AMBIVALENCE AND HYBRIDITY IN SAFIA ELHILLO’S THE …

AMBIVALENCE AND HYBRIDITY

IN SAFIA ELHILLO’S THE JANUARY CHILDREN:

A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY

COVER PAGE

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra

in English Letters

By

ZENHING ANGELINE

Student Number: 164214115

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS

FACULTY OF LETTERS

UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA

YOGYAKARTA

2021

PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI

ii

AMBIVALENCE AND HYBRIDITY

IN SAFIA ELHILLO’S THE JANUARY CHILDREN:

A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY

TITLE PAGE

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra

in English Letters

By

ZENHING ANGELINE

Student Number: 164214115

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS

FACULTY OF LETTERS

UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA

YOGYAKARTA

2021


vii

MOTTO PAGE

i don’t know how to do

what i do in the way

that i do it. it happens

despite me and i pretend

to deserve it.

but i don’t know how to do it.

only sometimes when

something is singing

i listen and so far

i hear.

—Lucille Clifton

today i woke up & was not dead & tomorrow

might be different but tomorrow does not yet exist

—Safia Elhillo

& for every country i lose i make another & i make another

—Safia Elhillo

come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed

—Lucille Clifton


viii

DEDICATION PAGE

thank you, Mama and Papa,

and everyone who has remembered me


ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have faith in God’s plans and being surrounded by those who are willing

to listen to my blabbering and whines, and those who understand and support me

are one of His blessings I will always be grateful for. In particular, I would like to

express my gratitude to Mr. Paulus Sarwoto, S.S., M.A., Ph.D., who has accepted

me as his student and been very patient in guiding me to write this undergraduate

thesis. I am forever beholden for the time and energy that he has spent to answer

my questions and help me overcome my confusion. I extend my gratitude to Ms.

Sri Mulyani, Ph.D., who has spent her time reviewing my work and given me

valuable feedback. Also, I would not continue my study if it were not for Mama

and Papa, who constantly try to give their best for their kids. I wish someone could

tell them that I love them more than what I have shown to them. I am also grateful

to meet my life-changing family, EDS Sadhar, in college. They have been sisters,

brothers, supporters, advisors, and teachers that influence who I am today. Icun,

Marfel, Diana, Ratri, Kenia, Langit, Elly, Novan, Revo, and Jul also deserve a

highlight on this page for being there since day one and cheering me every time I

feel messed up. There are more friends that I cannot mention one by one, who have

also shared memories and laughter and kept me sane. Lastly, without Kak Gres,

who essentially helps me with literally everything, and Kenia, Marfel, who reread

my words, and Farah, Mama, who help me with the Arabic, I would not be so

confident that I would survive writing this undergraduate thesis. Thank you

everyone for being in my corner.

—Zenhing Angeline


x

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COVER PAGE ...................................................................................................... 0

TITLE PAGE ........................................................................................................ ii

APPROVAL PAGE ............................................................................................. iii

ACCEPTANCE PAGE ........................................................................................ iv

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY .................................................................... v

LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH

UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS .............................................................. vi

MOTTO PAGE ................................................................................................... vii

DEDICATION PAGE ........................................................................................ viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................. ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................... x

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................ xii

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................ xiii

ABSTRAK ............................................................................................................ xiv

CHAPTER I ........................................................................................................... 1

A. Background of the Study ............................................................................. 1

B. Problem Formulation ................................................................................... 4

C. Objectives of the Study ............................................................................... 5

D. Definition of Term ...................................................................................... 5

CHAPTER II ......................................................................................................... 7

A. Review of Related Studies .......................................................................... 7

B. Review of Related Theories ........................................................................ 8

1. Theory of Poetry Elements ................................................................... 8

2. Postcolonial Theory ............................................................................ 14

C. Review of Related Background ................................................................. 20

1. Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in Sudan ........................................... 20

2. Notes on Independent Sudan .............................................................. 22

3. Other Notes about Sudan .................................................................... 24

D. Theoretical Framework ............................................................................. 25


xi

CHAPTER III ..................................................................................................... 27

A. The Object of the Study ............................................................................ 27

B. The approach of the Study ........................................................................ 29

C. Method of the Study .................................................................................. 30

CHAPTER IV ...................................................................................................... 32

A. Ambivalence and Hybridity of the Speaker in Poems Collection The

January Children ....................................................................................... 32

B. People’s Attitude towards the Ambivalence and Hybridity of the Speaker ...

................................................................................................................... 62

CHAPTER V ....................................................................................................... 80

REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 83

APPENDICES ..................................................................................................... 87

Appendix 1: “to make use of water” ................................................................. 87

Appendix 2: “abdelhalim hafez asks for references” ........................................ 87

Appendix 3: “origin stories” ............................................................................. 88

Appendix 4: “date night with abdelhalim hafez” .............................................. 88

Appendix 5: “self-portrait with dirty hair”........................................................ 89

Appendix 6: “republic of the sudan .................................................................. 89

Appendix 7: “asmarani does psychogeography” .............................................. 90


xii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FRD : Federal Research Division

Para : Paragraph

“republic of sudan” : “republic of the sudan

ministry of interior passport & immigration general

directorate

alien from sudanese origin passcard”


xiii

ABSTRACT

ANGELINE, ZENHING. (2020). Ambivalence & Hybridity in Safia Elhillo’s

The January Children: A Postcolonial Study. Yogyakarta: Department of English

Letters, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Many Sudanese have fled from the country, seeking refuge and a better life,

since their independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium because conflicts

keep happening within the border. In hindsight, British colonization was also part

of the cause that makes Sudan the way it is today. It proves that the aftermath of

colonialism has lasted longer than its timeline. Furthermore, as the Sudanese

disperse, the aftereffect has also affected their integrity. This situation is reflected

in The January Children, written by a Sudanese diaspora, Safia Elhillo. The

January Children is a collection of poems that explores themes related to identity,

which is popularly discussed in postcolonialism. The collection tells about a

Sudanese who was born and lived outside Sudan. It foregrounds an experience of

rediscovering and reconstructing the speaker’s perception of selfhood, which brings

the speaker to realize the nature of hybridity and ambivalence within her.

Accordingly, this study aims to scrutinize the configuration of ambivalence

and hybridity of the speaker of poems in The January Children and to examine the

attitude of the society that is portrayed throughout the poems towards the speaker.

To achieve the objectives, the researcher applies the library research

method. Thus, the researcher collects data from books, journals, and websites to

conduct analysis. This study also employs a postcolonial approach to delineate the

speaker’s foregrounding towards her perception of selfhood, leading to

ambivalence and hybridity, and to understand society’s attitude towards the

speaker.

In short, after explicating many poetic devices used in the selected poems,

the analysis shows that, portrayed as a Sudanese diaspora, the speaker manifests

ambivalence and hybridity. Her ambivalence and hybridity is exhibited through

various gestures, such as employing dual-languages and exercising two different

values of the colonized (Sudan) and the colonizer (the Western). The analysis also

unveils that society is unsupportive. The speaker’s family and the broader

community display a demeaning attitude towards the speaker, which suggests their

disagreement with the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity. These are expressed

with many devices but mostly dominated with irony and paradox.

Keywords: ambivalence, hybridity, unhomeliness, The January Children,

Sudanese


xiv

ABSTRAK

ANGELINE, ZENHING. (2020). Ambivalence & Hybridity in Safia Elhillo’s

The January Children: A Postcolonial Study. Yogyakarta: Department of English

Letters, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Banyak orang Sudan melarikan diri dari negaranya, untuk mencari

perlindungan dan hidup yang lebih baik, sejak Sudan merdeka dari pemerintahan

Inggris-Mesir karena konflik terus terjadi. Apabila menilik ke masa lampau,

kolonialisasi Inggris juga memiliki andil dalam menyebabkan Sudan penuh konflik

seperti sekarang ini. Hal ini menunjukan bahwa dampak kolonialisme berlangsung

melampaui masa kolonialisme itu sendiri. Selain itu, karena orang Sudan banyak

yang tersebar di seluruh dunia, dampak kolonialisme pun juga memengaruhi

integritas mereka. Kondisi ini direfleksikan dalam buku The January Children yang

ditulis oleh seorang diaspora Sudan, Safia Elhillo. Buku ini merupakan kumpulan

puisi yang mengeksplor tema yang berhubungan dengan identitas, yang populer

dibicarakan dalam post-kolonialisme. Puisi-puisinya menguraikan tentang

kehidupan orang Sudan yang harus hidup di luar negaranya dan mengalami proses

pencarian dan rekonstruksi persepsi terhadap jati dirinya, yang pada akhirnya

berujung pada kesadaran pembicara dalam puisi terhadap hibriditas dan

ambivalensi yang ada pada dirinya.

Oleh sebab itu, skripsi ini bertujuan untuk menunjukan konfigurasi

hibriditas dan ambivalensi pembicara dalam puisi-puisi The January Children dan

menganalisa sikap masyarakat yang digambarkan dalam puisi-puisi yang dipilih

terhadap pembicara dalam puisi.

Untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut, peneliti menggunakan metode studi

pustaka. Sehingga, peneliti mengumpulkan data dari buku, jurnal, dan website

untuk melakukan analisa. Skripsi ini juga menggunakan pendekatan

postkolonialisme untuk menjelaskan bagaimana pembicara dalam puisi

mengemukakan persepsinya, yang berujung pada ambivalensi dan hibriditas, dan

juga untuk mengetahui sikap masyarakat terhadap pembicara.

Secara singkat, setelah menguraikan berbagai elemen dalam puisi yang

dipilih, hasil analisis menunjukan bahwa pembicara dalam puisi menyadari

ambivalensi dan hibriditas dalam dirinya. Kesadarannya ditunjukan melalui

beragam sikap, seperti penggunaan bahasa bilingual dan penerapan dua nilai yang

bertentangan dari bangsa jajahan (Sudan) dan yang penjajah (bangsa Barat). Hasil

analisis juga menunjukan bahwa masyarakat tidak supportif. Keluarga pembicara

dan masyarakat umum menunjukan sikap yang merendahkan. Hal ini menandakan

bahwa mereka tidak mendukung hibriditas dan ambivalensi pembicara. Hal tersebut

diekspresikan melalui berbagai elemen dalam puisi yang dipilih, terutama melalui

penggunaan ironi dan paradox.

Kata Kunci: ambivalence, hybridity, unhomeliness, The January Children,

Sudanese


1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

2019 had written a new history in Sudan as Omar al-Bashir was toppled

down by military coup d’état (News World Africa, 2019). He had been ruling Sudan

for 30 years and was ousted from his throne in April 2019. However, political

turmoil continued as many demonstrators were killed in June, and another round of

protest in Khartoum burst out in September 2019. It is not the first coup d’état nor

the first demonstration in Sudan. Such things have been lingering in Sudan and

causing instability since the 20th century, during decolonization, or even beyond.

Sudan itself was known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium country after

Britain and Egypt occupied it in 1898 (Collins & Tignor, 1967). Accordingly,

Sudan became one of Britain’s colonial countries and later gained its independence

in 1956. Decolonization practically had happened in Sudan since the early 1950s,

which allowed the early Sudanese nationalist elite to think of Sudan’s new face.

However, decolonization does not necessarily strip off all legacies from the era of

colonialism. The legacy also the trauma, remains, and even hold influence upon

Sudan as the colonized subject. It includes the system, culture, and people. Further,

it does not only affect the generation, which directly experienced the ruling of the

British Empire but also the generation after and after insofar as its society dispersed.

Therefore, the discourse of postcolonialism becomes a relevant subject even

today, considering that the influence of colonization goes beyond the era of


2

colonialism itself. Ashcroft et al. note that postcolonialism is a set of studies that

concerns the effect of colonization on culture and societies (2000, pp. 168-173).

Similarly, Bressler (2011) stated that postcolonialism seeks to “uncover and

discover what happens to the colonized after they are conquered by the colonizers”

(p. 209). Therefore, it can be said that the impact of colonialism upon the post

colonized society is not merely affecting the country’s infrastructure like the

governmental system, for instance, but also culture and identity.

The discourse of postcolonialism itself, more often than not, is generated

through literary texts. The popular forms of literary texts that employ postcolonial

topics today are nonfiction and fiction, such as novels and short stories. In addition

to that, poetry can actually also generate productive discussion about

postcolonialism. In fact, poetry was widely used in Sudan, if not all colonized

countries, during the time of struggles towards independence. Some of today’s

discussions also focus on postcolonial poetry, for example, Postcolonial Poetry in

English (2006) by Rajeev S. Patke and Poetry and Postcolonialism (2012) by Jahan

Ramazani. These discuss how poems written in the shadow of colonialism are an

integral part of postcolonial discourse. Ramazani stated that postcolonial poetry

includes “works that engage issues of living in the interstices between Western

colonialism and non-European cultures” (2012, p. 938). With that, the researcher

believes that the poems by Safia Elhillo in The January Children (2017) are also

relevant to be brought to postcolonial discourse.

The January Children (2017) itself is a collection of poems that tells the

story of living between Western and non-Western cultures, in this case, Sudanese


3

culture. Safia Elhillo herself is a Sudanese who was born in the United States and

stays there until today (Spencer, 2019; “Safia Elhillo”, n.d.). However, she grew up

mainly in Sudanese circumstances as both of her parents, and many of her extended

family, are Sudanese. In that regard, Elhillo develops a tie between both Sudanese

and Western cultures. While critical awareness of “the force exerted by

colonization” (Patke, 2006, p. 4) is not limited only to those who directly experience

colonialism, Safia Elhillo and her works might become one of the examples that

retells the experiences of Sudanese diaspora inside the chamber of postcolonial

discourse.

To put it in other words, The January Children (2017) is worth studying for

its author has composed poems that unfold the aftermath of colonialism upon one’s

identity, conceivably experienced by many Sudanese people and diaspora.

Around the time of writing this poem, I’d made the decision that I wanted

to try and get closer of my writing, to how language functions in my head.

…. If I write the word in the language it occurs to me in, then what’s that

going to look like? What’s that going to feel like? How can I make that

work? (Elhillo, Interview with Poet Safia Elhillo, 2019)

The cited interview above is taken from TED-ed’s interview with Safia Elhillo on

January 22, 2019, in which Elhillo explained why she put Arabic in one of her

English poems, which also appears in The January Children (2017). With

hindsight, Elhillo’s awareness of having a hyphenated identity is sort of obvious.

Her explanation signals that the way she perceives herself is nuanced through her

language use in the works.

For the most part, this research aims to find out how Elhillo projects her

perception of the dual identity in her works. Accordingly, through representations


4

and depictions formulated in Elhillo’s poems composed in The January Children

(2017), this study seeks to find out how ambivalence and hybridity are embodied

in the works. However, it shall be noted that Sudan, in itself, is a diverse country.

Its convoluted history and culture may also have complicated Sudanese’s

perception of being a Sudanese. With that being said, it serves as a disclaimer that

this study has no intention to undermine the complexity of Sudanese identity despite

the simplification that may, or may not, appear in the discussion.

Further, Elhillo also draws other characters besides the speaker of the poem

in her works. It leads the researcher to also try to examine the way traditional

society, as in natives or ultra-nationalist, reacts to ambivalence and hybridity. The

researcher believes that the impacts of colonialism, which exert influence on an

individual level, can get various responses from the broader society because these

aftermaths can lead someone to change their attitude, behavior, appearance, or all

of it. Following that, these changes may or may not be welcomed by the broader

spectrum of society, given that some changes can also involve backlashing ideas

with the ones that traditional society usually holds.

Altogether, this study aims to see how the poems in The January Children

(2017) unveil the ambivalence and hybridity through the speaker of the poems and

to see how the poem problematized the reaction of the society towards the

ambivalence and hybridity.

B. Problem Formulation

In order to explicate the contemporary literary works written by Safia

Elhillo, two research questions are issued as follows.


5

1. How are the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity in the selected poems from

the collection The January Children revealed?

2. How is societies’ attitude towards the ambivalence and hybridity revealed in

The January Children?

C. Objectives of the Study

Referring to the questions formulated earlier, the first objective of this study

is to explain how ambivalence and hybridity are showcased in the poems through

the representation of the speaker of poems in The January Children’s selected

poems that is portrayed as part of the Sudanese diaspora, which means a part of a

post-colonized society. This research also seeks to infer the society’s attitude

portrayed throughout The January Children (2017) towards the bearer of

ambivalence and hybridity, i.e., the speaker of the poems.

D. Definition of Term

1. Hybridity

The term hybridity refers to the making of “transcultural forms within the

contact zone” as the aftermath of colonization (Ashcroft et al, 2000, p. 108). In

other words, hybridity can be associated with the articulation of transcultural

exposure embodied by an individual.

