Home in Exile: The Search for Belonging Across Generations in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses.

Abstract

This study examines the representation of home, exile, and belonging across generations in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses. Through the experiences of the Yacoub family, the novel portrays Palestinian displacement not as a single historical event but as a continuing condition that reshapes identity, memory, and family relationships over time. Drawing on postcolonial and diaspora perspectives, along with the concepts of collective memory and postmemory, the study explores the changing meanings of home within the Palestinian diasporic experience. It also considers the historical contexts of the Nakba of 1948, the Naksa of 1967, and subsequent waves of Palestinian migration to situate the family’s movements within a broader history of dispossession and exile. The analysis demonstrates that Salt Houses presents home as more than a geographical location; it becomes a physical, emotional, and cultural space reconstructed through memory, language, traditions, family bonds, and inherited stories. Forced displacement produces grief, trauma, nostalgia, and a persistent sense of instability, while later generations increasingly experience Palestine through fragmented memories and transmitted narratives. Although the family repeatedly attempts to rebuild a sense of home in new countries, these spaces remain marked by previous losses. The novel therefore reveals that belonging in diaspora is fluid and multigenerational, shaped by the continuous tension between attachment to the lost homeland and adaptation to new cultural environments.