This study analyzes how Shaila Abdullah's Saffron Dreams (2009) portrays and resists Orientalists' stereotypes of Muslim women. As Sadaf (2018) states, post-9/11 marks the beginning of the popularity of Pakistani writers publishing literary works with the alternate interpretation of 9/11's consequences on their clan's identity as both Muslims and Easterners. Saffron Dreams is one of them. Abdullah is assumed to put up a fight against the stereotypes of Orientals, especially Muslim women, that the West built through this novel. The main protagonist is portrayed as a Muslim Pakistani-American woman who lost her husband in 9/11, experiencing mistreatment in her host land due to the spreading stereotypes of Muslim women, especially the veiled ones. By utilizing the qualitative method with the Close Textual Analysis (CTA) approach, this study examines how the novel depicts and resists the Orientalists' stereotypes of Muslim women. This study discovers that the novel repeatedly portrays that the West perceives Muslim women as dangerous others who become the 9/11 terrorists' comrades due to the same religion they adhere to. Further, the novel depicts the Muslim female characters repeatedly defining the veil as the identifier of their cultural identity. In addition, they also describe the action of unveiling using symbols. The Muslim female characters believe the veil is their identity, husband's mandate, and the standard of adopting double consciousness. Therefore, unveiling means hiding the identity to disguise, sacrificing the husband's mandate to avoid the accusation, and trying to fit into the standard of a harmless Muslim woman in a Western country

SI23092

SKR SI23092

Perpustakaan FAH

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