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Abstract

“Creating a Lifeboat” is a story of a Syrian refugee woman who rises from the ashes to build a life for herself and family. The story reveals Adeebah’s agency and role in adapting to the new life in USA as a refugee. It depicts how Adeebah steps outside her comfort zone to challenge gender norms and engage in economic activities such as working in restaurants and catering food. Adeebah exerts her agency as active participant in shaping her life as well as her family’s. She uses her talent of painting and finds herself an artist who sells her paintings in churches and exhibits. Adeebah’s story is not only a story of a refugee woman but a unique story of emancipation.

Author Biography

Graduate Teaching Assistant. West Virginia University, Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. She also worked as a full-time researcher at Jordan Heritage institution. She received her BA in Translation Studies (Arabic-English) with Honor degree from Yarmouk University and continued to translate and publish articles on feminism, literature, and philosophy. Her research in linguistics focuses on language change and variation, and sociolinguistics.

Associate Professor and Director of Arabic Studies, West Virginia University, Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. She has been a Faculty Associate in both Women’s and Gender Studies and the Humanities Center. Her research interests are related to timely global issues such as human rights, feminism, racism, place and identity, war narratives and refugee crises. She explores these themes in her most recent publications that have appeared in Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring; The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation; Literature and Psychology: Writing, Trauma, and the Self; and Arab Spring and Arab Women: Challenges and Opportunities, in addition to several peer-reviewed essays in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Journal of International Women’s Studies, Comics through Time, and Women’s ENews.

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