their throats represent ones’

emptiness: the colour of blue represents the feeling of

depression, sadness and grief. Simultaneously, the

American women are represented as hope for the

future life of the immigrant students in order to

establish their hybrid identities.

These immigrants also debate their traditional

cultures to share their feelings and desire to build a

new home in the host land. The narrator says,

“Nadia’s café is like other places—crowded at meals

and quiet in between—but somehow there is also

usually a lingering conversation, current of Arabic

that ebb around Sirine, fell her head with mellifluous

voices” (19). Here, although these immigrants are

superficially satisfying their hunger, they are

continuously searching for the Mediterranean food

and meals to fulfil their homes. Thus, this novel

reveals how these communities attempt to make home

by discussing their traditional cultures in the café.

This struggle can also be seen through the way Sirine

and Han or Hanif frequently discuss their future home

in the café. By depicting these different background

ethnicities have a dream to establish their homes in

the café representing the host land, Crescent

highlights how the U.S. has transformed to become

multiple identities.

These transformations can be seen through the

way the immigrants establish their unique home in the

café through music. The narrator states, “They sit at

the tables outside and play drums with their fingers,

the one-stringed rebab, the violin, the flute, Arabic

music sailing through the walls of the café” (42). In

this sense, these communities use music to entertain

their “blue lives” as they often face issues of

American racism as many mainstream society or

white communities perceive them as foreigners,

despite the fact that some of them were born in the

U.S. Additionally, these immigrants use the café as a

space in which to exchange ideas. Before Sirine starts

her day in the café, every morning she observes the

situation: “in her open kitchen behind the counter and

discreetly watched the students sipping coffee,

studying the newspapers, and having arguments”

(22). Indeed, the café is represented as a comfortable

space where everyone can relax and enjoy their drinks

and food. These students also exchange their opinions

by having various debates and discussions. In this

sense, they can speak freely and voluntarily in

conversations without being intimidated or

interrogated by any powerful groups or institutions,

such as the CIA or Saddam’s regimes. When Han

lived beyond this café, for example in Iraq, he was

frequently hunted by Saddam’s soldiers as he

contributed to spreading propaganda. Thus, the café

is a safe place to discuss any topics including politics

and religion, which can be dangerous topics if

discussed in other public places, such as in the square

or the city park, where Han used to speak to criticise

Saddam’s regime.

However, although these communal people feel

safe and comfortable in the café, they remain living

under the surveillance of American officers. When

Um-Nadia and the customers are watching TV, the

narrator describes “two policemen sitting by the TV,

eating friend lentils and onions, and watching reports

in Arabic about terrorists from Saudi Arabia” (43).

Indeed, the two American policemen are depicted as

characters who watch Arabic news, despite the fact

that they do not speak or understand Arabic. In this

sense, Abu-Jaber toys with the American policemen

who are watching Arabic TV program without

understanding the language. These two policemen are

depicted as only seeing the pictures superficially,

without understanding the content. This depiction can

be understood as the way in which this text questions

the role of American officers in excluding Muslims in

public, especially at U.S. airports, where many

Muslims face discrimination and unfairness. This

discrimination can be seen through the fact that the

U.S. President, Donald Trump, launched “Executive

Order 13769,” (2017), which bans Muslims to enter

the U.S., especially from these following countries:

Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen.

In order to question U.S. policy Abu-Jaber uses

one of the U.S. highest institutions, including the

CIA, invade the café. The narrator describes how the

CIA frequently came to the café when it belonged to

Falafel Faraoh, an Egyptian-American and Um-

Nadia’s friend: “after a month of sitting at the

counter, the two men took the cook aside and asked if

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he [Falafel] knew of any terrorist schemes developing

in the Arab-American community” (21). Here, the

CIA not only assumes that Falafel has links terrorists,

but also uses the Arab café as a place to investigate

and interrogate Arabs and Arab-Americans, who may

be associated with terrorism. The narrator also

explains that the reason Falafel sells his Arab café to

Um-Nadia is because of the CIA interrogations. In

this sense, the café is not only represented as a safe

place to spend leisure time reading newspapers and

watching TV, but simultaneously as a place of fear as

it is used as the site of the CIA’s investigations. Thus,

this comfortable space, which is a home for these

marginal citizens, is also invaded by American

institutions, including the policemen and the CIA.

