Afterword

Abstract

In this book, I focus on the implications of the non-national in narratives by Arab-American, Chicana, South Asian-American, and Cuban-American women writers. As I mentioned earlier in the introduction for this study, the non-national subject reconfigures implications of home country and host country in the migrant stories I have discussed. The non-national, however, should not be confused or conflated with the transnational; it is rather a specific moment within the transnational that problematizes both the national and the transnational, and complicates meanings of national consciousness, national time, national space, and national belonging as the earlier chapters suggest. That is to say, the non-national subject contests and questions unproblematic assimilation and integration into the United States (as the examples of The Language of Bazklava and An American Brat); and resists singular belongings and binaries between first world and third world; home and abroad (as the examples of The Night Counter and The Agüero Sisters clarify). As I have mentioned earlier, I expand the meaning and use of the non-national in American Studies. The analysis of the texts in this study shows that the non-national opens up narratives to multiple interpretations to rethink Americanness in light of intricate US domestic and foreign policies.