2. Ambivalence

Ambivalence, in general, refers to “contradictory feelings” towards a

particular subject. The concept of the terms “ambivalence” later adapted to the

discourse of postcolonialism in which during the process of converting the subject


6

to be the same as the colonizer produce a difference that makes the colonial other

almost the same but not quite (Wolfreys, Robbins, & Womack, 2006, p. 7).


7

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Review of Related Studies

The first study reviewed in this part is an undergraduate thesis by Laura

Sianturi with the title Hybrid Identity in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

as Seen through the Characteristics of Nyasha: A Postcolonial Reading (2017). In

her study, Sianturi examined the way hybridity is presented in the novel. The result

of the study described that Nyasha’s hybridity generally could be seen from the

novel’s depiction of Nyasha, which is depicted as different from her Zimbabwean

peers. She has higher competence, a different way of thinking and dressing, so on,

and so forth. Nevertheless, Zimbabwean society rejected her being different by

forcing her to be an authentic Zimbabwean girl. Nyasha has refused to comply. She

believed that she was the one to decide what kind of woman she wanted to be.

Sianturi concluded that what Nyasha did with her hybridity was challenging the

concept of the asymmetrical position between colonized and colonizer.

Another study that employs a similar spirit to this postcolonial study is a

thesis written by Satrio Nugroho. Under the title Neurosis and Identity Crisis of the

White Man: Ambivalence and Hybridity in Anthony Burgess’ Selected Novels

(2015), Nugroho analyzed how Burgess’ novel discussed an issue of identity crisis

and how it reflected Burgess’ problem. Nugroho’s thesis concluded that Crabbe,

the main character that he analyzed, ended up having an identity crisis due to the

experiences of hybridity and ambivalence. Nugroho explained that Crabe’s


8

hybridity and ambivalence took place as the result of the proximity between Crabbe

and the natives Malayan, as well as his sympathy for them. However, his original

European identity had hampered him to be completely native. Nugroho also

concluded that Crabbe’s crisis represents Burgess’s own life after analyzing

Burgess’ personal experience.

To compare and contrast the studies mentioned above with this research,

generally, it shares the same topic, which includes hybridity and ambivalence. In

particular, with Sianturi’s study, the discussion of hybridity and ambivalence is

nuanced by the focus of the analysis. In short, Sianturi’s study focuses more on how

hybridity and ambivalence per se deconstruct the inferiority of the colonized.

Meanwhile, Nugroho’s study is more focused on how hybridity and ambivalence

lead to an identity crisis. Slightly different from both studies, this research focuses

more on the configuration of hybridity and ambivalence revealed by the bearer, and

the reaction from the external party. Additionally, this study is notably different

since it takes poems as the source of discussion in postcolonial reading. Thus, it

diversifies the scope of today’s discussion.

B. Review of Related Theories

1. Theory of Poetry Elements

Shira Wolosky, in The Art of Poetry (2001), gives the impression that

“poetry is a language that always means more” (p. 3). In other words, the meaning

of poetry does not stop at the surface level. It goes deeper as every element is

designated to create purposeful designs. In doing so, poetry uses elements, such as


9

imagery, symbols, allegory, allusion, figurative language, and rhetorical strategy.

These elements are elaborated in this part as follows.

a. Imagery

Imagery or images in poetry addresses the five human senses that are drawn

in the poetry. Kennedy and Gioia tell that “images in poetry generally mean a word

or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience” (1995, p. 660). Hence,

through words, imagery in poetry offers a reader an experience that involves the

sensory ability to see (visual), hear (aural), touch/feel (tactile), smell (olfactory),

and/or taste (gustatory). By doing so, it creates a mental picture in the reader’s mind,

that is to say, the imagery in poetry evokes the reader’s imagination. Poetry itself

usually appeals to more than one sensor. Miller and Greenberg (1981) give

examples from “Ulysses” written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who says: the lights

begin to twinkle from the rock; / the long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the

deep / moans round with many voices. These lines present the imagery, which starts

from the visual imagery of the lights that begin to twinkle and then shift to the aural

imagery, the moaning deep (1981, p. 80).

b. Symbol & Allegory

Kennedy and Gioia define symbols as “a visible object or action that

suggests some further meaning in addition to itself” (1995, p. 796). Conventional

symbols that have been widely known are, for example, the flag, black cat, or red

rose, which is used casually in daily life and the language of poetry. As Kennedy

and Gioia suggest that a symbol is a visible object or action, it means we shall focus

on the reference/signifier of a concrete object or action to identify symbols in a


10

poem, rather than the abstract and arbitrary object like the word love, peace, and

death. Generally speaking, a symbol is commonly imagery that the reader can see

with their imagination. However, the image is a special kind of image because it

carries richer connotations rather than imagery (1995, pp. 796-800).

Along with symbols, allegory is a (narrative) description of an equivalent

representation that employs persons, places, and things (Kennedy & Gioia, 1995,

pp. 800-801). Kennedy and Gioia further illustrate the use of allegory by taking an

example of a parable in the Bible: The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man

which sowed good/seed in his field:/But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed

tares among the/wheat, and went his way. From these lines, it is interpreted that the

Sower is the Son of man, the good seed of wheat is the children of heaven, the field

is the world, and the tares among the wheat is the wicked children. As a rule, we

can see from the previous examples that the use of allegory continuously builds a

systematic one-to-one comparison. Hence, it is presumed that allegory will hardly

have multiple interpretations.

Given these points, the meaning of an allegory is thinly disguised, or in other

words, the corresponding representation is somewhat already entailed within the

allegory (Kennedy & Gioia, 1995, p. 802). It is like a bird inside a cage that has

been labeled with the identity of the bird itself. Meanwhile, a symbol is a raven that

mysteriously appears in a library, but we have no clue why it is there, how it gets

there, so on. Thus, we need to investigate it further. All to say that we have to look

deeper to find the meaning of a symbol because a symbol is a tangible hint for

something else, and it might come with many interpretations.


11

c. Allusion

An allusion is the use of reference related to specific events, characters, or

scenes of religious, historical, scientific, or literary nature (Miller & Greenberg,

1981, p. 56). Therefore, understanding an allusion requires shared knowledge

between the poet and the reader, or else the poem will tend to be meaningless.

d. Figurative Language

Miller and Greenberg (1981) exemplify figurative language like how a

speaker says, “I am at the end of the rope” to express her/his despair, instead of

saying literally, “I am desperate.” Hence, figurative language is “a means of indirect

statement that says one thing in terms of another” (p. 66). Figurative language is

widely used in poetry as it employs the gratifying effect where an expression can

still represent the nature of an object or idea, and at the same time, emphasizes the

speaker’s attitude and feelings.

The variation of figurative language itself is numerous. A simile is one of

the figurative languages, which compares one thing to another explicitly (Miller &

Greenberg, 1981, p. 69). It is indicated using linking words, e.g., as, such, than, or

verbs that indicate comparison, e.g., resemble, seem, etc. It is important to note that

the things which are compared shall not be substantially similar but conjoin in the

poet’s perception. Thus, a simile is not “her cheeks are like mine” because it is very

literal. Instead, when Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) says, “her cheeks like apples”,

he speaks a simile. The sibling of a simile is a metaphor (1981, p. 70). It compares

two entities, but the metaphor does not need connectives like a simile. Hence, it is

an implicit comparison. It indicates that “one thing is something else, which, in a


12

literal sense, it is not” (Kennedy & Gioia, 1995, p. 680). The example is: she is the

light in the middle of the dark. Also, Kennedy and Gioia (1995, pp. 680-681)

mention that there is an implied metaphor. It is the moment when we compare

things without stating what is being compared. They give examples like my love

has red petals and sharp thorn, and I place my love into a long stem vase / and I

bandaged my bleeding thumb. It can be seen that this line is actually comparing

love with a red rose.

In general, Kennedy and Gioia (1995, p. 681) explicate that the difference

between simile and metaphor is not merely whether they have connective or linking

verbs. It is how a simile refers to one or two elements that two different things have

in common. Meanwhile, a metaphor is not constrained by the number of similarities

that two different things share. It may involve comparisons of appearance as well

as morality.

Besides simile and metaphor, there is also a metonymy (Barnet, Berman, &

Burto, 1961, p. 673). Metonymy is the naming of something by using other things

that is related to it. The crown in “scepter and crown must tumble down” (James

Shirley) is metonymy, to put it another way. In the aforementioned line, Shirley

uses the crown to signify royals, in which the crown is very common to be

associated with a king or queen. Another kind of metonymy is synecdoche. It refers

to the reference where the part replaces the whole, or the part is replaced by the

whole. An example of synecdoche is a wheel to mention automobiles or bread to

refer to all possible meals.


13

e. Attitude, Tone, and Others Devices

As a poem evokes the reader’s imagination, it also creates a particular vibe

that has a specific effect in arousing the reader’s understanding of the poem. The

vibe is frequently suggested by the notion of the speaker’s attitude, which a tone in

poetry conveys. The tone itself is “the mood or quality of feeling that informs poem

as a whole” (Miller & Greenberg, 1981, p. 205). Hence, it tells whether a poem is

mocking, admiring, or demeaning, for instance. Consequently, we need to be

attentive to the changes of tone in a poem. Miller and Greenberg warn that we need

to note that a phrase that says “good try” is not always about complimenting when

spoken to refer to corruptive doings done by a politician; it is instead a mockery

(1981, p. 203). Given the example, it shall be noted that tone is not the attitude of

the speaker itself. It is something—anything—that makes the attitude of the speaker

in a poem clear. Accordingly, Miller and Greenberg say that tone is the product of

the other elements that compose a poem, and the more pinpoint the identification,

the more precise we can make an inference about the speaker’s attitude.

While having a particular tone that conveys the speaker’s attitude in a poem,

readers can also tell the writer’s attitude from the “rhetorical strategies” used in a

poem (Miller & Greenberg, 1981, pp. 213-214). An instance of this is verbal irony,

which is words that say certain things but indicating another. There lies a disparity

between what is said in words and what is intended from it. Closely related to verbal

irony is situational irony, in which between what seems to be happening and what

is happening lies discrepancy or incompatibility. It is like what we usually have in

our daily expectations versus reality (fulfillment) jokes.


14

Aside from irony, there is also a paradox. It refers to a statement that seems

contradictory in the first strike but logical (Miller & Greenberg, 1981, pp. 217-218).

Miller and Greenberg offer an example of Wordsworth’s “The Child is father of the

Man” which seems absurd. It is usually the adult man that becomes the parent of a

child. However, Miller and Greenberg advised that, beyond the surface statements,

there lies a justified concept intended, that it is the childhood experience that creates

the adult-man. There is also hyperbole. A poet uses hyperbole because it gives an

exaggerating effect, which usually emphasizes a point being made.

2. Postcolonial Theory

Bressler states that postcolonialism is a “loosely defined set of theories”,

which tries to understand what happened to the colonized after colonialism (2011,

p. 209). Ashcroft et al. also emphasize the concern of postcolonialism that focuses

on the impact upon culture and society, as the discourse often includes the

discussion of European colonialism and its empire, the subject of colonialism and

its resistance, as well as the colonial legacy (2000, p. 169). Thus, the backbone of

postcolonial discourse in cultural studies revolves around colonialism and its

aftermath.

In terms of impact, ambivalence and hybridity are among them. Homi K.

Bhabha (1994) expounds these ideas in response to the binary opposition that

distinguishes things in a rigid duality, like the Orient and the Occident. He mentions

that the polarization of the Orient and Occident essentially is the binary logic of

imperialism about the self and the other (p. 19). Before going further, note that

European ethnocentrism—a superior feeling of one’s own culture over other


15

cultures—becomes the underlying reason that exacerbates the polarization of the

Orient and the Occident. From his book Orientalism (1978), Edward Said explains

that in orientalism, the division of the Orient and Occident has only glorified

European superiority over the non-European. Whereas, the non-European is

perceived as a primitive society. Subsequently, it results in the portrayals that

undermine the Orient and the justification of European conquest under the narrative

of a mission to civilization.

With that in mind, Homi Bhabha has called into question the fixity of

identity and the binary system. According to M.A.R Habib, Bhabha’s hybridity has

challenged the “notions of identity, culture, and nation as coherent and unified

entities” (2005, p. 750). Bhabha himself defines hybridity as “in-between” spaces

that allow the elaboration of selfhood, in which it will “initiate new signs of identity,

and innovate sites of collaboration and contestation” (1994, p. 1). Thus, it affirms

that the polarity in orientalism is constructed, and hybridity, indeed, challenges it.

Hybridity itself, as Bhabha elaborates in his book The Location of Culture

(1994), can only be understood under the notion of cultural differences, and not

cultural diversity. It is because cultural differences, in the words of Ashcroft et al.,

focus on the “process of how the objects come to be known and so come into being”

(2000, p. 53). Meanwhile, in Habib’s words, cultural diversity embodies “a received

and static recognition” (2005, p. 752). Thus, cultural diversity does not give an ideal

framework for hybridity to be acknowledged or even articulated.


16

To understand how cultural difference operates and enunciates hybridity,

Bhabha utilizes Renee Green’s metaphor on architecture to project a moment of in-

betweenness and how cultural difference allows it to happen:

The stairwell as liminal space, in-between the designations of identity,

becomes the process of symbolic interaction, the connective tissue that

constructs the difference between upper and lower, black and white. The

hither and thither of the stairwell … prevents identities at either end from

settling into primordial polarities (Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1994,

p. 4).

Bhabha explains that cultural difference in the binary system plays its role like the

stairwell (a liminal space). Be so, the “hither and thither of the stairwell” can be

read as an exchanging process of qualities, meanings, perspective, and whatsoever,

between the binary opposition. This process gives the object an exposure towards

both ends. Thus, it leads to hybridity.

Significantly, cultural difference recognizes an ambivalent moment in its

articulation. In that regard, Bhabha insists that the “enunciation of cultural

difference problematizes binary division of past and present, tradition and

modernity” (1994, p. 35). Hence, it acknowledges that the meaning of culture

cannot be divided into a simplistic ideology of the Self and the Other. Bhabha

implies that the interpretation of culture always requires what Bhabha calls “Third

Space”. With the intervention of the Third Space, Bhaba ensures that culture would

have no “primordial unity or fixity” (1994, p. 37). In the words of Habib, the

articulation of the Third Space makes the hybridity of all cultural statements comes

into recognition (2005, p. 753).

The exploration of the Third Space or the in-between space, therefore,

allows the rise of “interstitial agency that refuses the binary representation”


17

(Bhabha, 1996, p. 58). It comes as the result in which hybridity becomes a new

element that is “neither the one nor the other” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 25). Accordingly,

Robert Young infers that hybridity “makes difference into sameness and sameness

into difference, but in a way that makes the same no longer the same, the different

no longer simply different” (1995, p. 25).

Under the constellation of postcolonialism, hybridity is also associated with

the resistance of the colonized towards colonial domination. Earlier, it has been

discussed that European ethnocentrism had brought Europe into a mission of

civilizing the non-European. It appears, as Ashcroft et al. mention, that the

colonizer also carries the intention to produce “compliant subjects that mimic the

colonizer” (2000, p. 10). In doing so, the colonizer imposes their values and habits

under the narrative of civilizing the Other and pushes the colonized to alienate their

value and culture. However, while the colonizer effectuates their agenda, it makes,

as Bhabha argues, colonial mimicry. Bhabha defines colonial mimicry as “the

desire for reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost

the same, but not quite” (1994, p. 86). In other words, colonial mimicry happens to

be expressing dual articulation, and the emergence of the ambivalence follows it.

Ambivalence is a term used in psychoanalysis to indicate “contradictory

feelings” (Wolfreys, Robbins, & Womack, 2006, p. 7). Bhabha adopts the term to

show the possible resistance when the colonized mimics the colonizer.

It [ambivalence] describes the complex mix of attraction and repulsion that

characterizes the relationship between colonizers and colonized …

ambivalence suggests that complicity and resistance exist in fluctuating

relation within the colonial subject (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2000, p.

10).


18

As shown in the quotation above, within the chamber of postcolonial discourse,

ambivalence shows that the relationship between the colonized and colonizer is not

simplistic. The colonized is resisting through their submission or mimicry. Hence,

they experience ambivalence.

Ambivalence, as well as hybridity, can also appear within the unhomeliness.

Unhomeliness is an experience of an “estranging sense of the relocation of the home

and the world” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 9). In other words, unhomeliness makes someone

feel like they do not belong to a “home”; it can be the place where they were born

and where they move. The fate of unhomeliness is considerably similar to exile,

whose estrangement due to banishment. An exile cannot go “home” because they

become an “outsider” (Said, 2013, p. 144). Thus, both are essentially “homeless”.