Another example of how this text criticises U.S.

government is by depicting the TV as using the

Arabic language, which blinds and confused the U.S.

officers. The narrator describes that: “there is a TV

tilted in the corner above the cash register,

permanently tuned to the all-Arabic station, which

news from Qatar, variety shows and a shopping

channel from Kuwait, endless Egyptian movies,

Bedouin soap operas in Arabic, and American soap

with Arabic subtitles” (42). Indeed, the TV shows

almost all Arabic channels from various countries

with their specific distinctions and with a shared

Arabic language. In this sense, this text undermines

American imperialism in the Middles East.

Additionally, in this story, the American TV channel

is represented as showing an American soap. This can

be interpreted as how this text deconstructs American

identity as a commercial identity, which mainly

focuses on commodity and superficiality. In fact, in

the nineteenth century, American identity was well-

known as an industrial identity: for example, the

General Motor, which has likely been replaced by

Chinese and Japanese companies.

Significantly, the café is constructed as a neutral

space, where every different identity and ethnicity is

welcomed and accepted. In the novel, not only is

Sirine depicted as an immigrant, but so is Mireille, a

Jordanian-American, whose father abandoned her

and married another woman. Other immigrant

workers in the café are Victor, whose parents died in

a fire, and Cristobal, whose parents died during the

El-Salvador revolution in 1929. Thus, the immigrants

in the novel represent multiple ethnicities and

religions. The narrator describes, “Um-Nadia, the

owner of the café and all-around boss,” and “her

daughter Mireille, and Victor Hernandez, the young

Mexican busboy hopeless in love with Mireille, and

the Central American custodian Cristobal, and Sirine

the chef are in motion around her” (20). Indeed,

Victor and Cristobal are depicted as Christian South-

Americans, while Um-Nadia, Mireille, and Sirine are

depicted as Arab/Muslim Americans. Thus, the café

as a home where different immigrants blend together

in the warm place.

Moreover, in the restaurant, the immigrants

celebrate various festivals, such as Christmas,

thanksgiving, and Eid al-Fitr, Islamic celebration,

after fasting Ramadhan for a full month. The narrator

describes when Sirine celebrates Thanksgiving with

the café community: “By noon there is: Han, Mireille,

Victor Hernandez, and his cousin Eliazer, Aziz the

poet, Nathan, Um-Nadia, Cristobal the custodian,

Shark, Jenoob, Abdullah, Schammal, and Gharb—

five of the lonely students from the café—Sirine, and

her uncle. King Babar greets each of them, standing

on his hind legs and putting his dusty paw prints on

their pants” (215). Here, there are not only various

kinds of ethnicities, but also different religions mixed

on one table to celebrate an American feast,

Thanksgiving. Victor and Eliazer are Mexicans,

Cristobal and Sharks are from El Salvador and Spain.

The rest are from various countries of the Arab world:

Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon. By presenting her

characters’ varying backgrounds, Abu-Jaber

emphasises how this mixed communities create their

own home in the café by celebrating American

culture, Thanksgiving, together. Thus American

Thanksgiving symbolizes their diversities, but their

ability to be united together on one table and in one

café which can also be read as a challenge to the idea

of American melting pot, which mainly focuses on

dissolving immigrants into a singular European,

instead of transnational and trans-religious identity as

Sirine represented as Iraqi-American and Muslim-

Christian backgrounds.

These groups not only unite together to celebrate

U.S. culture, but also reconstruct American culture to

build their hybrid culture, such as Arabic

Thanksgiving. When Sirine prepares the turkey in her

kitchen, she speaks to Han: “An Arabic

Thanksgiving. It was my idea—what you think? […]

Vibrant vegetable greens, garlic, and lemon. And this.

Herbal, meaty, vaguely fruity” (216). Indeed, Sirine

not only combines the turkey with various kinds of

vegetables, but also Arabian taste, flavours, and

numerous fruits. Fruits are symbols of freshness and

health. In doing so, Sirine is creating her home by

combining American and Arabian food; thus she

realizes how her own identity and home are the

amalgamation between these two different cultures,

which create a sense of creativity and innovation.

Additionally, these various kinds of foods represent

different ethnicities that celebrate American

Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent

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Thanksgiving together. By reconstructing American

culture, Sirine and her community negotiate

American traditions (American belonging) as part of

their identity. This can also be related through the

reality of U.S. Muslims who have negotiated

American traditions by offering their cultures inserted

in the U.S., such as food and music or dance as

discussed previously.

