But I`m From Here Now Constructing Identity in Iranian

But I`m From Here Now Constructing Identity in Iranian

But I’m From Here Now
Constructing Identity in Iranian-American
Self-Narrative
DISSERTATION
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
Doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.)
der Philosophischen Fakultät
der Universität Rostock
vorgelegt von
Maria Diana Blaim, geb. am 03.07.1983 in Straubing
aus Berlin
urn:nbn:de:gbv:28-diss2015-0004-3
Gutachter
1. Gutachter:
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Linke
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Rostock
2. Gutachter:
Prof. Dr. Volker Depkat
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Regensburg
3. Gutachter:
Prof. Dr. Nasrin Rahimieh
Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture,
University of California at Irvine, USA
Datum der Einreichung:
16.01.2013
Datum der Verteidigung:
11.10.2013
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
9
0. Introduction
11
0.1 The Construction of Identity in Iranian-American Self-Narrative
11
0.2 History and Sociology of the Iranian-American Diaspora
13
0.3 The Corpus
19
0.3.1 Iranian-American Literature and Its Focus on Autobiographical Writing
19
0.3.2 Choice of Corpus
20
0.4 Theory and Methodology
22
0.4.1 American Studies: Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism, Transnationalism
22
0.4.2 The Constructedness of the Self
24
0.4.3 Self-Narrative / Autobiography / Life Writing
33
0.5 Organization of Chapters
49
PART ONE: TROUBLED HERITAGE
53
1. Explaining Departure: Narratives of Victimicy
55
1.1 “The stranger I had become” — Losing One’s Identity in Revolutionary Iran
57
1.2 Jewish Victimicy Narratives
62
1.2.1 The Heterogeneous Jewish Experience
63
1.2.2 Constructing Ultimate Victimicy: References to the Third Reich
66
1.2.3 Casting Departure as Jewish ‘Exodus’
68
1.3 Leaving Behind Traditionalism
70
1.3.1 Regulated Children, Unfree Lovers, Madwomen: Victims of Patriarchy
70
1.3.2 Women’s Rights Violated
76
1.3.3 “My scarf cement around my head:” Hejab and the Victimicy Narrative
80
1.3.4 Victims of (Sexual) Harassment and Abuse
83
1.3.5 The Female Condition: Suffering, Silence, and Sacrifice
85
1.4 Conclusion
89
2. A Usable Past: Construction of Religion and Alternative Identifications 93
2.1 Religion in Lives Reconstructed
2.1.2 Keeping Political Religion at a Distance
93
99
3
2.2 Looking for Alternative Identifications in Past and Present
104
2.2.1 A Usable Past and a Persian Identity
107
2.2.2 An Alternative Islam: Sufi Mysticism
123
2.2.3 Making an U.S.-Iranian Identity Work: Stressing a Shared Humanity
126
2.3 Conclusion
128
PART TWO: LANGUAGE, BODY, AND THE IRANIAN-AMERICAN SELF
131
3. The Interplay of Language and Identity Construction
133
3.1 The Self-Conscious Speaker
134
3.1.1 Language of Success, Language of Identity? — The First Generation
135
3.1.2 Embarrassment and Alienation… and Yet! — The 1.5th Generation
139
3.1.3 The Schizophrenia of Bilingualism — The Second Generation
141
3.2 Not Lost in Translation? — The Self-Confident Ethnic Autobiographer
152
3.2.1 Claiming Authority By Speaking Persian
153
3.2.2 Affective Distancing and Agency Through English
159
3.3 Conclusion
161
4. The Iranian-American Body In Between
164
4.1 “Was I brown?” — The Race Question and the Iranian-American Body
167
4.1.1 In Iran: Desiring ‘European’ Colors
168
4.1.2 Identifying the Iranian Body in America, and Being Identified
168
4.2 Revealing Clothes — Inscriptions of the Iranian-American Female Body
178
4.2.1 Iranian Politics of Hejab
179
4.2.2 Across-Dressing
184
4.3 Bodies in Danger? — The Female Body, Sexuality, and the Public
188
4.3.1 The First Generation
189
4.3.2 The Second Generation
196
4.4 Conclusion
202
PART THREE: CULTURE INHERITED/IN FLUX
205
5. Between Fiction and Fact: Telling the Iranian-American Self
207
4