Regarding that, an exile has a prominent attribute that is to suffer inherent losses as

Edward Said insists that “the achievements of exile are permanently undermined by

the loss of something left behind forever” (2013, p. 137).

Conversely, Said suggests that, although an exile suffers an inherent loss,

they also have “an awareness that is contrapuntal” (2013, p. 148). Contrapuntal

awareness of an exile, in other words, means that exile notices the dimension of

cultures and the idea of “home” that is not singular. This awareness is similar to

unhomeliness that the unhomely cannot settle only in one place. In light of that,

such awareness can evoke internal conflict within oneself in defining “home” to

which their identity will attach. Hence, Bhabha says that “to be unhomed is not to

be homeless, nor can the unhomely be easily accommodated in that familiar

division of social life” (1994, p. 9). It means that the unhomely cannot easily fit in


19

the already-polarized society, as well as the polarized identity that entails it. Again,

colonialism has spread the propaganda of binary opposition, which classifies people

as the West versus the East, for example. Within that situation, the unhomely elicits

an interstitial space, the Third Space, where they explore their perception of

selfhood in corresponding to the idea of “home”. Thus, the unhomely bear

hybridity. Accordingly, they will likely develop an ambivalence.

As the Third Space allows one to negotiate their perception of selfhood, the

bearer of hybridity can elude themselves from the polarized identity that has been

widely politicized. Whereas, this is not good news for those who valued their people

based upon one’s sense of cultural belonging. The reason being is hybridity

practically challenges the rigidity of cultural identity as Bhaba said:

It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a

colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to descend into that

alien territory . . . may open the way to conceptualizing an international

culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of

cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity (p. 38).

That is to say, the productive exploration of the Third Space can create a new

concept of culture accordingly, irrespective of the historical and cultural identity

attached to someone. Thus, it is very likely for the bearer of hybridity to ignore the

traditionalism of their historical identity and appear to be the “other of ourselves”

(Bhabha, 1994, p. 39). In other words, the bearer of hybridity does not necessarily

conform to the traditionalism of their roots as supposed by their people.

In short, hybridity is a “form of cultural difference” enacted by the

ambivalence of the Third Space that challenges the fixity of the existing cultural

norms. Hybridity itself can happen to the colonial subject whose mimicry is an


20

irony. The colonized mimics the colonizer, but they cannot wholly be like the

colonizer. They still anchor themselves to their own culture. However, they are “no

longer the same”. They become the interstitial agent who is ambivalence because

there is a conflict of impulse between resisting and accepting the other culture—in

this subject is the colonizer’s culture. Both conditions happen to the unhomely, who

feels like not belong anywhere, and refuses to comply with the polarity in social

life.

Therefore, ambivalence, hybridity, and unhomeliness are a form of

resistance to colonial domination that exaggerates the polarized division of cultural

identity. It is also a form of one’s resilience, which, unfortunately, will be opposed

by those who highly value their people based on national solidarity. It is because

the idea of ambivalence, hybridity, and unhomeliness do not only undermine

colonial authority. They also challenge rigid traditionalism.

C. Review of Related Background

1. Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in Sudan

Sudan was once a country of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium after the

collapse of Mahdist State (Collins & Tignor, 1967). It means that Britain and Egypt

governed Sudan in joint control under a Condominium agreement of 1899. Despite

the agreement, British colonials had systematically secluded Egypt from

governance to limit their influence upon Sudan concerning their cultural ties as the

Nile Valley country. Accordingly, Sudan was practically one of Britain’s colonial

countries. In that case, the colonization had brought some notable improvement

upon Sudan (Sharkey, 2003). One of them was a fixed border that gave Sudan a


21

vast definite territory; it was extending from Egypt’s southern borders to the

Northern border of Uganda. However, from the mapped territory that made Sudan

a big country with multiple potentials, the ruling of the British colony was mainly

concentrated in Khartoum.

Another improvement brought by the British colonization was the education

system. Sharkey (2003) mentions that the British established Gordon College in

Khartoum, 1902. It was the first school in Sudan. Alas, not all Sudanese could enter

the school. The British discriminatively selected Gordon College’s student, and

they mostly chose someone from the privileged background of Northern Sudanese

and Muslim notable. Hence, only these elite young men got access to the

“civilization” brought by the British. These people were educated with high literacy

in Arabic and English. They were also exposed to the ethos of group work and

technology.

A striking difference was evident in the Southern part of Sudan; the

Northern and Southern part of Sudan was divided with an imaginary line crossed

the White Nile somewhere around 12 ̊ N Latitud (Sharkey, 2003) e. In the South

(now South Sudan), education, for example, was left to the underfunded Christian

Missionary Body. Therefore, unlike Northerners, Southern Sudanese did not

cultivate a culture solely based on Arab culture. That was why the Southern

Sudanese using vernacular languages or English for government business and day-

to-day activities, rather than Arabic. Most of them were also pagan, and some were

Christian, which very different from the Muslim majority of Northern Sudan

(Sharkey, 2003).


22

This brief review of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in Sudan

exemplifies how the British proceeded with their agenda of humanizing others in

Sudan. Notably, British colonization in Sudan did not reflect their civilizing mission

since they were very pragmatic in Sudan. Arguably, their pragmatism is because

their interest was merely to maintain their power in the Nile Valley. Hence, to

support this political agenda, the British employed policies that favored the elites

group under the assumption that it would make Sudanese cooperative (Sharkey,

2003).

2. Notes on Independent Sudan

Sudan gained its independence on January 1, 1956, with an almost trouble-

free process. The only problem was that Southern Sudanese were barely involved

in the Administrative Conference in Khartoum (1946) and the Juba Conference

(1947) that decided North and South Sudan should be administered as one country

(Federal Research Division, Library of Congress [FRD], 2015). The Southerners

essentially rejected this decision and attempted a mutiny in 1955, in which it failed.

In Dhurgon’s words, the reason behind the rejection was because Sudan’s

independence merely meant “a change of master” for South Sudan (n.d., para. 15).

It is because the Northern elites mostly dominated the government body of

independent Sudan, while the Southerners had little to no voice.

The apparent instance of Northern domination was when its elitists decided

that Sudan ought to proclaim Islamic values and Arabic culture as Sudan’s national

identity, irrespective of Sudan’s plurality (Sharkey, 2003). In that regard, this

determination was, arguably, because these minority elites had been highly exposed


23

to Islam and Arabic culture from the education they received during British colonial

governance and other possible means. This agenda immediately received backlash

from multiple layers of society outside Khartoum. However, the government

refused to listen to them. That was why the civil war broke in Sudan, killing nearly

1.5 million people (Oppong, 2010). The Darfur crisis in Sudan also was not less

deadly than the Northern-Southern civil war, and power competition among the

higher-ups also added to the number of conflicts in Sudan.

It seems that after independence, and even after the split of South Sudan in

2011, conflicts have tattered the living condition of Sudanese people. In retrospect,

the British colonizer can be held responsible for the country instability that

Sudanese suffered. Their pragmatism had reified the imaginary gap between

Southern and Northern Sudan, which subsequently led to war. Besides, the British

colonization also had born educated elitists who eventually turned to be a repressive

leader who failed to maintain peace and ignored society’s welfare.

That is to say, the government of independent Sudan had been unable to

provide basic service and protection for all layers of Sudanese people. It could be

seen from the awful healthcare system in Sudan, which caused many people to die

because of diseases such as Malaria, TBC, and Meningitis (Oppong, 2010). Oppong

(2010) also mentions that Sudanese was exposed to daily threats of landmines

planted everywhere without warning. Above all, the country was under constant

poverty despite the vast and various landscapes and resources—although Khartoum

seems to be a developed city. The poor governance had wasted many potentials if

not jeopardized by the conflicts. Hence, it cost the national instability and pushed


24

many Sudanese to flee across the border to seek protection from the unending

conflicts or pursue a better life if they had the opportunity.

3. Other Notes about Sudan

Sudan is located in the African continent. The region of Sudan lies between

two different spheres of the African and Mediterranean world, and for this reason,

it becomes a place for the encounter of two different cultures (Oppong, 2010). Ryle

et al explain that the people movement from Arabian peninsula has caused

“extensive assimilation” with the indigeneous African people (2012, p. 73).

Therefore, in hindsight, it can be considered that “Sudan” in itself has been

hybridized because of the assimilation of Arabic and African culture inside the

region of Sudan.

Accordingly, Sudan is rich in cultural heritage (Oppong, 2010). For

example, Sudan has a wide variety of local languages despite Arabic as the national

language. In terms of language, such national identity was actually enforced

because the central government sought an Islamic revolution that considered only

Arabic and Islam as its identity. This agenda had suppressed the local languages,

beliefs, and other customs with the dominance of Arabic and Islam. Therefore, it

left many people, other than Arabic and Muslim, being unaccommodated by the

central government.

Derived from the Islamic reformation agenda, Khartoum imposed Sharia

Law—a law based on Islam (FRD, 2015, pp. 248-249). One of its regulations was

that women were restricted from wearing “improper clothes”. What was considered

as improper was usually cloth that was revealing or emphasizing women’s curves.


25

Women are also required to wear head-cover accordingly. The restriction was very

rigid and extreme. For example, Oppong (2010) reports that in July 2009, Lubna

al-Hussein and 12 other Sudanese women were jailed for wearing slacks in public—

even the law required them to be punished with 40 lashes.

Meanwhile, when discussing Sudanese traditionalism, marriage becomes an

example that still holds its influence in modern Sudan. Arranged marriage was still

prevalent in Sudan, even among the educated Sudanese (Oppong, 2010); (Essien &

Falola, 2009). Marriage was considered not only a tradition but also a religious

practice in Sudan. Marriage is also essential to sustain kinship which is important

for Sudanese. In the lower society in Sudan, marriage was also perceived as a

solution to poverty. Thus, Sudanese society still encouraged it.

The arranged marriage had emboldened a woman to be married at a young

age but secluded them in the decision making, such as deciding who would be their

groom (Oppong, 2010). It means the parents were the one who negotiated the

marriage for their daughter. That is why, as Oppong mentions, the parents most

likely would marry their daughter to a man that was already self-sufficient. After

the marriage, the woman is usually expected to be a housewife (Essien & Falola,

2009, p. 15). They also hold full responsibility for nurturing their children and other

domestic work.

D. Theoretical Framework

In this study, all theories and background are used comprehensively to

perform analysis in the next chapter. As suggested by the title of this research, the

discussion of the next chapter addresses two issues in postcolonial discourse,


26

namely hybridity and ambivalence. As the issue is examined throughout the poems

written by Safia Elhillo, the review on poetry devices from the perspective of

Sylvan Barnet et al., X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, and Ruth Miller and Robert

Greenberg are used to comprehend the meaning of poems. In that case, the

theoretical review on postcolonial theory, as elaborated in the preceding section,

becomes the basis for identifying the construction of hybridity and ambivalence

within the speaker of the discussed poems. Sudan’s historical background is also

significant to provide frameworks and context to justify the argument whenever

required.

Overall, the theories and background discussed earlier are integrated to

answer the first and second formulated problems. From The January Children’s

poems as the source of discussion in this study, the speaker’s ambivalence and

hybridity from the poems are revealed by explicating the poetry devices employed

in the poems. Further, the analysis of hybridity and ambivalence becomes the basis

to see the reaction or attitude from the speaker’s surrounding environment, which

is inferred from poetry devices, whether the surrounding environment rejects or

supports the hybridity and ambivalence as revealed in the poems.


27

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. The Object of the Study

This study explicates poems compiled in a book entitled The January

Children (2017), written by an emerging Sudanese poet, Safia Elhillo. Her poems

collection won the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets (“Safia

Elhillo”, n.d.). The University of Nebraska Press later published it in 2017 as part

of the African Poetry Book Series. While Safia Elhillo writes the poems, its

foreword is written by Kwame Dawes, who is an African poet, a professor at the

University of Nebraska, and the editor for the African Poetry Book Series.

The title of the book, The January Children, refers to the Sudanese

generation born during the British colonization. Elhillo describes it in the epigraph

of her book:

The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British

occupation, where children were assigned birth years by height, all given

the birth date January 1 (Elhillo, 2017).

However, Elhillo’s poems in The January Children do not tell about an experience

encountering British colonialism. Instead, her poems in The January Children

explore one’s selfhood through different culture and values.

Although all of Elhillo’s works in The January Children nuance a theme

that revolve around selfhood exploration, this study will only examine seven poems

from the collection. While the other poems in the collection are drawn from the lens

of gender issue or culture, for instance, the researcher only selects seven poems


28

because they bespeak postcoloniality. The selected poems exclusively reflect a

simultaneous experience of unhomeliness, hybridity, and ambivalence which

become the discourse in postcolonial study. Besides, the selected poems also

portrays other character other than the speaker herself, for example the speaker’s

family and friends, which makes the selected poems quiet distinct from the other

poem in the collection. In other words, the seven poems are selected because they

reveal the speaker’s perception of selfhood and portray how the surrounding society

behaves accordingly. For that reason, the seven selected poems are deemed ideal to

be the source of data for this research.

The selected poems are listed as follows:

1. “to make use of water” (2017, p. 4);

2. “abdelhalim hafez asks for reference” (2017, p. 8);

3. “origin stories” (2017, p. 10);

4. “date night with abdelhalim hafez” (2017, p. 21);

5. “self-portrait with dirty hair” (2017, p. 23);

6. “republic of the sudan

ministry of interior passport & immigration general directorate

alien from Sudanese origin passcard” (2017, p. 34); and

7. “asmarani does psychogeography” (2017, p. 42).

As mentioned earlier, the seven poems above generally portray the

speaker’s exploration of selfhood, i.e., how she perceives herself and how society

perceives her. Logan February, a Nigerian poet, says that Elhillo’s poems are

“unapologetic expression of a dual self … this duality creates the tension that drives


29

The January Children” (February, 2017, para. 2). Thus, it can be said that the poems

essentially show how the speaker negotiates the idea of identity. She starts with

negotiating her perception of “home” and leads to ambivalence and hybridity. In

that case, the reader can find Abdel Halim Hafez, a legendary Egyptian singer,

appearing in some of the poems. It has drawn some sort of attention since Hafez

does not only appear once. When Elhillo was questioned about it, she argued that

“the book is my turn to imagine myself as his asmarani” (Elhillo, 2017). However,

when it is examined more in-depth, Hafez’s appearance in the poems means more

than that. It appears that by imagining being Abdel Halim Hafez’s asmarani, Elhilllo

uses him to present the exploration of selfhood in her poems.

B. The approach of the Study

The approach employed in this study is postcolonialism. The researcher

believes that postcolonialism is the most appropriate approach to expound on the

topic of hybridity and ambivalence, as addressed in the title of this study. Hybridity

itself is among the characterization of a postcolonial approach based on Peter Barry.

He categorizes four characteristics of a postcolonial approach, which includes

awareness as exotic Others, concern upon language use, dual/hybrid/unstable

identity, and the existence of cross-cultural interactions (Barry, 2009).

Furthermore, Bertens (2001) notes that postcolonialism appears after

decolonization when people think about what colonialism did to them and consider

the loss of their cultural identity. It means postcolonialism is also a suitable

approach to see the aftermath of colonialism upon colonized society and the

following generation of the colony. In this case, the approach is used to analyze the


30

selected poems from Elhillo’s The January Children because its poems speak a lot

about dual identity, which is arguably bound to the historical roots of colonialism.

In addition to that, Bertens stated that Postcolonial criticism learns about

“the process and the effect of cultural displacement and the way the displaced have

culturally defended themselves” (2001, p. 200). Thus, this approach can also

explicate the literary works to see how society reacts towards cultural clash

experienced by those experiencing cultural displacement.

C. Method of the Study

This research applies library research as the methodology to find out the

answer to the problems formulated in the first chapter. Selected poems from the

book The January Children serves as the source of discussion. Hence, The January

Children is the primary resource for this study. As the secondary resources, the

researchers use several books that examine the ideas about hybridity and

ambivalence, such as Location of Culture by Homi Bhaba. Another book used in

this study is Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (Sixth

Edition), for example, to explain poetic devices used to explicate the poems. This

study also uses literature that provides knowledge about Sudan, like Living with

Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Along with

these books, some journals and interviews give additional information relevant to

the study.

In carrying out the study, there were several steps taken. Firstly, the

researcher conducted close reading on selected poems from The January Children

to identify the data relevant to the conduct of the following analysis. Second, the


31

researcher applied the theory of poetic devices to identify the elements of poems

used to compose the poems in The January Children. Later, the researcher analyzed

the poems using the collected data from primary and secondary resources.

In particular, to answer the first question, the researcher sought to find out

the way the expression of hybridity and ambivalence was revealed in the poems

through its poetic devices. In answering the second formulated problem, the

researcher identified other characters in the poem discussed by the speaker of the

poems. Then, the researcher inferred the way these characters behaved towards the

hybridity and ambivalence expressed in the poems by also looking at the devices

used in the poems. After the analysis is done, the researcher concludes the analysis

in the fifth chapter.


32

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

A. Ambivalence and Hybridity of the Speaker in Poems Collection The

January Children

Each of Elhillo’s poems in the collection The January Children evidently

has different storylines, settings, and problems. However, to take a helicopter view,

the collection of The January Children essentially talks about the issue of identity

construction that is experienced by a Sudanese diaspora. The identity construction

is problematized through several themes, such as gender and culture for instance.

Meanwhile, the selected poems for this study particularly foreground the

postcolonial theme, which prominently pertains to the idea of ambivalence and

hybridity.

Accordingly, someone may identify themselves, not only from their name

but also from where they live or from. However, it is more complicated for those

who feel they do not belong anywhere because they are uprooted from their origin.

In postcolonialism, that feeling is called unhomeliness (see page 18). It is the

condition in which one feels distant from the place that is supposed to be called a

“home”; it can be where they were born, where they live, or where they move.

Regarding that, the poems in The January Children appear to revolve around the

issues of unhomeliness. It becomes an integral part of the speaker’s identity

construction, which leads to her hybridity and ambivalence.

Before going further, it has been noted that there will be only seven poems

discussed in this study. The speaker of every poem will be regarded as the same


33

character unless advised otherwise. With that being said, it seems important to

understand first the speaker’s birth identity before further examining how the

speaker reveals her ambivalence and hybridity throughout the poem. The poem that

provides us such information is “republic of the sudan ministry of interior passport

& immigration general directorate alien from sudanese origin passcard” (Elhillo,

The January Children, 2017, p. 34). Later the title will be shortened to “republic of

the sudan” for efficiency.

at the khartoum office a veiled woman

made the card in microsoft paint told me my arabic

was [not bad for a foreigner you can barely

hear the accent] i board the plane with

grandma’s voice crackling through the phone

[come home again soon] my blue passport

made me american place of birth maryland usa

(Elhillo, the republic of the sudan, 2017, stanza 1)

In “republic of the sudan”, the speaker recounts her story in Sudan’s

immigration office after visiting her grandmother. She tells what she experienced

when she goes back and forth to the US and Sudan in the poem. While sharing her

experience, the speaker says: “my blue passport / made me american place of

birth maryland usa” in the seventh line of the quoted poem above. Obviously, this

line informs the reader that the speaker was born in the US, specifically in

Maryland. Thus, the US is attached to her birth identity since she was born there.

However, if it is examined further, the line mentioned above does not only

inform us about the speaker’s birthplace but also tells about her feelings towards

her birthplace. It is the phrase “my blue passport / made me american” that should

be scrutinized more since the speaker seems to imply something else within these

lines. That is to say that the line is an irony. With the irony in the line, the speaker


34

appears to signify that she is not an American, or at least she does not feel like being

one, because it is her “blue passport” that made her American. In other words, the

speaker is American merely because she is documented as an American.

Following the nuance of the speaker’s identity above, it is later understood

that the speaker is not of an American-descent. As suggested by the phrase

“sudanese origin passcard” mentioned in the title, she appears to be a Sudanese.

Besides, the speaker and her parents are still speaking Arabic to each other: “mama

/ still speaks to me in arabic” (stanza 2, line 5), which supports the idea that the

speaker is a Sudanese and not American. Evidently, in Sudan, Arabic is widely

spoken and becomes the official language (see page 22-24). Also, the fact that the

poem “republic of the sudan” tells about the speaker’s visit to her grandmother in

Sudan strengthens the argument that the speaker is a Sudanese-descent.

With that in mind, the speaker is apparently experiencing unhomeliness.

The fact that the speaker was born in America instead of Sudan, her origin country,

appears to cause her feeling unhomed. That is why she implies that it is her “blue

passport” that makes her American (Elhillo, stanza 1, line 6 - 7). It means that she

does not have a bond with the place that has raised her to make her feel American

enough. Hence, it causes her to experience estrangement sense about the US,

making her the unhomely in her birthplace.

Be that as it may, at the end of the poem “republic of the sudan”, the speaker

mentions something about her “home”: “& last time i was home a soldier stopped

the car / asked where i was from laughed when i said here” (Elhillo, stanza 2,

lines 10 – 11). From these two lines above, the speaker’s perception of “home” can


35

be examined as she recounts that she was home when a soldier stopped her car.

Arguably, the speaker frames her encounter with a soldier as an allusion to Sudan.

It is because Sudan is constantly in an unstable condition (see page 22-23).

Additionally, Sudan’s political sphere was also highly dominated by military

influence (Ryle, Willis, Baldo, & Jok, 2012, p. 180). That is why it was very likely

to meet a soldier in the street or the border since the government used military forces

to keep things under control. According to that context, when the speaker says, “&

last time i was home …” and answer that she is from “here” when the soldier asked

her, it can be argued that the speaker is addressing Sudan as her “home”.

In that respect, the speaker appears trying to dismiss her unhomeliness by

anchoring her perception of “home” to her origin country, Sudan. That is why when

the soldier asked about her origin, she answered from “here”, viz., Sudan. This line

is a paradox because the speaker’s answer is contradictory to the fact that she is

from the US. After all, she is an American citizen. However, her claim that she is

from Sudan can eventually be justified, given that she is a Sudanese descent.

Thereupon, what the paradox reveals is the speaker’s standpoint, which considers

Sudan as her “home”, although she was born and grows up in the US.

Sudanese diaspora itself, in reality, have numerous way in perceiving Sudan

as a “home”, to which their identity belongs. Cathy Wilcock, in her analysis about

diaspora formation among U.K. Sudanese, states that “there is a tendency for

Sudanese abroad to orient towards parts of Sudan, and not all of it” (2017, p. 5).

Therefore, although the sample of Sudanese diaspora analyzed in her study is

limited only to those who lived in the U.K., it can be used as a basis to argue that


36

most of the Sudanese diaspora perceived their individual and group identity based

on their constituent relevance rather than national. This is supported by the fact that

Sudanese people in Sudan itself identifies themselves with a range of criteria, such

as family ancestry, political and religious affiliation, tribal variation, language, and

patterns of subsistence and not necessarily by the national identity of the country

(Ryle et al, 2012, p. 70).

However, the way the speaker sees Sudan as “home” appears to be slightly

different. The speaker arguably perceives that Sudan is a “home” as a whole nation

rather than exploring her constituent relation to a specific part of Sudan. In doing

so, the speaker relates her perception of “home” to the geographical location of

Sudan as the whole country. As revealed in the poem “republic of the sudan”, the

speaker was questioned about her domicile but she did not mention anything about

the US, her country of origin, to the soldier. Instead, she answered that she was

from Sudan, leaving an impression that it is her home or domicile. Thus, what the

speaker does in this poem is that she tries to bind her sense of self with Sudan by

perceiving that the country as a whole—“republic of the sudan”—is the

geographical location of her “home”, irrespective of which region of Sudan is her

“home”.

It may then come into question why the speaker does not move to Sudan—

instead of just visiting—if she feels Sudan is her home, literally, and not the US.

The answer to the question can be observed in the poem entitled “to make use of

water” (Elhillo, 2017, p. 4). The speaker starts this poem by comparing and

contrasting her relation and experience with Sudan and the US, particularly


37

regarding her language use. Later, nearly at the end of the poem, the speaker says:

“i want to go home” (Elhillo, stanza 3, line 2), which explicitly shows that the

speaker desires to go back home or, in other words, going back to Sudan and live

there.

From the aforementioned lines, the speaker shows her awareness of the urge

to go back to her native homeland. Arguably, a similar feeling is commonly

experienced by the diaspora community in general. It is because the idea of going

back home provides reassurance that in their homeland “no one will question them”

(Silva, 2009, p. 694). After all, it is a place that denotes their history and their past—

that marks them as non-alien. With that regard, it is argued that the speaker—who

is portrayed as part of the Sudanese diaspora—experiences such gravity towards

Sudan when she talks about home. Thus, again, it confirms that the speaker

associates her perspective of “home” with the idea of a geographical and physical

home.

Nonetheless, the speaker’s desire to go “home”, to stay and live in Sudan,

remains a desire as she cannot realize it. Her reason for that is shown when the

speaker immediately expresses criticisms that confront her yearning:

half don’t even make it out or across you

get to be ungrateful you get to be

homesick from safe inside your blue

american passport do you even

understand what was lost to bring you

here

(Elhillo, to make use of water, stanza 4, line 2 – 6)

The criticism in the stanza above accosts her desire to go back to Sudan by

unfolding the trauma she associates with her safety in living outside Sudan. Note


38

that the preceding chapter has discussed the living condition of the Sudanese people

since its independence. Many have died due to constant conflict, repression, and

other crises, making them suffer (see page 22-23). Thus, from the second line that

narrates: “half don’t even make it out or across”, it is safe to infer that the line refers

to those Sudanese who did not manage to seek help as a refugee or even escape the

conflict. With that in mind, the line is actually alluding to the humanitarian crisis

happening in Sudan to emphasize the struggle of the Sudanese people.

The misery that the Sudanese people undergo above is an opportunity cost

that the speaker, also a Sudanese, does not have to bear to enjoy her safety, living

within the “blue american passport”, a metonymy of the US borders. It is nuanced

by the lines in the same stanza that mention: “you / get to be ungrateful you

get to be / homesick from safe inside your / blue american passport”.

Seemingly, these lines intend to criticize the speaker for her desire to go “home”.

The speaker is called out for her callousness and homesickness, i.e., her desire to

go back “home” while she is actually safe living abroad. Hence, the line reveals an

irony because the speaker does not reflect the expected manner, such as gratitude,

for being safe, for example, while many of her fellow Sudanese had to struggle to

escape the crisis in Sudan. The irony to some extent also criticizes the fact that the

speaker possesses a privilege, which many other Sudanese do not have. It implies

that she can live a safe and comfortable life while other Sudanese people have to

die for it.

When reaching the end of the fourth stanza in “to make use of water”, the

speaker, with her unhomeliness, is again confronted with a question that reads: “do


39

you even / understand what was lost to bring you / here”. The question is also an

irony because, from this line, it is known that it requires a sacrifice to save

something or someone, in this case, the speaker. Thus, with a sarcastic tone, this

line implies that the speaker’s safe life is not a miracle but a struggle full of

sacrifices.

Altogether, it can be seen how the ironies presented in the fourth stanza of

“to make use of water” have scolded the speaker for her audacity, expecting to go

back to Sudan. It juxtaposes the struggle and sacrifice, not to mention the misery

that her fellow Sudanese want to escape, with the privilege of being safe that the

speaker—a Sudanese—gets without any struggle. The ironic juxtapositions, hence,

show how “homecoming” is a conflicting decision for the speaker. The speaker may

think that going back to Sudan is something that can dismiss her unhomeliness

because, then, she can live in the geographical location of her origin. Thus, it will

complete her sense of self that she associates with a Sudanese identity. On the other

hand, she cannot easily go back because she understands how homecoming may

undermine other Sudanese people’s sacrifice and struggle. That is why she detained

her desire to “go home” to settle in Sudan.

The fact that the speaker cannot go “home” although she wants it is similar

to a condition of an exile. Exile is banished from one’s native country or someone

who banished themselves for safety reasons. Under that circumstance, they also

cannot go “home”, although they wish to, because they have been stigmatized as an

“outsider” (see page 18). In addition to that situation, labeled an “outsider”, exile


40

also has to live under insurmountable sorrow and “disorienting loss”, which has

undermined their “achievement” (Said, 2013, p. 137).

Likewise, the speaker appears to experience a similar feeling as to how an

exile is in despair. It can be seen depicted in “to make use of water” discussed

above, where the speaker is overshadowed by the loss and casualties of other

Sudanese. Seemingly, the grief entails the speaker’s unhomeliness since she cannot

go back to her native country. Her expression of sorrow appears several times, not

only in “to make use of water” but also in other poems.

Engaging in the speaker’s unhomeliness that is akin to an exilic feeling

entailed by grief, the speaker also appears to undress her pain in the poem “origin

stories” (Elhillo, 2017, p. 10). This poem generally tells about the speaker’s

experience when visiting her grandparents in Sudan. However, the poem starts with

an allusion, and at the same time is a metaphor, which signifies more of her origin:

“i was made out of clay out of time” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 1, line 1).

The phrase “i was made out of clay” can be considered an allusion to a religious

belief of Abrahamic religion that God makes humans from dust or soil. Meanwhile,

it is a metaphor too because the speaker compares herself with pottery—both are

made from clay.

In some ways, both inferences above tell about the way the speaker

perceives her selfhood. First of all, as a metaphor, the imagery of “clay”—or

pottery—invites us to imagine its color. Apparently, the speaker utilizes this

imagery as a metaphor to suggest that her color is similar to the color of clay, which

is dark-skinned. With that in mind, the metaphor may function to emphasize the


41

speaker’s racial identity by the reference of color. It shows that the speaker is aware

that she is part of people of color.

Secondly, it is also an allusion. The allusion tells us that the speaker believes

in religious values, particularly Islam. It is because Islam also adopts such tale of

creation, that human is created from clay soil. The reference of “the quran” in the

following line: “the quran says we began / as a single clot of blood” (Elhillo, origin

stories, stanza 1, line 1-2) also supports the idea that the speaker embraces Islam as

her religious belief although she was born and raised in the US, a secular country.

Accordingly, it may strengthen the idea that the speaker tries to embrace her

Sudanese side more than her American-ness, considering that Sudan was an Islamic

country for 30 years—Islamic revolution was ended following the downfall of Al-

Bashir regime (Sudan Separates Religion from State Ending 30 Years of Islamic

Rule, 2020). On the other hand, the allusion of “i was made out of clay” also

elucidates that the speaker associates her perception of Sudanese identity with the

idea of being Muslim. It strengthens the idea that the speaker is part of the majority

in Sudan as she associates her Sudanese identity with prominently Islamic values.

Whereas, there are more belief systems in Sudan, rather than just Islam, as Ryle et

al mention that the “religious landscape of the Sudan is many-layered” (2012, p.

104).

The speaker also mentions “out of time” in the line following the phrase

discussed earlier: “i was made out of clay out of time” (stanza 1, line 1),. This

phrase is an allusion too, which refers to the era of colonialism and post-colonialism

in Sudan. It means the speaker tries to express that she is a Sudanese born at the


42

wrong time. The reason behind it is because she has been dislocated since she was

born. Additionally, the speaker discerns that she was born at the wrong time because

her birth, as well as her life, is haunted by a pang of guilt knowing many Sudanese

died under an authoritarian governments.

The speaker also cites the quran as she mentions: “the quran says we began

/ as a single clot of blood” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 1, lines 1–2). Undoubtedly,

the reference for this line is Surah Al-Alaq, which mentions: َنسَانَ مِنإ عَلق ِ خَلقََالْإ

(transliteration: khalaqal insaana min ‘alaq) that means “[your Lord who] created

humans from a clinging clot” (Al-'Alaq, 2020). Apparently, it is the word “alaq”

that the speaker interprets as “a single clot of blood”. However, the literal meaning

of the word “alaq” from Surah Al-Alaq is “to adhere to something”. Hence,

according to Sayyid Imani, “alaq” can be used to refer to “some congealed blood

or a leech which sticks to the body to suck blood” (Surah ‘Alaq, Chapter 96, n.d.).

Regarding that, some have considered that the word “alaq” symbolizes the

beginning of life (Surah ‘Alaq, Chapter 96, n.d.). The first reason is that the shape

of an embryo, the early stage of a fetus, will be a sticking clot. Another reason is

that a sperm that fertilizes an ovum to be a baby resembles a leech (alaq). Another

point of view says that the word “alaq” is used in the Surah because its sticking

nature resembles clay, a thing that Adam was made from. Hence, the word “alaq”

is believed to indicate the beginning of human life. With that in mind, the reference

of “a single clot of blood” mentioned in “origin stories” can also be considered

referring to the beginning of life. Thus, the speaker’s phrase corroborates with some

aforementioned interpretations of the word “alaq” in Surah Al-Alaq.


43

Furthermore, it shall be noted too that the word “alaq” also means a leech.

