The Formation of In-Betweennees: Iraqi Immigrants' Identity in Heather Raffo's Noura

: Heather Raffo, an Iraqi American playwright, focuses on Iraqi immigrants’ issues and offers a glimpse into their lives by narrating their stories in her plays. Raffo’s drama falls under the category of immigrant literature in which immigrants or their descendants are usually presented. In Noura (2019), Raffo depicts the story of a Christian Iraqi family who fled to the United States to avoid ISIS, a dangerous radical Islamic group. Raffo’s Noura describes the notion of in-betweenness through its characters’ dimensions. Depending on postcolonial theories, this paper analyzes and elucidates the situation of the Iraqi immigrants who fluctuate between the two different cultures of their homeland and their adoptive country. Moreover, this paper highlights how Iraqi immigrants occupy the place of in-betweeness and their in inability to forget their cultural belonging. Depending on Homi Bhabha’s mention of the term ‘in-between’ space to refer to the ‘third Space,’ the Iraqi immigrant characters in Noura designate a transcultural contact zone, hybrid or ‘in-between' space in which they initiate new signs of identity formation. The paper portrays how the cultural encounter causes a sense of confusion among the immigrants and how it affects the construction of their in-between or multicultural identity. Hereby, Noura’s characters develop a new mixed form in which the boundaries between their Iraqi identity and their American identity are blurred and fluid.