The Civil War Female Refugee and Assimilation: An Acculturative Study of Layla AlAmmar’s Silence Is a Sense
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1311.16Keywords:
female refugees, war, assimilation, acculturation, BerryAbstract
Female refugees go through numerous stages and transformations during the asylum-seeking process, all of which leave their imprint on their individuality over time. This forced journey, the fleeing of a war-torn country, the search for shelter and safety in the host country, as well as a plethora of other factors, all have a bearing on the refugee's assimilation or lack thereof. This article aims to demonstrate the journey of assimilation that the protagonist in Layla AlAmmar's novel Silence is a Sense (2021) underwent. It takes John Berry's models of acculturation as its approach in order to investigate whether or not the refugee character Rana assimilated into the host society. Therefore, it critically scrutinizes the text to determine how Rana represents millions of female refugees, what it means to be a refugee in a host country, the extent to which a female refugee can integrate into the other country's culture, and whether the process of fully acculturating is underway.
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