Hence, the phrase “a single clot of blood” can be equivalent to a leech too. In

hindsight, it is presumed that the speaker may also signify a parasitic nature that

inflicts pain on someone—like a leech when it sucks human blood—when she uses

the reference of “a single clot of blood” in telling her “origin stories”. As provided

by the earlier discussion that the speaker’s safety requires other’s sacrifices, it is

argued that the phrase “we began / as a single clot of blood” may also refer to the

speaker’s situation, in which she was born in a fortunate circumstance—being safe

outside Sudan—despite others Sudanese sacrificing a lot to be on her feet. In other

words, she regards her birth as a parasitic event too.

The premise, then, explains why the speaker says: “i keep digging the

wound it’s warm inside” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 1, line 2), following the

symbolization of “a single clot of blood” or “alaq”. Obviously, when a leech sucks

one’s blood, the victim will suffer from pain. Apparently, it is the “wound” that the

speaker digs. Apart from that, “the wound” itself is a symbol of sacrifices. Hence,

it nuances a similar message like in “to make use of water” that a lot of things have

been sacrificed to make the speaker live safely, and it shadows the speaker. Thus,

every time she reminisces about the history of her people, or the sacrifices that

Sudanese has to make, she is “digging the wound”.

Further, every time the speaker digs the wound, she can feel it is “warm”.

As something warm often associated with something fresh or new, this imagery

conveys a message that the wounded history always feels like it just happened

yesterday for the speaker. Thus, it implies that the speaker can feel the pain of


44

Sudanese people who struggle for safety throughout history although she does not

experience it herself. In other words, it shows that the speaker has an emotional

bond with Sudanese people. Hence, she feels their misery or their “wound”.

Correspondingly, it expounds that the speaker embraces her Sudanese

identity by signifying the emotional relationship that she shares with Sudanese

people through its history. However, she does not specify which history she relates,

given that one ethnicity—or another group alike—in Sudan may have different

forms of struggle. Thus, the speaker’s nostalgia may appear to be generalizing. She

has deserted the different problem that commonly used by Sudanese to identify

themselves as part of which Sudanese (Ryle et al, 2012, p. 70). Once again, the

speaker attunes to Sudan as a united nation whose struggle and history are as if

similar across the country despite the fragmented society in Sudan. If it is

scrutinized further, it can be said that this tendency is influenced by her privilege in

terms of social status. It is because the speaker’s appears to become part of the

dominant group of people in Sudan as she embraces Islam, which she associates

with her perception of Sudanese identity.

Nonetheless, what the speaker feels in relation to the history of her Sudanese

fellow also happens to be counterproductive to her perception of “home” and

selfhood. The way the speaker incorporate the history of Sudanese people into her

journey of combating her unhomeliness, at the end, reflects how the speaker is

haunted by misery upon the struggle of her people. The speaker also gives an

impression that the exact emotion evoked by the history of struggles has detained


45

her “homecoming”. It means that it was also the pain of losing people that has

uproot her from her origin and makes her unhomely.

Like an exilic feeling, losing people and haunted by pain are two things that

the speaker associates with her unhomeliness. The other thing that she accentuates

in the poems to communicate her unhomeliness is the loss of language, which also

appears in the poem “origin stories”:

some things you lose to mark the time yes men of course but also

some hair handful of teeth is what i am told but all i lost

is a language but i keep quiet & no one can tell

(Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 1, line 3–6)

In “origin stories”, as seen from the quoted lines above, the speaker associates

language loss with the phase of growing old, “some things you lose to mark the

time”. In this stanza, the speaker compares what others usually lose when growing

old with what she loses. Other people told her that she would lose her partner or

company when she grows old as she said: “yes men of course”. Also, she is told

that she will lose “some hair handful of teeth”. These are the things that she finds

common for people to lose as they grow old. However, as she grows, it turns out

that what she loses is her language: “but all i lost / is a language”. With that, the

juxtaposition of what she loses versus what others have commonly lost is situational

irony. It is because she loses a language, something that is unexpected for her. After

all, no one tells her that she will lose her language or that others experience the

same thing.

The irony of losing a language above also appears in the poem “abdelhalim

hafez asks for reference” (Elhillo, 2017, p. 8). In this poem, the speaker generally


46

recounts the bullying that happened to her in an Arabic class. Further, she intends

to show how this experience affects her selfhood. She opens the poem with a tale:

there’s a saying about women who cannot

remember their homes how they love to

mourn what does not belong to them

a language a man a silk dress

(Elhillo, abdelhalim hafez asks for reference, stanza 1, lines 1–4).

In the poem “abdelhalim hafez asks for reference”, the speaker mentions

something about the “women who cannot / remember their homes”. Arguably, the

women that the speaker describing is an allegory that represent the unhomely. The

imagery of “home” itself can symbolize a sense of belonging. Hence, because the

women are described that they forgot their homes, it can be read that the women

forget how it feels to belong somewhere or something. Thus, the women are an

allegory to the unhomely or someone who experiences unhomeliness because the

deeper meaning of the description corroborates Bhabha’s word on how the

unhomely experience an estranging sense of a place (see page 18). Accordingly, in

this poem, the speaker projects herself as part of the women in itself since she also

experiences unhomeliness.

In that regard, the speaker marks the unhomely feeling that happens to the

“women” in the lines above with the absence of language, man, and silk dress,

which considerably is figurative in meaning. In that case, language is a metonymy

that exemplifies identity because a language that someone possesses is often

associated with their identity; for example, Mandarin is associated with Chinese

people. The silk dress, meanwhile, signifies a culture because a dress is part of


47

clothing. Thus, it is part of a culture, which makes the “silk dress” a synecdoche.

Lastly, man is a metonymy to constitute society or community.

Therefore, by employing the figurative languages, the speaker characterizes

the aforementioned women with the absence of identity, society or community, and

culture, since they do not have those things. It means that, to some extent, the

speaker is also seeing herself disconnected from the same things, given that she

projects herself as part of those women. In other words, the speaker depicts her

unhomeliness, which she signifies as being part of the women who forget their

homes, with the dispossession of identity, community, and culture. On the other

side, it means that she feels her relation to the current identity, society, and

culture—that is western—is hollow, explaining why she feels unhomely.

Bhabha’s perspective about unhomeliness emphasizes that the unhomely

cannot straightforwardly fit in the “familiar division of social life”, which is the

polarized society (see page 18). About that, the speaker’s unhomeliness can

complicate her identity construction. Firstly, she has to deal with an estrangement

sense of unhomeliness that makes her feels like not “American” enough. Hence,

she doubts herself as an American. Then, she is faced with two societies contrasting

with each other. There are Sudan, the speaker’s origin country, in opposition to the

US, the speaker’s birth country in which she grows up. Apparently, it becomes the

reason why the speaker finds it difficult to resolves the question of her selfhood. It

is because she has certain relations with two contrasting cultures, places, and

societies.


48

In dealing with such conditions, it seems that the speaker has been moving

to several places, as mentioned in “asmarani does psychogeography” (Elhillo, 2017,

p. 42). Psychogeography itself is a terminology that explains how places impact

someone’s behavior and emotion (Marshalls PLC, 2018). As the title suggests, the

poem mainly tells about the speaker’s experiences of moving from one city to

another, be it in the West, Africa, and the Middle East. Along with her moving, the

speaker recollects different experiences. It starts with being in the same household

with a prominent figure to the racism that she experiences in the West and the

Middle East.

The speaker reminiscences the experience that she has when she moves

from city to city. The speaker starts the poem “asmarani does psychogeography”

with her memory of living in Zamalek (line 1) and ends the poem with her memory

of living in Geneva (line 11). When it comes to the speaker’s constant migration

portrayed in this poem, the speaker shows how she is “not easily accommodated”,

which corroborates Bhabha’s word about the unhomeliness. Her constant relocation

shows that she has not settled and is still looking for a “home” to feel a sense of

belonging to a place. From this depiction, the speaker still appears unable to

overcome her unhomeliness, although she tries to anchor her perception of “home”

to a particular place, like Sudan, as discussed earlier. That is to say that she is

inevitably still unsettled.

It should be noted from the earlier discussion that the speaker’s perception

of “home”, and selfhood thereof, is connected with the idea of geographical location

and shared emotion which compels her to anchor herself to her Sudanese-origin.


49

On that account, in the poem “asmarani does psychogeography”, the speaker has

notably distinguished her circumstances when she is in Sudan. It is shown through

her distinctive use of words that opens her reminiscence of Khartoum. The speaker

does not only mention “once in …” like how she typically addresses other places

in the poem. She says, “once in khartoum i was / three days returned not yet

readjusted” (lines 7 – 8) before telling her experience there. The distinction that the

speaker draws between Khartoum and any other places is that she returns when she

is in Khartoum. It means that, at this point, when the speaker has explored many

cities, she still perceives Khartoum as her “home”, a place to which she keeps

coming back. Thus, she thinks she returns.

At the same time, the speaker mentions that she has “not yet readjusted”

when she returns to Khartoum. However, intuitively, readjustment would be

unnecessary if the speaker deems that Khartoum is her home, as discussed earlier.

It is because home means natural habitat that she can instinctively adapt with no

effort, unless she feels no longer the same. Therefore, it foregrounds the fact that

changes indeed happen upon the speaker when she goes to other places. As a result,

there is an urge to “readjust” when she returns to Khartoum. The desire to readjust

itself implies that she recognizes the changes or even tries to embrace it.

The speaker’s awareness above can be regarded as similar to an exile’s

contrapuntal awareness about home (see page 18). It means that the speaker

develops an understanding that the idea of “home” is not rigid, physically or

emotionally like what have been discussed prior to this. In parallel, the speaker

recognizes the dimension outside the divided binary logic in perceiving her


50

selfhood or identity. Arguably, it happens as she experiences things that she does

not encounter in her Sudanese circumstances. That is why she has to “readjust” the

changes that she carries within herself when she goes back to Sudan. Putting it

differently, the speaker tries to vocalize the difference that she articulates, which

arguably also affects her perspective of “home” and the identity derived from it. At

the end of the day, the speaker is aware that she is not the same Sudanese as she

envisioned. As she readjusts, it can be seen that the speaker has manifested

hybridity, which makes her not only a Sudanese. She is neither the one nor the

other.

The speaker herself is, indeed, has been a hybrid since she was born. It is

not because she is mixed-race, but because she has been exposed to two different

cultures since birth. There is an encounter of the cultural identity from the Self and

the Other within the speaker as she grows up situated in the US and Sudan, two

different worlds of the colonizer and the colonized respectively. An example of the

dual cultural exposure towards the speaker is seen in the poem “republic of the

sudan”. The speaker says in the poem: “mama / still speaks to me in arabic but we

eat with fork & knife” (Elhillo, the republic of the sudan, stanza 2, lines 4–5). The

juxtaposition of two different cultures—speaking Arabic and eating using fork and

knife—presents irony. As has been elaborated earlier, the speaker is a Sudanese,

explaining why she speaks Arabic with her mother. However, people typically will

not expect that a Sudanese will eat with a fork and knife. Traditionally, Sudanese

people do not eat with utensils, or they only use their right hand (Oppong, 2010, p.


51

54). Thus, the ironic juxtaposition mentioned earlier epitomizes the exposure of

Western and Eastern culture that the speaker gets in her core family.

It also has been discussed earlier that the speaker signifies her unhomeliness

with the loss of language, but it actually means more than merely losing a language.

Her language loss is figurative that she uses to imply her hybrid and ambivalence,

particularly in her language use. The speaker has been exposed to two different

languages, and it affects her articulation of culture between the West (the colonizer)

and the East (the colonized). The first example of it can be seen in “to make use of

water” where the speaker compares her use of languages:

dilute

i forget the arabic word for economy

i forget the english word for عسل forget

the arabic word for incense & english

word for مسكين arabic word for sandwich

english for مطعم & صيدلية & والله

/stupid girl atlantic got your tongue/

(Elhillo, to make use of water, stanza 1)

The way the speaker mentions that she forgets specific terms, both in Arabic and

English, manifests her perception of losing her language. Concurrently, it gives

more proof to the idea that the speaker is exposed to two different cultures.

More than that, the way the speaker consecutively exchanges her use of

Arabic and English also shows a moment of in-betweenness that she experiences

when dealing with language. It can be seen that Arabic and English are metonymies

that represent the cultural identity of the Other and the Self. Therefore, the

enunciation of the Third Space between these identities has caused her language to

intermixed, which signifies the speaker’s hybridity.


52

Correspondingly, the speaker utilizes the word “dilute” that opens the

quoted stanza above to emphasize her problem with her languages, which initially

is perceived as lost. The word dilute describes the process of making a liquid weaker

by adding more water into it (Cambridge Univeristy Press, n.d.). Hence,

analogously, the speaker uses “dilute” to explain her gestures that simultaneously

“forget” Arabic and English as she exchanges the use of it. Thus, the word “dilute”

is a symbol that signifies how her duality in language use has manifested within

herself. To put it differently, it shows her realization of the hybrid nature of her

subjectivity.

However, in responding to such dilution, the speaker appears to be bitter

about it. The speaker exhibits it in the last line, mentioning: “/stupid girl atlantic

got your tongue/” (Elhillo, stanza 1, line 7). This line employs an implied metaphor

because the speaker compares her language with her tongue. Thus, considering that

“atlantic” is a metonymy of the West, the line mentioned before talks about the

speaker’s articulation of English. She addresses it with a tone of bitterness and

mockery as she calls herself a “stupid girl”. Arguably, the speaker is resenting her

duality in language—that is her hybridity—because it has diluted her Sudanese-

self. The speaker’s articulation of English, to put it differently, has contributed to

undermining the speaker’s process in embracing Sudanese as her identity that is

discussed in the beginning. Likewise, the speaker’s articulation of dual language

contributes to the questioning of her selfhood. From her mockery tone, it can be

assumed that the speaker feels guilty about her articulation of dual language because


53

she feels, to some extent, betraying her Sudanese identity since she forgets some

Arabic.

However, from the way the speaker accentuates her Arabic-use to signify

her process of embracing Sudanese as her identity shows a bigger picture on how

the speaker embraces her Sudanese side. Willis and Fernald quotes that Sudan is

home to 134 living languages (Ethnologue as cited in Willis & Fernald, 2014,

p.280). It means that the speaker’s foregrounding on only Arabic delineates that the

speaker has simplified the complexity of the language diversity in Sudan. It is

parallel to how the speaker generalize her perception toward Sudan as her “home”,

in which she views it as a whole united country with a more or less similar history,

which is distinctively different with how most of Sudanese in itself perceives their

individual and group identity. That is to say, similar to the earlier discussion, the

speaker’s embrace of only Arabic marked the speaker’s privillege of her social

status, as it indicates that she is part of the majority of Arabic-speaking people in

Sudan.

Apart from that, the speaker’s language articulation depicts how the speaker

doubts that she can be called a full-fledged Sudanese. On the other hand, if it is

delved more in-depth, the speaker’s act of forgetting English essentially shows that

the speaker is exerting colonial mimicry. In this mimicry, the speaker brings into

play her double consciousness of having two facets in language as she sees that a

particular term is better expressed with either Arabic or English. In the stanza

quoted above, she expresses her double consciousness with the act of forgetting in

order to justify her exchanges of Arabic and English use.


54

With that, the speaker’s hybridization is also manifested through her act of

mimicry. It shows that the speaker’s hybridity causes her to become the “interstitial

agent” itself and makes her experience ambivalence. Accordingly, it has been

elaborated above that the poem “to make use of water” portrays the speaker’s

rejection upon her leaning to the Atlantic world—the colonizer’s culture—in the

first stanza. Again, it is shown by her mockery of herself as the “stupid girl”. On

the other hand, in the second stanza, the speaker shows her acceptance of the

Western.

back home we are plagued by a politeness

so dense even the doctors cannot call things

what they are my grandfather’s left eye

swirled thick with smoke

what my new mouth can call glaucoma

while the arabic still translates to

the white water

(Elhillo, to make use of water, stanza 2, lines 2–7)

Apparently, the speaker tolerates the western cultural identity because of its

education has influenced her. The phrase “my new mouth” above affirms that the

speaker indulges herself in her Western identity. Similar to the “tongue” in the first

stanza, the phrase “my new mouth” is a metaphor for her English, which she

juxtaposes with Arabic.

It can be seen that the stanza above manifests Young’s words that hybridity

makes “different into sameness in a way that the same no longer the same” (see

page 16). It is the speaker’s “new mouth” that makes the speaker “no longer the

same”, that is to say, not pure Sudanese. Because of it, the speaker can be frank in

criticizing her origin culture, calling it “plagued by a politeness”. The phrase is

arguably an allegory to the glorification upon courtesy, which appears to be very


55

prevalent in Sudan (Essien & Falola, 2009, p. 66). With the allegory, the speaker

illustrates the phenomenon that a doctor cannot be straightforward in diagnosing a

patient, which can be regarded as an example. She follows it with a juxtaposition

of what English can tell about the disease that of what Arabic tells.

