Representations of Home and Identity for the Migrant Woman in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the representation of the migrant woman in Moshin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) by focusing on the text’s engagement with the diasporic concepts of home and identity. In essence, this study explores the ways in which the migrant heroine engages with and represents these concepts and on how her representations destabilize the dominant and traditional meaning of home and identity. Such a reading of the novel illustrates how the migrant woman’s narrative indicates that home and identity can no longer be considered as generalized, definite, or as fixed concepts. Instead, these concepts must be accorded multiple representations as they are experienced by the migrant woman in multifarious ways. For the migrant heroine in Exit West, the notions of home and identity are not strictly or unilaterally defined in relation to her place of origin or to any affiliation with a particular place. In other words, the narrative in the text is centered on the fact that although the migrant heroine initially defines her home and identity in strict association to her homeland or place of origin, this subsequently changes as she moves out of her city of birth and encounters various places and cultures. With these findings, this study enters into dialogue with emerging studies in literary diasporic literature on the multifarious themes of home and identity for the migrant woman.