Stepping over the Hyphen: Resistance Through Assimilation in Sayed Kashua’s Second Person Singular (2012)

In a world shaped mostly by colonialism and its impact, it is imperative to study its implications and consequences. This paper explores the Palestinian-Israeli identity under Israeli occupation in Sayed Kashua’s Second Person Singular, originally published in 2010, translated in 2012, to understand how colonization and discrimination reshape the identity of the colonized. This paper examines the Struggle of Resistance within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli literature. Through textual analysis of the selected work, this paper investigates the role of colonization in shaping the identity of Kashua’s Palestinian protagonists inside the occupied land. Kashua echoes the voices that emerge from the colonized land, narrating the dilemma of hybrid Palestinian-Israeli citizens who are ostracized from meaningful roles in society. The paper applies Frantz Fanon’s assimilation and Homi Bhabha’s mimicry to understand how colonization and discrimination reshape the identity of colonized Palestinians. Like his protagonists, Kashua has a hyphenated identity; he is a Palestinian-Israeli, which is a life problem and a continuous struggle.