Racialized Subjects in Transit in Post-9/11 America: Salwa and Jassim's Perpetual Quest for Belonging in Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land.

This article analyzes the construction of Arab American identities in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks through Laila Halaby's novel *Once in a Promised Land*, employing postcolonial feminism and intersectionality to explore how race, gender, religion, and class intersect to shape the experiences of the protagonists, Salwa and Jassim. It highlights the emergence of neo-orientalist and American nationalist discourses that homogenize Arabs as a monolithic threat, leading to racial profiling and social exclusion despite the characters' diverse backgrounds and upper-middle-class status. The article argues that Halaby's work challenges these reductive binaries by portraying Arab Americans' hybrid, hyphenated identities and the complexities of their belonging in the U.S., emphasizing the necessity of intersectional analysis to understand their multilayered marginalization. Ultimately, the novel reveals how Arab Americans navigate an ambiguous social position—"white but not quite"—caught between American and Arab identities amid post-9/11 racialization and discrimination.