5.1 The Public/Private-Divide: The Aporia of Iranian Autobiography?
207
5.2 Storytelling, Telling Stories: Fictionalizing Lives
211
5.2.1 Interpreting Life Through Fiction
212
5.2.2 Being Imagined, Imagining Oneself
212
5.2.3 Re-Writing the Past
214
5.3 On Fact-Finding Mission: Creating Authority, Dealing with Trauma
216
5.3.1 Ethnic Journalism, Personal Experience: The Authority of Factuality
217
5.3.2 Recording Facts, Overcoming Trauma
222
5.4 Conclusion
228
6. Relative Identities: The Iranian-American Self in Its Relation to Others 230
6.1 Telling My (Family’s) Story
231
6.1.1 Family Constellations: The Relative Iranian-American Self
232
6.1.2 Others’ Stories, Collective Memory and Countermemory
241
6.2 Between Independence and Interdependence: The Allure of the Other
251
6.2.1 The Fascination of the Single Self: Being ‘West-Struck’
252
6.2.2 Nostalgia for the Communal Self: Being ‘Iran-Struck’
256
6.3 Conclusion
259
7. Imagining ‘Home:’ Between Persian Paradise and American Arcadia
261
7.1 The Image of the Garden Between Iran and America
261
7.1.1 The Paradise Garden
261
7.1.2 Pastoralism, the Agrarian Ideal and America as Promised Land
265
7.1.3 The Market Dynamics of Longing for Paradise
268
7.2 The Paradise Garden in Iranian-American Writing
269
7.2.1 Constructions of a Persian Paradise
269
7.2.2 Paradise Lost
272
7.2.3 Paradise Rebuilt
280
7.3 Conclusion
285
8. Conclusion
287
9. Addenda
295
9.1 Main Corpus
295
9.2 Additional Corpus
298
5
9.3 Transliteration of Persian Words
299
10. Works Cited
300
10.1 Primary Sources
300
10.2 Secondary Sources
301
6
7
8
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore some of the most predominant strategies that IranianAmerican autobiographers employ in constructing their identities. Unable to relocate
to a post-revolutionary Iran and facing ongoing discrimination in the USA, Iranian
Americans are precariously suspended between cultures and have to answer the
question, “What does it mean to be Iranian-American?”
In order to gain insight into the self-constructions of Iranian Americans, I
examine thirteen autobiographies from a text and communication pragmatics
perspective, and include additional material from ten further memoirs. As I regard
selves and their narratives as fluid, I have read these autobiographies as information
about the self’s current constitution, and thus as fraught with politics and intentions.
This is why I argue that the autobiographers not only writes for themselves, but
always also have specific audiences and agendas in mind — the own group, the
American public, those interested in human/women’s rights, et cetera. Conversely,
ethnic autobiographies are influenced by the preferences of publishers who try to
anticipate market desires for ethnic authenticity and authority.
In my analysis, I provide a multitude of aspects regarding Iranian-American
self-construction, ranging from how Iranian-American autobiographers position
themselves towards their past, to how they incorporate the ‘realities’ of language and
body into their self-narratives, and eventually to how they present their cultures to
both persist and transform in diaspora. Most importantly, however, I argue that
writing autobiographically has the potential of providing agency to Iranian
Americans: It gives them the opportunity define their identity in the face of
stereotypes and to imagine their future as part of American society, as they
increasingly assert: “But I’m from here now.”1
Highlighting how Iranian Americans inscribe themselves into American
literatures and cultures, this project thus not only contributes to the long overdue
expansion of the canon towards Middle Eastern-American literature, but also to the
transnationalization of American Studies.
1
Bahrampour, Tara. To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America. Berkeley, California: U of
California P, 2000. 339.