Under those circumstances, this second stanza of “to make use of water”

suggests that the Western offers gratification that the speaker would not experience

if she does not embrace her “new mouth”. Hence, she shows her acceptance of it.

Her acceptance is portrayed through her assertiveness when she identifies the

“smoke that swirls” in her grandfather’s eye with the word “glaucoma”, which

naturally sounds more scientific than the Arabic term, “the white water”. This

juxtaposition is indeed intentional as it foregrounds the gratifying effects that the

speaker experiences when she embraces her westernized-self.

Collectively, the first and second stanza of “to make use of water”

accentuates the speaker’s ambivalence. Firstly, she hints at her rejection of the

western or colonizer’s culture in the first stanza by calling herself stupid for

embracing her western side because she uses Arabic-English interchangeably. Of

contrast, she accentuates her confidence in embracing her western-side in the

second stanza, which shows the speaker’s acceptance. This inconsistency shows

that the speaker’s Sudanese-side and her Westernized-side are conflicting, which

affirms her ambivalence.

Earlier, the discussion of the speaker’s language loss is linked to the

speaker’s unhomeliness as appearing in “abdelhalim hafez asks for reference”. It is

where the speaker reflects herself as part of the “women who cannot remember their


56

home” (lines 1 – 2) and frames her unhomeliness with a characterization of having

no language, man, and silk dress (line 4). More than that, the speaker actually elicits

her ambivalence, denoted when the speaker says that the “women who cannot

remember their homes”, that is unhomely, mourn what they do not have (lines 3 –

4). It is their grieving that resonates with saddening rejection as if they cannot resist

the event from happening, as the colonial culture influences them.

On the other hand, as one of the “women who cannot remember their

homes”, the speaker also exhibits her submission to the cultural influences of

western identity in the following lines. She describes herself wearing “tight jeans”

(line 7) that got her bullied. The fact that the speaker is wearing tight jeans in her

Arabic class present the paradox of the speaker. She is deliberately trying to

embrace her Sudanese identity as elaborated earlier, yet she seems not trying to

dress like one. In that matter, the common attire of Sudanese women can be

observed within two different categories. The first one is the dressing culture that

is culturally more traditional. Some examples that can be found in regard of

traditional clothing culture is a rahat or a “string shirt”. Essien and Falola describe

that rahat “has existed for centuries and it remains the most popular outfit … that

highlight Sudanese clothing and design” (2009, p. 117). On the contrary, another

dressing culture that exists in Sudan, which is claimed to be the national dress code,

is in accordance with Islamic rule (see page 24), where women commonly wear

thawbs or something looser to avoid revealing the curves.

Therefore, the imagery of the speaker wearing “tight jeans” is actually

incompatible with the way Sudanese women dressed. Hence, the speaker performs


57

a contradictory behavior of embracing Sudanese identity as her attire does not

incorporate either traditional or national identities of Sudan. Instead she wears a

fashion of Western-style. This paradoxical gesture is, then, justified if the

ambivalence nature is considered. The speaker expresses her acceptance towards

the colonizer’s culture, particularly in dressing up, despite her embrace of Sudanese

value.

The poem “origin stories” also reveals the speaker’s hybridity and

ambivalence. After implying how her unhomeliness shares an exilic feeling due to

the pain and trauma of her origin stories as discussed earlier, the speaker signifies

her unhomeliness with language loss that she frankly admits: “but all i lost / is a

language but i keep quiet & no one can tell” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 1,

lines 4–5). Once again, language is a metonymy of identity. With that, it

foreshadows that the speaker loses her identity by the significance of language.

Nevertheless, the speaker does not literally lose her identity—that means

her Sudanese side as she persists in embracing it. The speaker’s enunciation of

cultural difference makes her feel as if she loses it because she is unable to settle,

i.e., unhomely. This moment of unhomeliness later elucidates her hybridity and

ambivalence as the speaker hints at the fluctuating impulses within her. Firstly, the

speaker resonates disappointment in her tone when she juxtaposes what she loses

against other losses—teeth, men, hair. The disappointed tone exposes the speaker’s

repulsion. Despite that, the speaker admits that she has tried nothing to overcome

what seems to be her problem as she replies: “but i keep quiet” (origin stories, stanza

1, line 6). Accordingly, this gesture signifies the speaker’s submission of losing her


58

language. In other words, it is an allusion that shows the speaker’s complicity to the

influence of Western. That is how the speaker reveals her unhomeliness to indicate

her awareness of the ambivalence and hybridity within her.

In the later stanza, the speaker manifests her hybridity and ambivalence as

well. The speaker is in Khartoum as she narrates the setting “it is dawn in khartoum

& i am two days arrived” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 3, line 3). Arguably, this

portrayal is introduced to tell the setting of an ongoing gathering that she joined.

Presumably, the gathering is a Fajr prayer, as suggested by the imagery of “dawn”

mentioned earlier. It is also supported by the imagery that she hears: “i hear prayer

called by a voice thick with something hurting” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 3,

line 1). Obviously, it is the azan that she hears. Hence, she means to imply a Fajr

prayer.

Ironically, the speaker says that she is sleeping during the gathering: “i sleep

through gatherings” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 3, line 5). With this behavior, the

speaker portrays her ignorance of the religious practice held by her family. This

ignorance is, arguably, caused by the exposure of secular value in the US towards

her. That means she is complicit to it. Even so, during her sleep, the speaker feels

“there is too much blood” in her body (Elhillo, stanza 3, line 6). With this hyperbolic

expression, the speaker insinuates her repulsion as she feels burdened of not fully

committed to the religion upheld by her family. Following that, the speaker

concludes her stanza with a repetitive hanging phrase mentioning: “& that my name

is my / name is my name is” (Elhillo, stanza 3, lines 6–7). The hanging end of what

her name is arguably represents her identity that she perceives as uncertain or, to


59

put it differently, ambivalence because of the clash of the repulsion and complicity

within her.

The manifestation of the speaker’s hybridity is also noticed in the fourth

stanza of the poem “origin stories”. The speaker is evasive when her grandfather

tells her that it is time to come home while giving the speaker a mango (Elhillo,

origin stories, stanza 4, line 2). With the context that the speaker is in Khartoum

means her grandfather is addressing Sudan as the home. That is to say, the speaker’s

grandfather invites the speaker to stay in Sudan. Intuitively, the speaker would say

yes, considering that she tries to embrace her Sudanese-trait as her home—that is

her identity. However, the speaker does not answer her grandfather: “i fill my mouth

& i do not answer” (stanza 4, line 4). By the gesture of filling her mouth (with the

mango), the speaker subtly avoids answering her grandfather upon her return. This

evasive gesture, therefore, signals her awareness that the speaker cannot go “home”.

The possible reason for her evasiveness is the fact that she was haunted by the

struggle of her Sudanese fellow. On the flip side, it can also means that she is aware

that she is no longer the same Sudanese because of her hybridity.

Subsequently, the speaker utterly comes out that she is neither the one nor

the other. She explicitly expresses her awareness of her hybridity and ambivalence,

as seen in the poem “date night with abdelhalim hafez” (Elhillo, 2017, p. 21). In

this poem, the speaker appears to have a date with Abdel Halim Hafez. In her date,

the speaker tells Hafez about the romance of her younger parents, followed by her

thoughts on marriage. In the middle of that, the speaker tells Hafez: “i have an

accent in every language” (line 6). This phrase employs a hyperbole as she signifies


60

that she has many accents. However, it is also an allegory to her hybridity because

she signifies that she articulates the cultural differences upon languages. It relates

to Bhabha’s words about the willingness to explore the Third Space, which will

results in international culture (see page 18).

Apart from that, the speaker also says, in the poem “date night with

abdelhalim hafez”, that “home is a place in time” (line 8). The line signifies that

home is changing. As a place, it does not remain the same nor fixated. It, again,

portrays the speaker’s contrapuntal awareness about home, which is developed

within her unhomeliness. With such awareness, the speaker articulates: “i’m not

from here or from anywhere” (line 10). By signifying that the speaker’s origin

is not “here” or “anywhere”, the speaker implies that she is not coming from a

particular origin. This articulation, thus, describes that the speaker is neither the one

nor the other. It tells her hybridity of cultural enunciation, that refuses to be tied

down into the polarity of one’s origin, moreover conforming to the binary

opposition of the Self and the Other.

The speaker also starts to actively show her hybridity and ambivalence as

appear in “self-portrait with dirty hair” (Elhillo, 2017, p. 23). The poem tells about

what people say about her appearance that the speaker heard. Reputedly, the speaker

is said, “a little tangled” (line 8) for her look. In that case, the speaker describes

herself as having a “jagged curl” that she tries to flatten. Likewise, the speaker also

mentions that her hair is “big & / loose & free of the straightening iron” (lines 11 –

12). Basically, the speaker portrays herself with her natural hair that is curly afro,

or coily, from the characteristics of “jagged curl”, “big”, etc. However, since Sudan


61

considers themselves more Arabic than African, many women follow the Arabic

beauty standard (Salih, 2020, para 1-3). Hence, they despise women whose hair is

curly. Many are straightening their hair to appeal to the Arabic beauty standard. As

a consequence, the moment when the speaker wears her natural hair to the airport

and her cousin’s wedding, many demean the speaker.

Nonetheless, the speaker’s gesture of embracing her natural hair showcases

the speaker’s progressiveness regarding beauty standards. As she shows it to her

family, the speaker also shows her duality, making her someone that is different

from her people because she is deviating from the conservative beauty standards in

Sudan. This gesture, therefore, accentuates her hybridity. Simultaneously, the

speaker also admits that she still flatten her hair when she tries “to flatten the jagged

curl” (line 1). It may show the speaker’s oppositional pulse of her progressiveness.

She acts following the traditional conservative mind-set that her Sudanese family

has as she straightening her hair. Therefore, the conflicting progressiveness and

traditionalism that the speaker depicts in the poem “self-portrait with dirty hair”

signifies her ambivalence.

Last but not least, in the poem “republic of the sudan”, the speaker also

foregrounds her ambivalence and hybridity. It is not just about her birthplace and

her habit in her house, but also how she highlights her hybridity and ambivalence

identity, mainly through her language. It has been mentioned in the beginning that

the poem narrates the speaker’s experience of going back from Sudan. The speaker

recounts that she met a stranger, seemingly in the immigration office, who

complimented her Arabic, “told me my arabic / was [not bad for a foreigner you


62

can barely / hear the accent]” (stanza 1, lines 2 – 4). It is juxtaposed with her

excellent English portrayed in the second stanza.

syrup settle back to coat my r’s & in new york

i am ambiguous browngirl [but your english

is so good you can barely hear the accent]

(Elhillo, republic of the sudan, stanza 2, line 2 – 4)

The speaker foregrounds her hybridity through the juxtaposition of her Arabic and

English. Both are equally strong to the extent that others could not hear the accent.

This juxtaposition can be inferred as a way for the speaker to express her hybridity

and signify that her Western side does not undermine her Eastern side nor the other

way around.

Additionally, the allegory of “ambiguous browngirl”, a reference that the

speaker makes for herself, elucidates her ambivalence. The imagery of a syrup

coating the speaker’s accent, viz., her r, represents the speaker’s mimicry. The

coated accent denotes that the speaker tries to adapt to the western people. However,

although her English is so good, the speaker realizes that she is indeed an

“ambiguous browngirl”. Her ambiguousness, and her brownness, accentuates her

difference. Hence, the speaker is ambivalent because, although her English

language and accent are so excellent and similar to the native accent, she is not quite

the same.

B. People’s Attitude towards the Ambivalence and Hybridity of the Speaker

In the cultural and social context, ambivalence and hybridity are defiant

from the traditional society that has been widely known, that is to say, essentialized.

It is because the subject of ambivalence and hybridity does not necessarily conform


63

to the rules, beliefs, and other customary behavior performed by the traditional

society that the subject occupies. It results in a conflict of identity within the subject

because they refuse to be tied down to the given binary division. It might be good

news because, as suggested by Bhaba, this selfhood explorations of the ambivalence

and hybrid eventually “open the way to conceptualizing an international culture”

(see page 19).

On the contrary, the traditional polarized societies look upon the subject of

ambivalence and hybridity as different, unusual, or even immoral. It is because they

perceive that the bearer is not devoted to their people. Hence, it is argued that they

will show rejection towards the hybridity and ambivalence of the bearer.

Apparently, it is what happens to the speaker of The January Children as she reveals

her hybridity and ambivalence.

The speaker’s awareness of her ambivalence and hybridity itself has been

discussed in the preceding section. It is elaborated that the speaker’s hybridity and

ambivalence is a result of the speaker’s unhomeliness that develops a contrapuntal

awareness. Besides, the speaker is also living and growing up between two different

cultures. These have made the speaker aware that she is someone that is neither a

Sudanese nor an American. In that regard, she shows defiance that is directed not

only to the colonizer’s value but also to the value of her own people. With that in

mind, this section will explicate society’s attitude towards the speaker, as the bearer

of hybridity and ambivalence.

Regarding the attitude that the speaker receives, the discussion in this part

will start from the poem “abdelhalim hafez asks for reference” (Elhillo, 2017, p. 8).


64

As discussed in the previous section, in this poem, the speaker depicts her

unhomeliness with the tale of “women who cannot / remember their homes”. It is

also discussed that the speaker’s ambivalence is seen through her way of dressing,

which the poem narrates as follows:

umeima hissed a rumor in our arabic class

that i wore such tight jeans because

my father had gone missing basma

leaning up from the row behind me

whispered if both parents had let umeima

leave the house with that ugly t-shirt on then

i was better off with just the one

(Elhillo, abdelhalim hafez asks for reference, line 6 – 12)

It is in the quoted lines above in which the speaker depicts herself wearing tight

jeans, that is to say, showing her acceptance of the clothing culture of the West.

Accordingly, the society’s attitude towards the speaker’s ambivalence

depicted in the poem “abdelhalim hafez asks for reference” can be examined

through Umeima and Basma, as seen in the lines above. First of all, Umeima, who

is the speaker’s peer in her Arabic class, spreads gossip about the speaker for her

clothes. Again, in this poem, the way the speaker dresses exhibits her ambivalence.

Therefore, the moment Umeima gossips about the speaker’s “tight jeans”,

analogously, Umeima criticizes the speaker’s ambivalence.

Umeima is arguably an allegory to represent the dominant group in Sudan,

whose morals are based on the strict Islamic value and has been very obedient

towards the Sharia law. Embodying the traditional and nationalist society of

Sudanese people, Umeima links the way the speaker dresses with the absence of

the speaker’s father (line 8). By doing that, she connotes that because her father is

missing, the speaker has become a bad kid. Hence, the speaker’s parents are failed


65

to look after their child. In other words, according to Umeima, the speaker’s

ambivalence happens because her parents cannot raise her properly. Therefore,

Umeima represents a kind of society that is demeaning the speaker’s ambivalence—

even regards it as misconduct—and labeling that the parents are failed.

Basma, on the other hand, appears to be slightly different from Umeima, as

Basma looks more supportive. Basma assures the speaker that she is doing okay by

saying that Umeima looks uglier than the speaker. Accordingly, Basma reassures

the speaker that her parent has done an excellent job in raising her. It is inferred

when Basma implies that the speaker is “better off with just the one” rather than

having two parents like Umeima but letting their children out wearing an “ugly t-

shirt”.

However, the way Basma labels Umeima as worse than the speaker

according to her styles makes Basma no other than Umeima herself. It is because

Basma also judges others based on the way people dress, viz., their culture.

Therefore, what Basma exhibits is also a colonial mindset that stereotypes people

based on the “level” of their culture. Because of such a stereotype, Basma looks

down upon Umeima’s clothes to give the speaker support.

With this inference, it is argued that Basma’s support towards the speaker

is biased. Meaning to say, she is not necessarily supportive of the speaker’s

ambivalence and hybridity. The implication is that Umeima and Basma appear to

be reinforcing the stereotype of orientalism. As they value people based on their

looks or culture, they enliven the binary logic of culture. That is why, eventually,


66

both Umeima and Basma appear to be the kind of society that is oppositional

towards the speaker’s ambivalence.

