Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part A (2024)

A diasporic community is caught in an awkward relation with the host society if the political relation between their home country and host country turns hostile. After the Gulf war, Iranian hostage crisis and the events of 9/11, Muslim people of Middle Eastern origin were often held guilty by association and considered potential terrorists by the mainstream American society. Because of the antagonistic treatment from their host society, diasporic Arab and Iranian Muslims naturally could not reconcile the Arab or Iranian part of their identity with their American identity. With reference to the aforementioned issues, this paper has studied the memoir of the Iranian writer, Firoozeh Dumas, an immigrant in the USA. It had been investigated how her struggle for acquiring an American identity clashed with the violent racism targeted at the Iranians in the USA after the hostage-crisis in Iran transpired. The resultant identity-conflict triggered an acute sense of liminality in the consciousness of the memoirist. Finally, the paper has concluded that forging an empowered hybridized identity in the diaspora, instead of opting for racial passing as the memoirist attempted earlier, she became a woman with active agency who has been able to transcend her identity-crisis.