Performing Identity and Negotiating Displacement: Intersectionality and Gender in My Name Is Salma

Abstract

Through the combined lenses of gender performativity and intersectionality, this study explores’ the mechanics of resistance and the production of identity in Fadia Faqir's My Name Is Salma. The article examines how identity is constantly contested under changing cultural and’ sociopolitical situations. Mainly, it focuses on the protagonist's metamorphosis from Salma to’ "Sally." The analysis shows how Salma's adoption of new linguistic, cultural, and behavioral’ patterns indicate a purposeful performance influenced by the necessities of survival in a’ diasporic setting, drawing on Judith Butler's concept of performativity. The limitations of self-reconstruction under inflexible social frameworks are revealed by the performative adaptation's’ failure to result in complete integration. In order to show how Salma's experiences of’ marginalization are created by the intersection of gender, race, class, and migration, the’ researcher of this article uses an intersectional method. Her vulnerability is increased by her’ relocation from Jordan to Britain, where she is positioned among intersecting oppressive’ structures that limit her access to agency, visibility, and voice, as her struggle is a mirror of’ larger structural injustices that control diasporic existence rather than just a personal one.