Routes to Roots: Homecoming and the Construction of Identity in Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water

Abstract

Palestinians in exile have long navigated the physical and emotional complexities of displacement. They occupy a distinctive space between the inherited memory of ancestral homeland and the lived transnational realities in exile. This article aims to examine the dynamics of homecoming and the construction of identity as depicted in Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015). Adopting a qualitative textual analysis grounded in postcolonial and diaspora theories, specifically theories of home and identity proposed by Salman Rushdie, Stuart Hall, and Homi Bhabha, this study explores the psycho-spatial tensions experienced by Palestinian returning subjects. The study hypothesizes that rather than facilitating a seamless restoration of identity, the return journey exposes a sharp friction between an idealized and romanticized ancestral memory and the lived transnational realities, forcing them to negotiate a hybridized, in-between identity. It further examines the challenges they face as they attempt to integrate into the cultural, social, and economic fabric of the ancestral homeland and probes into the tensions and adjustments required as they strive to find a balance between their transnational identities and their desire to firmly root themselves in their native homeland. Through close reading of the novel’s narrative structure and character trajectories, the article demonstrates that homecoming operates not as a static arrival, but as an incessant, fraught process of emotional and psychological re-adjustment, reframing home from a fixed geographical space of origin into an ongoing performative act.