Cultural-Encounter Conflict and Female Modes of Resistance in Two Selected Works From the Perspective of Theory of World Literature

This study draws on world literature to demonstrate how the local becomes global in the world of world literature. It focuses on the cultural-encounter conflict of the female characters in two short stories, which are “The Ostrich” by Arab-British Leila Aboulela from her collection of short stories titled Elsewhere, Home (2018) and “Bien Pretty” by Mexican-American Sandra Cisneros from her collection of short stories titled Woman Hollering Creek: and Other Stories (1991). The study relates this conflict to the male characters in the two stories and highlights the modes of resistance that the two characters, Samra and Lupe, in the two stories respectively, show to the oppression imposed on them by the male characters. It also illustrates how, driven by the power of their resistance, they both manage to assert themselves in the end, each in her own way.