A woman’s struggle for identity and existence : a critical study of Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma

الملخص EN

This paper attempts to critically trace the Arab woman fugitive who flees from what the so-called backward world to the so-called modern and civilized world.

It is a loss in a hypocrite world where in each part of it people assume humanity and coexistence.

However, the real truth is that each person is a racist and ethnic against the other.

The paper examines the postcolonial text that reveals the instill gap of racism and inferiority of East to the West.

Gaining the Western identity by an Easterner is not an end of abusing and disdaining, it is also a new door for a new name of discrimination.

It investigates the writer’s fragile identity for feeling guilty towards herself, her family, her society, her religion and that she deserves honor killing.

However, her new identity does not give her peace and happy life.

Being a woman in a western country means to be ready for selling your body to sustain yourself and your dependents.

The paper also examines the language of the text that the author uses to bring to light the changing of one’s educational life.

It is an analysis of the interlanguage that the writer keeps for the reader to investigate such slang words which are left untranslated.

The dialogue that the writer makes during the speaker’s childhood, adulthood and womanhood gives a real picture of the two worlds, West and East, religiously and socially.

Fadia Fakir’s, My Name is Salma shows the evolution of Salma’s mind and awareness that tells her whatever one changes his/her appearance to change the identity cannot change his/her inner one.

Keywords: Post-colonialism, Racism, Muslim Arab Woman Identity, Honor Killing.