Özet:

This study aims to shed light on the liminal identities of Monica Ali’s characters in Brick Lane that are shaped by cross-cultural circumstances and the border-crossing experience. This experience causes many changes in the migrant’s life in terms of living conditions, social milieu, cultural circumstances, educational opportunities and gender roles. All of these factors are means for the construction of an identity for a settled life in a country. In a foreign country, a migrant wants to survive and experiences a dilemma between the host and home lands. To overcome this dilemma, the migrant realizes his or her actual self by dwelling on the ambivalent nature of liminal subjectivity. In a way, migration generates thresholds in life since the subjects who are in a transitory, middle passage, move through a process that takes them from separation to integration. In this sense, Monica Ali crafts the identity construction of her characters in a framework through transition into reunion in a new way of life. Consequently, this study will analyze the liminal identities of Brick Lane by focusing on the term ‘liminality’ within the interrelated concepts, ambivalence and third space coined by Homi Bhabha.

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