Arab, African, or Both? Cultural Identity Crisis in Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley

Abstract

According to H. J. Sharkey, Sudan’s “unique Afro-Arab hybridity, cultural tolerance and capacity for
internal coexistence” is a preferred reading among academics in this area (27). Indeed, this is true in a sense;
however, some tension can be traced. Set in the fifties of the twentieth century, right before the end of the
Anglo-Egyptian colonization of Sudan, Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley (2010) demonstrates a process of
interpellation where the characters' Arab-African identities are put into test. Lyrics Alley presents special
cases of cultural and ethnic identities who are struggling to know who they are according to cultural systems
that raise conflicts about the characters’ inward and outward lives. The paper explores how Aboulela
succeeds in presenting different characters with different shades of flexibility and ideologies, and she
manages to portray more than one character who, despite the difficulties and tragedies they face between
Sudan and Egypt, can embrace both closely related cultures and work through them not in a fairy tale
manner, but in a manner that reflects pain and beauty at the same time. Last but not least, the paper
demonstrates how the characters' acknowledgment of their Arab-African identity gains them agency and
offers new perceptions of the world and how the lack of embracing both identities (i.e., Arab and African)
leads to further disintegration.