Additionally, the history of Thanksgiving can be

traced back to when it was celebrated initially at the

beginning of white American history. Thanksgiving

is traditionally celebrated in the U.S. in order to give

thanks for the blessings of the year, including the

harvest. Thanksgiving, which is annually celebrated

on the fourth Thursday of November, is also a symbol

of the beginning of the holiday season in the U.S.

Thus, thanksgiving can also be related to a religious

tradition, as it is always followed by the Christmas

feast in December. This is why in the novel, this

society also celebrates Christmas in the café.

Indeed, these communal people celebrate

Christmas in the café as a means to unite together as

a family. The narrator describes when the people

celebrate Christmas, Um-Nadia and Victor

Hernandez decorate their café: they “string Christmas

lights around the inside of the café. She stands

beneath him, giving a lot of instructions (That doesn’t

look like Christmas that way. Put it higher-higher-

make it go in circles)” (280). Here, the “string

Christmas lights” represent the variety of people who

feel alive in the café because they celebrate the holy

feast together, despite the fact that they are not

Christians. In this sense, Abu-Jaber illuminates that

although the Mediterranean café belongs to a U.S.

Muslim, she accommodates and appreciates her

various customers. This reveals how the restaurant

can be used as a means to celebrate the feasts to unite

different communities, regardless of their ideologies

and religions.

Moreover, in this novel, the society not only

celebrates Christmas, but also celebrates Eid Al-Fitr

at the café to break the dominant feast of Anglo-

Europeans. The narrator describes,

At the café, Sirine and Um-Nadia become

preoccupied with the special iftar—or fast-

breaking—menu for the month of Ramadan. Muslims

all over town hear about it and more customers crowd

in, loitering outside and waiting for tables—Iranians,

Saudis, Palestinians, Lebanese, even Malaysians,

Pakistanis, and Croatians. They come early in the

morning, before sunrise, then later after the sun goes

down and the day’s fast ends, ordering special treats

like killaj pastry, qatayif pancakes, zalabiyya fritters,

and ma’mul cookies. Sirine no longer has time for

anything but cooking and baking (297).

Indeed, Sirine is depicted as a chef who cooks for

iftar, or fast breaking, for students or the Muslim

community who are fasting in the month of Ramadan.

Ramadan is the month when Muslims fast for thirty

days not only to be empathetic and feel how the poor

are suffering, but also to train their own patience and

control their worldly desires. By feeling these hunger

pains, Muslims grow to want to share their food and

money with the poor and avoid harbouring a selfish

attitude. Here Ramadan, Islamic worship, can unite

these diverse, poor students and immigrants. In this

sense, this text reveals how the communities use the

Islamic tradition as a means to be together to tighten

their brotherhood as Muslims. In doing so, they create

their own home by using the café as a place for a

family gathering and celebrating various festivals. By

celebrating and performing Islamic worship and

traditions, Abu-Jaber’s Crescent highlights that the

U.S. is no longer a white and Christian country, but a

colourful state with multi-faiths.

3 CONCLUSION

This paper has investigated how Diana Abu-Jaber’s

Crescent (2003) explores the idea of home in Arab or

Muslim Americans to question the ideas of American

Exceptionalism and Eurocentrism. Arguably, Arab or

Muslim women’s voice, in Postcolonial studies, has

tended to be excluded in the last five decades. In order

to fill this gap, this paper has explored Abu-Jaber’s

Mediterranean restaurant, which functions to replace

senses of loss and establish Arab or Muslims’

identities, who work together with other ethnicities,

such as Mexican, Caribbean, African, and Chinese.

Indeed, The protagonist, Sirine, who is an Iraqi

American chef, shares her “home” with Hanif, an

Arab American professor, and other immigrants who

are rooted to various identities in the world. By

presenting and exploring multiple identities in her

novel, Abu-Jaber shows how Mediterranean

restaurant functions to unite these minorities in order

to undermine the idea of American individualism.

Significantly, specific emphasis is given to the way in

which Abu-Jaber offers complex representation of

American belonging to a range of multi forms of

ethnicities, religions, and immigration in the Arab or

Muslim American context and diaspora.

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Making Homes in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent