From Promise to Sorrow: The Post-9/11 America and the Ironical State of Social Freedoms in Rana’s Hope Ablaze

Abstract

The research paper presents Sarah Mughal Rana's Hope Ablaze (2024) to understand the fabrication and limitation in the execution of standardized declarations of America on equal social rights to every American citizen. The catastrophe of 9/11 propelled the Pakistani Americans' lives to constant suspicion, torture, surveillance and incarceration. The claims of freedom of religion, expression, education, and above all, the acceptance into the nation, just became dreams in post-9/11 America. Hope Ablaze navigates multifaceted xenophobia including the detentions of Pakistani artists, exploitation of Muslim women’s dignity, the hiring of state personnel to torture assumed terrorists under Muslim women gowns, use of power to zip the lips raising voices against marginalization, causing educational and financial breakups, and the efficiency of a leader to protect. Shaheen's (2020) exegesis of ‘Pakistani Anglophone 9/11 Fiction’ informed by diaspora theory serves as a theoretical framework to analyze Rana’s novel also depicting the subtle challenges faced by Pakistani diaspora in post-9/11 America. By highlighting the instances of verbal and situational irony in the novel, this paper brings to center the xenophobic acts in the novel and persistent social and cultural exclusion of Muslims despite the American state’s claims of individual freedom. Through this critical examination, the paper aims to remind the American State of its unflinching promise to uphold social freedoms and ensure the execution of chartered citizen rights in America to reduce the differences and to shape a more inclusive and just society.