Like Mother Like Daughter: Hydrofeminism and Postmemory in Zoulfa Katouh’s The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue (2026)

Def, FatimaZAhra

doi:10.48308/clls.2026.245535.1487

Like Mother Like Daughter: Hydrofeminism and Postmemory in Zoulfa Katouh’s The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue (2026)

مقالات آماده انتشار

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی پژوهشی

نویسنده

FatimaZAhra Def

Department of English Studies, Maghnia University Centre, Maghnia, Tlemcen, Algeria

10.48308/clls.2026.245535.1487

چکیده

This research examines how Zoulfa Katouh’s novel The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue (2026) represents water as a medium through which maternal memory and diasporic belonging move across to belated generations. It investigates the mother-daughter bond through a combined hydrofeminist postcolonial framework. This study uses qualitative close reading to analyze passages dealing with the ocean, the sea, jellyfish, and Jihad’s recollections of her mother in the novel. The paper argues that oceans are not merely a symbol of exile, but a character archiving history in a fluid manner, transmitting nostalgia, identity, trauma, and patriotism in literary spheres. The analysis aims to highlight the daughter’s connection with her dead mother through the shared love of water, inheriting all of her past deeds. The ocean becomes a hope rather than a boundary; being most of the planet, it reaches further lands and symbolizes international continuity. The findings show that the novel demonstrates that oceans are ambivalent: they are the enemy that causes alienation for many displaced Syrians around the world, and a link that permits inherited and archived memory to travel beyond human bodies and be stored in a myriad of media. In this sense, water speaks all of the stored feelings and stories back to the daughter in an intersubjective relation. The novel does not magically heal the mother’s loss of her country nor the daughter’s loss of her mother, but like mother, like daughter, belonging is inherited from one generation to another, with oceans functioning as an archive.

کلیدواژه‌ها

Exile

Hydrofeminism

Motherhood-Daughterhood

Oceans

Postmemory

Zoulfa Katouh

موضوعات

شماره موضوع-محور نشریه

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