Storytelling techniques and young immigrants’ identities : a narratological analysis of the YA novels Just a hat and Everything sad is untrue

This thesis examines the connection between storytelling techniques and immigrant identity in two contemporary young adult novels: Daniel Nayeri's Everything Sad is Untrue: A True Story (2020) and Shanah Khubiar's Just a Hat (2023). Through close reading and comparative analysis, the study explores how narrative form reflects and expresses the complex experience of young immigrants in North America, particularly their connection to their culture of origin. This research uses narrative theory and diaspora studies as theoretical frameworks to analyze three key narratological dimensions: narration and perspective, narrative structure and temporality, and thematics and motifs. The narratological analysis reveals distinctive storytelling approaches that mirror the immigrant experience. In Just a Hat, Khubiar employs a nearly invisible third-person narrator and linear chronology techniques that subtly convey cultural fragmentation through motifs of translation and metaphorical "hat-switching." By contrast, Nayeri makes storytelling itself central to his story, using first-person narration that fluctuates between child and adult perspectives, deliberate chronological disruption, and Persian storytelling traditions as structural elements. These formal choices – particularly Nayeri's use of patchwork narrative structure symbolizing fractured memory and Khubiar's ordered narrative, suggesting gradual integration – function as metaphorical expressions of the immigration experience. The findings reveal profound contrasts in how each text articulates immigrant identity: Khubiar portrays a second-generation immigrant's journey toward self-revelation through cultural abundance, while Nayeri illustrates a refugee's struggle for acknowledgment through reconstructing what has been lost. Despite these differences, both novels demonstrate that immigrant identity exists in a liminal space characterized by duality rather than synthesis. This analysis contributes to diaspora studies by illuminating how narrative techniques serve as vehicles for expressing "in-betweenness" and the negotiation of cultural boundaries. Additionally, the research addresses the representation of Middle Eastern characters in young adult literature, examining how these texts challenge stereotypes and present nuanced portrayals of intersecting identities. This analysis ultimately suggests that the form of storytelling itself becomes a powerful expression of the immigration experience, where identity is not a fixed state but a continuous process of negotiation between cultural worlds.