After portraying the way the general society perceives the speaker through

Umeima and Basma as the allegory, the speaker also depicts how her Sudanese

family reacts to her ambivalence and hybridity. It is elucidated in the poem “origin

stories”. In the previous section, it has been discussed that, in this poem, the speaker

reminiscences her visits to Sudan. She describes it as follows:

it is dawn in khartoum & i am two days arrived everyone kisses

my cheeks & asks if i am returned or visiting & i think

they mean to be kind

(Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 3, line 4 – 6)

The stanza above portrays a friendly and welcoming gesture that the speaker

receives from her relatives in Sudan. She depicts that “everyone kisses” her the

moment she arrives. This welcoming gesture from her family may suggest an

acceptance towards the speaker, who is ambivalence and hybridity.

Nonetheless, it should be examined deeper why at the same time, the family

asks the speaker whether she is returning or visiting (line 4). Although the speaker

considers the question, and the gesture, as a form of their kindness, the question

actually gives rise to the expectation of her family that the speaker will settle in

Sudan. This inference is strengthened by the following stanza in “origin stories”,

which the speaker recounts as follows: “in khartoum’s bright yellow morning my

grandfather brings me / the season’s first mangoes & tells me it is time

to come home” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 4, line 2 & 3)

According to the aforementioned lines, it appears that the speaker and her

family are celebrating a family tradition to welcome the harvesting season,


67

indicated with “the season’s first mangoes”. In addition to that, the sunny day in

Khartoum: “khartoum’s bright yellow morning”, suggests that it is a good day

where everyone is happy with the celebration. In this situation, the expectation upon

the speaker’s homecoming can be seen from the gesture when the speaker’s

grandfather gives the speaker “the season’s first mangoes”, which becomes the

symbol of the ritual itself. While giving the symbol of the ritual to the speaker, her

grandfather advises her that “it is time to come home”.

Therefore, the suggestion, coupled with the gesture, affirms that the

speaker’s family are expecting her to settle in Sudan. The mango, in particular, is

described with hyperbole that says: “firm & green but on the inside all sunlight”.

The hyperbole means to show that the mango is excellent in quality. Thus, it

emphasizes the importance of the mango as the symbol in the ritual. By giving “the

season’s first mangoes” to the speaker, her grandfather also indicates the honor that

the speaker has to have the mango. On the other side, it is evident that her

grandfather is gently persuading the speaker. So, she would “come home” because

of the honor given to her. Therefore, the gesture and question addressed to the

speaker elucidate the expectations for the speaker to stay in Sudan.

With that in mind, it can be argued that the speaker’s family does not

necessarily embrace the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity. Indeed there is an act

of acceptance that is signified with the welcoming gesture of her relatives.

Nevertheless, it appears that they still, in a way, manipulate the speaker to settle

down in Sudan. Their family does not only asks her to settle in Sudan, but they also

teach the speaker their traditional wisdom, arguably to persuade the speaker. For


68

example: “my grandmother tells me to shred dill / by hand she means to teach me

patience she calls it length of mind” (Elhillo, origin stories, stanza 2).

Thus, these attitudes embody the expectation towards the speaker to be fully

Sudanese and not come back to her Western side. In other words, the speaker’s

family disavows the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity.

In “date night with abdelhalim hafez”, it can be learned that the speaker’s

ambivalence and hybridity become a concern for her family. It has been noted

earlier that in this poem, the speaker is basically having a date with Abdel Halim

Hafez. After throwing back to the old romance of her parents while dating, the

speaker tells Abdel Halim Hafez: “they’re worried no one will marry me i have

an accent in every language / i want to be left alone but that’s not how you

make grandchildren” (date night with abdelhalim hafez, lines 6 & 7).

Earlier, “an accent in every language” is regarded as signifying the

speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity. On account of her ambivalence and hybridity,

the speaker’s parents—or family—appears to worry about the speaker. The speaker

implies that her family thinks her ambivalence and hybridity, signified with “an

accent in every language”, will make other people reluctant to marry the speaker

(lines 6).

With that elaboration, it can be seen that the speaker’s family is pressuring

the speaker to get married. For Sudanese society, marriage is important from the

cultural and religious aspect (see page 24–25). It is advised in the Islamic religion.

Other than that, marriage is also essential to strengthen family ties within the

community and many other factors. However, the truth is that the speaker does not


69

want to be married. She implies that she is “not looking for anything serious” (line

4) and that she wants to be left alone (line 7) after her throwback of her parents’

romance. Arguably, this stance is influenced by western value, which generally

does not regard marriage as obligatory or a life goal.

Therefore, with the insistence from her family that she should be married, it

elicits their contradiction towards the speaker’s ambivalence of hybridity. It is

because the family projects the traditional Sudanese value to be followed by the

speaker when the speaker is, in fact, unwilling to obey. With that in mind, it can be

inferred that the speaker’s family, in general, is not supportive of the speaker’s

ambivalence and hybridity. It can be seen through how they allure the speaker to be

fully Sudanese by persuading the speaker to return “home” and get married soon.

Even worst, the speaker’s family deliberately despises the speaker, not only

for her value but also for her look. The evidence of the speaker being demeaned

about her appearance can be examined in “self-portrait with dirty hair” (Elhillo,

2017, p. 23). In the preceding section, this poem is examined as revealing the

speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity incorporated in the way the speaker dresses

up. As discussed earlier, the way the speaker presents herself is both conforming

and, at the same time, challenging the beauty standard inflicted upon Sudanese

women. Following that, the speaker retells what others, especially the women in

her family, say regarding her physical look.

First of all, in “self-portrait with dirty hair”, the speaker narrates that, while

flattening her hair, she hears her great-grandmother complaining about the

speaker: “she’s a / pretty girl but why do you let her go outside like that people will


70

/ think she does not have a name” (self-portrait with dirty hair, lines 1–3). This line

is, in fact, a paradox. Her great-grandmother says that the speaker is pretty, but at

the same time, she indicates that she is ashamed if the speaker “go outside like that”.

It appears to be contradictory. If the great-grandmother thinks that the speaker is

pretty, intuitively, she would not have to worry about how the speaker goes outside

or how the society thinks about her.

Thus, to explain why the great-grandmother’s line is logical—hence, it

constitutes a paradox—her social background should be taken into account. Again,

in Sudan, people uphold Arabic beauty standard, which is not inclusive to all

Sudanese woman, particularly the Afro Sudanese (Salih, 2020). The most feasible

feature that distinguishes Afro woman with Arabs woman is usually the hair and

the complexion. Thus, it is common for Sudanese women to bleach their skin and

straighten their hair. With that context, the speaker appears to be deviant from the

beauty standards pursued in Sudan as she often wears her hair “big / & loose & free

of the straightening iron” (lines 10-11), despite her effort to flatten it (line 1).

Additionally, the religious value in Sudan could also be the judging tool that

the great-grandmother uses to scorn the speaker. It is discussed in chapter 2 that

woman shall wear non-revealing clothes (see page 24). Thus, many are wearing

long and loose clothes to avoid emphasis on their curves. They also often cover

their head with head cover (Ryle et al, 2012, p. 182). In that regards, the speaker

can be seen as a disgrace from the way she looks. Not only that she does not appeal

to the beauty standard commonly uphold by other Sudanese women, but she also

does not perform the religious duty to cover herself. In other words, the speaker


71

does not have the same value upheld by the great-grandmother. That is why the

great-grandmother frowns her “beauty”. Correspondingly, it shows that the

speaker’s family projects their conservative value upon the speaker irrespective of

her ambivalence and hybridity.

On top of that, the paradox above employs a sarcastic tone when the great-

grandmother criticizes the speaker’s appearance. The great-grandmother fears that

“people will / think she does not have a name” if the speaker is outside with looks

that does not fulfil society’s standard. Arguably, “name” is a metonymy of identity

as spoken by the great-grandmother. It means that as the great grandmother fear

people will think that the speaker “does not have a name”, she fears that the society

will perceive the speaker as having no identity, that is to say, not a Sudanese

woman, because her look does not reflect the (common) identity of a Sudanese

woman. It becomes the concern for the great-grandmother because the speaker’s

appearance might bring disgrace to the family. The society will see the speaker’s

family as unable to raise the speaker to be a good Sudanese woman that conform to

Sudanese value and standard.

Besides, being nameless is evidently an allusion to the speaker’s hybridity

that is neither the one nor the other. Thus, her great-grandmother worries about the

way the speaker looks because it speaks her hybridity. That is to say, the paradox

spoken by the great-grandmother is undermining the speaker since the speaker will

be unknown, or identity-less. In other words, she will not be regarded as part of the

society in Sudan. With that, the speaker’s great-grandmother shows her disapproval

of the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity.


72

Like Umeima in “abdelhalim hafez asks for references”, the speaker’s

grandmother also blames the speaker’s parent for her ambivalence and hybridity.

Her grandmother replies to the great-grandmother: “her mother took her to america

it is / different she does not know anymore how to look done” (self-portrait with

dirty hair, lines 4-5). The moment the grandmother implies that “she does not know

anymore how to look done”, the grandmother refers to the speaker’s appearance,

which is criticized by the great-grandmother earlier.

Her grandmother condemns her daughter—the speaker’s mother—for

bringing the speaker to America and let the speaker dress inappropriately. At this

point, the idea of how someone should “look done” can be influenced by either

cultural and religious norms in Sudan. Essien and Falola mentioned that ethnic

groups in Sudan still incorporate their ethnic identities in their outfit—particularly

ceremonial outfit—although many Sudanese accept the Islamic-inflected dress

code that is imposed under the Islamic law (2009, pp. 113; 117-119).

Meanwhile, the speaker has been trying to embrace her beauty by

discounting the Arabic beauty standard. That is why, according to the earlier

discussion, the way the speaker dress up has manifested her ambivalence. Thus, to

put it in other words, what the grandmother has said, to some extent, acknowledges

the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity. However, the tone of the line is sarcastic.

It is because the speaker is regarded cannot dress properly ever since she comes to

the West. Hence, it suggests that her grandmother is upset about it.

Further, since the grandmother blames the speaker’s mother for the way the

speaker dress up (inappropriately), her mother bears the moral burden imposed by


73

her elders. The speaker delineates it as “unable to escape how her mother raised

her” (line 7). As a matter of fact, in Sudan, society expects that women can be a

good wife and mother (see page 25), who is responsible for raising their children

properly after their marriage. That is why the speaker says that her mother is

“unable to escape how her mother raised”. It is because she is told to be the kind of

good women that Sudanese society envisioned.

In responding to the situation of her mother, the speaker says: “mother

trying not hurt my feelings” (line 6). It shows the speaker’s awareness of her

mother’s position between the conservatism of her Sudanese family that raised her.

Thus, it seems that the speaker is not surprised when her mother diminishes her:

“habiba you always look nice but today you look / maybe a little tangled” (self-

portrait with dirty hair, lines 7–8). Essentially, the speaker’s mother tells the speaker

that her look—which embodies her ambivalence and hybridity—is awful.

The situation appears to be ironic for the speaker, given that her mother is

the one that brings the speaker to America. Hence, supposedly, she is also the one

that understands the speaker’s situation of being ambivalent and hybrid. With that,

we intuitively would expect that her mother would, at least, explains to the elders

about the speaker’s situation. Contradictorily, instead of defending the speaker, her

mother supports her elders’ attitude that shows sentiment towards the speaker’s

ambivalence. It delineates that the speaker generally gets no support from her

family.

The speaker continues to reproduce other people’s opinion about her

appearance in the poem “self-portrait with dirty hair” and what they told her what


74

to do about her look. With that, the speaker portrays the attitude of other people

towards her, as seen in the following lines:

i hear a man i don’t love begging me to undo

my braid to show his friends my girl got a waterfall i watch halim

sing to a creamcolored girl i hear the quiet ripple of her loose waves

(Elhillo, self-portrait with dirty hair, lines 8–10)

From the lines above, the speaker introduces a man that she does not love but calls

the speaker his girl. It should be noted that woman in traditional Sudanese society

is often arranged into marriage (see page 25). Therefore, by mentioning the “man i

don’t love”, the speaker hints that her family picks a man or husband for her. The

man also calls the speaker his girl: “my girl got a waterfall”, which supports this

inference. In that situation, it reveals how the speaker’s family insists the speaker

to pursue the ideals as a Sudanese woman, i.e., to get married.

Apart from that, the man also shows a disrespecting gesture towards the

speaker. The speaker narrates that the man begs her to undo her braids to “show his

friends my girl got a waterfall”. The imagery of the waterfall itself is a metaphor

that is compared to the speaker’s hair. The metaphor is employed to characterize a

western woman’s hairstyle, which usually has a wavy hair model. It is supported

by the line: “i watch halim sing to a creamcolored girl i hear the quiet ripple of her

loose waves” (line 10). The “creamcolored girl” is a metonymy of Western girl,

whose complexion is generally fairer than Sudanese woman. By implying that

Halim sings to the girl, the speaker intends to show the adornment of Sudanese

society towards the white woman. The speaker intensifies the beauty by the imagery

that she can hear: “quiet ripple of her loose waves”, which is hyperbole.


75

For that, the tone of the line: “my girl got a waterfall”, shows that the man

is proud of it. Hence, he wants to show the speaker off to his friends. This attitude,

however, elucidates that the man is objectifying the speaker as the man regard the

speaker as his trophy to be bragged. Besides, the man has also succumbed to the

superiority narratives of the western style. It becomes one reason why he wants to

brag about the speaker’s hair, which is similar to the western people. Regardless of

that, the man has objectified the speaker. With this attitude, the man does not

certainly mean to support the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity, although he

seems proud of the speaker's westernized hairstyle.

More examples from “self-portrait with dirty hair” about the disturbing

attitude of the people surrounding the speaker, or the people that she meets, is when

the speaker is: “get searched to the scalp at airport security” (line 11). It is hyperbole

that the speaker uses to emphasize the ridiculing attitude of others towards the

speaker. In the final part of the poem, the speaker also accentuates how her family

being unsupportive towards her:

i wear my hair big &

loose & free of the straightening iron to my cousin’s wedding &

grandma says you might as well have just shown up in pajamas

(Elhillo, self-portrait with dirty hair, lines 11 – 13).

In the quoted lines above, the description of the speaker’s hair that is “big & loose

& free” is hyperbole too. It shows the way the speaker embraces the freedom of

being herself in her own skin. In other words, she embraces her natural hair rather

than comply with any beauty standard, again which is very much influenced by

Arabic beauty standard. It may also allegorize that she tries to embrace her dual self

freely.


76

Unlike the speaker who embraces herself the way she is, the speaker’s

grandmother quickly despises her because of her looks. In a mockery tone, the

speaker’s grandmother juxtaposes the speaker looks for her cousin’s wedding with

a look in pajamas. This phrase employs a simile that compares the speaker’s look

for the wedding occasion with a just-wake-up look: “you might as well have just

shown up in pajamas”. With the simile, the grandmother implies that the speaker

looks messy, considering that when people wake up, they usually look messy. It

may resonates again the impression that the speaker has dressed inappropriately

when she just tries to be free in embracing her skin. That is to say, the poem “self-

portrait with dirty hair” also portrays that the speaker’s family, for the most part,

refrains the speaker who appears to physically manifest her dual self and show it to

other people.

Likewise, in the poem “republic of the sudan”, where the speaker recounts

her leaving from Sudan, the speaker’s grandmother also seems to restrain the

speaker from leaving. The speaker narrates:

i board the plane with


[come home again soon]”

(Elhillo, republic of the sudan, stanza 1, line 5-6).

As the reference of “home” in the quoted stanza above is introduced by the

grandmother, it can be inferred that the speaker’s grandmother tries to allure the

speaker to settle with her Sudanese side by providing the idea that Sudan is her

home. The speaker’s grandmother also rushes the speaker to come back soon. It

suggests that her grandmother does not want the speaker to leave Sudan for a long

time. It may be read as a grandmother’s endearment who does not want to be


77

separated from her grandchild. Alternatively, it can also be seen as a forbearing

gesture to avoid the speaker settles too long in the West. Hence, the grandmother

tries to lessen the speaker’s encounter with the western world.

Apart from that, in “republic of the sudan”, the speaker juxtaposes the

attitude from two different societies towards her. The first one is represented by a

woman depicted as “a veiled woman” that the speaker meets in Khartoum’s

immigration office. From the portrayal of the clothes and the setting, it can be

inferred that the woman is a Sudanese. It is because Sudanese women usually wear

a niqab as advised by religion (Essien & Falola, 2009, p. 119). Thus, the woman is

a synecdoche of the larger Sudanese society outside the speaker’s family.

