LAUSR

ABSTRACT Displacement from one’s homeland and the inability to return problematize definitions of diaspora, belonging, and identity. Palestinian American Hala Alyan’s 2017 novel Salt Houses reconfigures these terms in its recapitulation of Palestinian history as traumatic memories. This article explores the importance of home both as private space, temporal or spatial, and as an embodiment of social texture and cultural identity. Trauma theory has been challenged for its treatment of the Palestinian experience. This article assesses its usefulness in tracing Alyan’s portrayal of the Yacoubs, a middle-class Palestinian family, and their reaction to wars and catastrophes, mainly those known as the 1948 exodus and the 1967 setback. Salt Houses suggests that such traumatic events can be transmitted to future Palestinian generations and define their transnational identity in diaspora. It illustrates how traumatic memories can serve as a form of resistance against the erasure of the personal and collective memories of Palestinians.