Title: “We Carry These Conflicts, These Ruptures of History:” the Hybridity of the Self in the Conflict between Tradition and Modernity in Laleh Khadivi’s the Age of Orphans
Author: Karwan Karim Abdalrahman
Place of publication: USA
Publisher: Missouri State University
Release date:2019

This study presents a postcolonial reading of Laleh Khadivi’s The Age of Orphans based on the theories of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha. The project offers specific answers to several questions: can this novel be read through the lens of Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, and, if so, what does such a reading reveal about culture and identity in The Age of Orphans? The hybrid self is an experience wherein the postcolonial self holds the shades of two identities and cultures, namely the colonizer and the colonized. In other words, the protagonist Reza lives in a space that represents the shadows of both traditional culture and modern culture. Reza’s inner tension comes from mixed cultural identity that is represented in his conflicting imaginings, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors towards the Kurds and his wife, Meena. The present study demonstrates that Reza has a hybrid identity. The modern Kurdish postcolonial self is a mixed one whereby it cannot return to a purely original and traditional cultural perception.[1]