The speaker recounts that the woman tells her that her Arabic was “[not bad

for a foreigner you can barely / hear the accent]” (stanza 1, lines 3 – 4). The woman

sounds genuine when she compliments the speaker. However, the woman appears

to be using irony. She did not expect the speaker to have an excellent accent in

Arabic since she thought the speaker is a foreigner. It shows her surprise, which

indicates that for the woman—or the Sudanese society at large—a foreigner

speaking Arabic fluently is something unlikely. Hence, it is uncanny for them.

On the other hand, other lines in “republic of the sudan” say: “[but your

english / is so good you can barely hear the accent]” (stanza 2, line 3 & 4). Preceding

this line, the speaker says that she is an ambiguous brown girl in America, “in new

york / i am ambiguous browngirl” (stanza 2, line 2 – 3). Thus, it gives the setting of

place where she receives the compliment of her English. From the setting, it can be

assumed that who compliments her English is western people. With that in mind,


78

the compliment that the speaker receives, saying her English is excellent, also

employs irony. The one who speaks to the speaker does not expect that the speaker

will have good English. Meaning to say, in the western world, the speaker also

receives a gesture that indicates her ambivalence and hybridity as something

unusual because they do not expect someone to be fluently articulating double

culture.

The last poem to discuss in this part is “asmarani does psychogeography”

(Elhillo, 2017, p. 42). As mentioned in the previous section, this poem retells the

speaker’s exploration of places from the eastern to the western sphere. Among

many experiences, the speaker recalls being “called darkgirl for the first / time”

(line 3) when she is in Sharm el-sheik. When she is in Washington DC, the speaker

got questioned about her race, and she “answered black” (line 7). The speaker also

recalls that she “was one of three african girls at school” (line 11) when she is in

Geneva.

Generally speaking, the list of memories mentioned above does not appear

to be a pleasant memory. It is because they epitomize the racial discrimination that

the speaker experiences in her journey. The speaker signifies it through the hints

that followed her memory. First is seen from the irony that is employed when she

was called a dark girl. The speaker deemed it as a compliment. Hence she replies

with a smile (lines 3 & 4). However, when the speaker mentions that she “didn’t

know he meant to be cruel” (line 4), it clarifies that the man was actually mocking

the speaker.


79

Then, a jeerer she meets in Washington DC asks her to say the racially

offensive word just to prove that she is black, “i / answered black & was told to say

nigger to prove it” (line 7). Meanwhile, in Geneva, the speaker recounts that she

heard a rumor that two out of three African girls in the school stinks. However, she

never knew exactly which two (lines 11 & 12). With the fact that the speaker is one

of the African girls, there is a possibility the speaker may be on the rumor.

Moreover, she never finds out the truth about it. From the rumor itself, the speaker

has been racially offended, although it is unclear whether or not she has been

rumored.

Nevertheless, those experiences that the speaker depicts in her

psychogeography listed above are unpleasant. One thing is in common that the

speaker shows throughout her psychogeography. It is the fact that she tries to

embrace and articulate the Africanness in her Sudanese side. Sudan is, in fact, a mix

of Arabic and African cultures. However, when she is embracing herself, other

people reflects a hostile attitude or racists towards her. From the portrayal above,

most people are mean and bullying her. Those bullying portray that the speaker is

not only being discouraged for embracing Western. In the same way, she is also

humiliated when she articulates her Sudanese side. Therefore, it shows how

society’s attitude has discouraged the speaker in embracing her hybridity and

identity that is ambivalence.


80

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

This study seeks to unveil how the ambivalence and hybridity within the

speaker of The January Children revealed in the poems and analyze the society’s

attitude towards the speaker as the bearer of ambivalence and hybridity.

Subsequently, this chapter is going to conclude the analysis in the preceding chapter

based upon those two purposes.

The first formulated question and objective of this study is about the

configuration of the speaker’s ambivalence and hybridity in Elhillo’s poem from

The January Children. Indeed, the speaker has been a hybrid since her birth because

she has been exposed to two different worlds, which culture and value are mostly

oppositional. This birth identity becomes essential because this situation is

something that affects the speaker’s perception of “home”. In that regards, the

poems show how the speaker experiences unhomeliness in her birth country.

Through various devices, the poems express the speaker’s disconnection towards

America.

On the flip side, the speaker tries to overcome her unhomeliness with

foregrounding her connection with her origin homeland, Sudan. At this point, it is

scrutinized that the speaker’s perception of Sudan and being a Sudanese tends to

favor the influence of Arabic culture in Sudan, particularly in her language use,

despite the heterogeneity that her origin country possessed. Nevertheless, it does

not go well as expected because she keeps haunted by the painful historical memory


81

of her Sudanese fellow. Hence, she is unable to go back to Sudan and fully embrace

her native origin identity. This whole experiences and processes portrayed in the

poems eventually bring the speaker to realize the hybridity within her. Her journey

involves exploring cities, language code-switching, to her evasiveness in answering

her family’s call to go back to Sudan, and her appearance.

As the speaker is aware of her dual-vision, she also manifests her

ambivalence. It is revealed in the poem how the speaker’s conflicts between

rejecting and accepting the western and the influence that it has upon her happens

within the speaker with several poetry devices like paradoxes, allegory, even a

mockery tone. For the most part, the speaker’s repulsion is based on the guilt that

she “loses” her language. Meanwhile, her complicity is shown from her

progressivity like in science and beauty.

Next, the second purpose of this study is to examine the society’s attitude

towards the hybridity and ambivalence represented by the speaker’s world in

Elhillo’s poem. Through allegory and symbol, this study finds at least two groups

of people that Elhillo’s poems bring into the discourse. First is the speaker’s inner

circle, that is to say, her family, and second is the outer group or the society. In a

nutshell, both groups of people are showing disavowal towards the speaker’s

ambivalence and hybridity. In her family, this gesture is often portrayed with allure

sometimes, and derision the other times. The grandfather giving the speaker “the

season’s first mango” in “origin stories” is an example of alluring the speaker to

neglect her hybridity and ambivalence nature because the grandfather subtly invites

the speaker to go back “home” in a ceremony or ritual of the harvesting season.


82

Then, derision is shown in other poems such as “self-portrait with dirty hair” where

the grandmother similarizes the speaker, who is embracing her natural beauty, with

someone in pajamas. In the case of the outer group, the poems also depict similar

gesture of the general society, be it from the Arab worlds or Western world. They

also show a similar gesture that does not support the speaker in embracing her

hybridity and ambivalence. It starts with seeing the speaker’s ambivalence and

hybridity nature as uncanny, which is recounted in “the republic of sudan”, to the

racism that the speaker experienced as told in “asmarani does psychogeography”.


83

REFERENCES

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2000). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key

Concepts. London: Routledge.

author, n. (2020). Al-'Alaq. Retrieved from Quran.com: https://quran.com/96/1-

19?reading=false

Barnet, S., Berman, M., & Burto, W. (1961). An Introduction to Literature. Boston,

MA: Little Brown and Company.

Barry, P. (2009). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural

Theory (Third Edition). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bertens, H. (2001). Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge.

Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.

Bhabha, H. K. (1996). Culture's In-Between. In S. Hall, & P. Du Gay, Questions of

Cultural Identity (pp. 53-60). London: Sage Publications.

Bressler, C. E. (2011). Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice

(Fifth Edition). New York City: Pearson.

Cambridge Univeristy Press. (n.d.). Dilute. Dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved

November 05, 2020, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/

english/dilute

Collins, R. O., & Tignor, R. L. (1967). Egypt & The Sudan. New Jersey: Prentice-

Hall, Inc.

Copyright © 2019 BBC. (2019, September 12). News World Africa. Retrieved from

BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49675769

Dhurgon, R. M. (n.d.). South Sudan: A History of Political Domination - A Case of

Self-Determination. Retrieved from University of Pennsylvania - African

Studies Center: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Hornet/sd_machar.html

Elhillo, S. (2017, October). Everything Lost Will Be Given a Name: Safia Elhillo

with Alex Dueben. (A. Dueben, Interviewer)

Elhillo, S. (2017). The January Children. Lincoln: University of Nebraska.


84

Elhillo, S. (2019, January 22). Interview with Poet Safia Elhillo. (TED-ed,

Interviewer)

Essien, K., & Falola, T. (2009). Culture and Customs of Sudan. London:

Greenwood Press.

February, L. (2017, December 28). Review of Safia Elhillo's The January Children

(University of Nebraska, 2017). Retrieved from The Bind:

https://www.thebind.net/blog/safiaelhillos-januarychildren

Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. (2015). Sudan: a Country Study

(5th ed.). (L. Berry, Ed.) Washington: US Government Publishing Office.

Habib, M. (2005). A History of Literary Criticism and Theory.

Imani, S. K. (n.d.). Surah ‘Alaq, Chapter 96. An Enlightening Commentary into the

Light of the Holy Qur'an, 20, 117 - 133. Retrieved from https://www.al-

islam.org/printpdf/book/export/html/43940

Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (1995). Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry,

and Drama (sixth edition). New York : HarperCollins College Publishers.

Marshalls PLC. (2018, February 27). An Introduction to Psychogeography.

Retrieved from Marshalls: https://www.marshalls.co.uk/commercial/blog/

an-introduction-to-psychogeography

Miller, R., & Greenberg, R. A. (1981). Poetry: An Introduction. London and

Basingstoke: The MacMillan Press.

Nugroho, S. (2015). Neurosis and Identity Crisis of the White Man: Ambivalence

and Hybridity in Anthony Burgess’ Selected Novels (Thesis). Yogyakarta:

Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Oppong, J. R. (2010). Sudan (Modern World Nations). New York: Chelsea House

Publishers.

Patke, R. S. (2006). Postcolonial Poetry in English. New York City: Oxford

University Press Inc.

Ramazani, J. (2012). Poetry and Postcolonialsim. In The Cambridge History of

Postcolonial Literature (pp. 938-981). Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9781107007031.010

Ryle, J., Willis, J., Baldo, S., & Jok, J. M. (2012). The Sudan Handbook. 2012: Rift

Valley Institute.


85

Safia Elhillo. (n.d.). Retrieved from Poetry Foundation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/safia-elhillo

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London: Penguin.

Said, E. (2013). Reflection on Exile: and Other Literary and Cultural Essays.

Granta Books.

Salih, T. (2020, Augusts 26). The Natural Hair Movement in Sudan. Retrieved from

500 Words Magazine: https://500wordsmag.com/social/the-natural-hair-

movement-in-sudan/

Sharkey, H. J. (2003). Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the

Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. London: Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Sianturi, L. A. (2017). Hybrid Identity in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Condition

as Seen through the Characteristics of Nyasha: a Postcolonial Reading

(Undergraduate Thesis). Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta.

Silva, K. (2009). Oh, Give Me a Home: Diasporic Longings of Home and

Belonging. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and

Culture, 15(5), 693-706. doi:10.1080/13504630903205332

Spencer, H. (2019, March 18). Intersection and White Space: an Interview with

Safia Elhillo. Retrieved from The Fourth River:

https://www.thefourthriver.com/blog/2019/3/15/intersections-and-white-

space-an-interview-with-safia-elhillo

Sudan Separates Religion from State Ending 30 Years of Islamic Rule. (2020,

September 7). Retrieved from MEMO: Middle East Monitor:

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200907-sudan-separates-religion-

from-state-ending-30-years-of-islamic-rule/

Wilcock, C. (2017). Mobilising towards and Imagining Homelands: Diaspora

Formation among U.K. Sudanese. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,

1-19. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2017.1313104

Willis, M., & Fernald, C. (2014). A View of Sudanese Refugee Resettlement

Through Nebraska’s Print Media. Great Plains Research: A Journal of

Natural and Social Sciences, 271-292.

Wolfreys, J., Robbins, R., & Womack, K. (2006). Key Concepts in Literary Theory

(Second Edition). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Wolosky, S. (2001). The Art of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press.


86

Young, R. J. (1995). Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race.

London: Routledge.


87

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: “to make use of water”

dilute

i forget the arabic word for economy

i forget the english word for عسل forget

the arabic word for incense & english

word for مسكين arabic word for sandwich

english for والله & صيدلية & مطعم

/stupid girl atlantic got your tongue/

blur

back home we are plagued by a politeness

so dense even the doctors cannot call things

what they are my grandfather’s left eye

swirled thick with smoke

what my new mouth can call glaucoma

while the arabic still translates to

the white water

swim/dissolve

i want to go home

drown

half don’t even make it out or across you

get to be ungrateful you get to be

homesick from safe inside your blue

american passport do you even

understand what was lost to bring you

here

(Elhillo, The January Children, 2017, p. 4)

Appendix 2: “abdelhalim hafez asks for references”

there’s a saying about women who cannot

remember their homes how they love to

mourn what does not belong to them

a language a man a silk dress

that glides quietly along the thighs

umeima hissed a rumor in our arabic class

that i wore such tight jeans because

my father had gone missing basma

leaning up from the row behind me


88

whispered if both parents had let umeima

leave the house with that ugly t-shirt on then

i was better off with just the one & now

i think if i had to choose then better

a man gone missing than drawn on a map


Appendix 3: “origin stories”

1

i was made out of clay out of time the quran says we began

as a single clot of blood & i keep digging the wound it’s warm inside

some things you lose to mark the time yes men of course but also

some hair handful of teeth is what i am told but all i lost

is a language but i keep quiet & no one can tell

2

my grandmother tells me to shred dill

by hand she means to teach me patience she calls it length of mind

3

i hear prayer called by a voice thick with something hurting

like a croak but i do not mean that it is ugly

it is dawn in khartoum & i am two days arrived everyone kisses

my cheeks & asks if i am returned or visiting & i think

they mean to be kind i sleep through gathering & feel

there is too much blood in my body & that my name is my

name is my name is my name is

4

in khartoum’s bright yellow morning my grandfather brings me

the season’s first mangoes & tells me it is time to come home

they are firm & green but on the inside all sunlight i use my hands

& spill the juice all down my front i fill my mouth & i do not answer


Appendix 4: “date night with abdelhalim hafez”

the story goes my father would never unwrap a piece of gum

without saving half for my mother the story goes

my mother saved all the halves in a jar that’s not the point

i’m not looking for anything serious just someone to watch

my plants when i’m gone [you can sing now if you want to]


89

they’re worried no one will marry me i have an accent in every language

i want to be left alone but that’s not how you make grandchildren

i can’t go home with you home is a place in time

[that’s not how you get me to dance]

i’m not from here or from anywhere

i mean to say i don’t know the song


Appendix 5: “self-portrait with dirty hair”

trying to flatten the jagged curl i hear my great grandmother she’s a

pretty girl but why do you let her go outside like that people will

think she does not have a name i hear my grandmother trying to

explain away all my knots her mother took her to america it is

different she does not know anymore how to loke done i hear my

mother trying not to hurt my feelings but unable to escape how her

mother raised her habiba you always look nice but today you look

maybe a little tangled i hear a man i don’t love begging me to undo

my braid to show his friends my girl got a waterfall i watch halim

sing to a creamcolored girl i hear the quiet ripple of her loose waves

i get searched to the scalp at airport security i wear my hair big &

loose & free of the straightening iron to my cousin’s wedding &

grandma says you might as well have just shown up in pajamas


Appendix 6: “republic of the sudan

ministry of interior

passport & immigration general directorate

alien from sudanese origin passcard”

at the khartoum office a veiled woman

made the card in microsoft paint told me my arabic

was [not bad for a foreigner you can barely

hear the accent] i board the plane with


[come home again soon] my blue passport

made me american place of birth maryland usa

& in the months since my last visit i feel american

syrup settle back to coat my r’s & in new york

i am ambiguous browngirl [but your english

is so good uou can barely hear the accent] mama

still speaks to me in arabic but we eat with fork & knife


90

we play abdelhalim but mostly motown

to remind mama of those swaying eighties nights in the garden

before it turned to dust before the old country crumbled

& mama came here to give me the blue passport

& last time i was home a soldier stooped the car

asked where i was from laughed when i said here


Appendix 7: “asmarani does psychogeography”

once we lived in zamalek in the same building as mohamed tharwat once i

was four years old in dar es salaam in love with a boy named osmani once in

sharm el sheikh i bought a peachcolored doll & was called darkgirl for the first

time smiled with my teeth didn’t know he meant to be cruel once in cairo i sat

next to amr diab’s daughter while learning to embroider nameless & tiny

flowers once in nairobi i learned to speak english once in washington dc i

answered black & was told to say nigger to prove it once in khartoum i was

three days returned not yet readjusted & wearing bright white sneakers that i

cleaned with a toothbrush once in khartoum the sun warmed my earrings until i

had to take them out once in geneva the pink wall took the skin off my arm

once in geneva i was one of three african girls at school two of which were said

to stink i was never told which two



Documents

AMBIVALENCE AND HYBRIDITY IN SAFIA ELHILLO’S THE …