Strategies of resistance in Elizabeth Laird's "kiss the dust"

Abstract EN

Elizabeth Laird’s novel, Kiss the Dust (1991) traces the fate of a Kurdish family living at Sulamanyia district in Iraq, and is narrated through the perspective of its young protagonist, Tara.

family members have been exposed to continuous raids of aggression by the Iraqi forces that deemed them as persona non grata.

thus, they were fated to a compulsory exile in Iran, and later in London.

in their attempts to survive, family members like Rostom, kak Soran and Ashti, practised violent tactics against their oppressors, but later they realized that violence led only to hatred and bloodshed.

accordingly, they opted for nonviolent resistance in terms of immigration and acquiescence.

away from home, as asylum seekers in London, they decided a new turn of resistance based on publicizing their issue to the whole world.

moreover, they believed that wherever they were, it is Kurdistan, a home that is within themselves, even behind borders.

in this sense, the current study employs Martin Luther King’s three forms of resistance: violence, acquiescence, and nonviolence, as the theoretical framework.

the novel abounds in a variety of resistance tactics, but propagates the efficacy of nonviolence.