9
10
0. Introduction
0.1 The Construction of Identity in Iranian-American Self-Narrative
“Comment peut-on être persan?”2 — “How can one be Persian?”3 a French
gentleman asks Montesquieu’s fictive traveler Rica in his famous Lettres Persanes.
As Nasrin Rahimieh observes, Rica becomes a curiosity to Western society once he is
transplanted from Persia to Paris, and he “is forced to define and reshape himself visa-vis the Other.”4 Similarly, the very real Iranians who have migrated to Western
societies have had to react to their new environment in their self-conceptions. In the
process, the Iranian diaspora, which largely lives in the USA, has been faced with the
question, “How can one be Iranian-American?”5 — especially following the events of
September 11, 2001. Diverse voices of 1st, 1.5th and 2nd generations have been
exploring possible answers in autobiographical writing. 6
In this dissertation, I am analyzing Iranian-American7 autobiographical
writing as a reaction to the highly disruptive experiences of revolution, migration,
exile, a new cultural environment and, especially for the next generations, life
between different and often clashing cultures. More importantly and as a result, I see
these texts as self-narratives in which the authors relate how they have become who
they regard themselves to be, and in which they present themselves as the kinds of
people they want to be seen as. Turning to their history, Iranian-American
autobiographers narrate themselves as victims of traditionalism and an oppressive
Muslim theocracy, and construct an alternative past. Exploring their transition and
adaption to American society, they trace the interplay of language and body with their
self-identifications. Having ‘arrived,’ these authors on the one hand acknowledge the
inherited, but on the other hand, they also self-confidently embrace a culture ‘in
flux.’ They thus inscribe themselves into American literature and culture, as they
assert boldly: “But I’m from here now.”8 The autobiographical narrative has the
2 Montesquieu,
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de. Lettres Persanes, 1721. Lettre XXX, Rica au
Meme, A Smyrne. Ed. André Lefèvre chez Alphonse Lemerre. 1873. http://athena.unige.ch/athena/
montesquieu/montesquieu_lettres_persanes_full.html (last retrieved June 28, 2012)
3 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de. Persian Letters. Trans. C. J. Betts. Toronto:
Penguin, 1973. 83. The correct wording would have to be ‘Iranian,’ however, as ‘Persian’ refers solely
to the language, not to the people.
4 Rahimieh, Nasrin. “How to be Persian Abroad: An Old Question in the Postmodern Age.” Iranian
Studies 26:1+2 (1993) 165-168. 166.
5 I will use the noun ‘Iranian American’ and the adjective ‘Iranian-American’ to denote Iranians that live
in the USA and that are influenced by both cultures to some extent. Thus, the terms include both the
first generation of immigrant Iranians, as well as subsequent American-raised or American-born
generations, as long as their Iranian heritage plays a role for them.
6 A note on terminology: In this thesis, I will use ‘autobiography’ and ‘memoir’ interchangeably. At
times, I will employ the broader terms ‘autobiographical writing’ and ‘life writing‘ in order to
acknowledge the fuzziness of the autobiographical ‘genre.’ For a more detailed discussion of
terminology, please refer to subchapter 0.4.3.1 “‘Genre,’ Scholarship and Terminology.”
7 I will be using the noun ‘Iranian American’ without the hyphen and the adjective ‘Iranian-American’
with the hyphen.
8 Bahrampour, Tara. To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America. Berkeley, California: U of
California P, 2000. 339.
11
possibility of becoming a vessel of agency to Iranian Americans, as they can reimagine their past and narrate their own identity and role in the USA instead of
accepting outside definitions. As the term ‘Iranian-American’ shows, they are part of
both cultures, the diaspora being a cultural contact zone in Mary Louise Pratt’s
sense.9 Therefore, the cultural artifacts of Iranian Americans have to be analyzed
within a transnationally defined, Cultural Studies-oriented American Studies.10
At the same time, the title of my thesis offers a certain openness to
interpretation, as it points towards the fluidity of identity constructions: The ‘I’
changes as the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of the utterance change. Such an openness is
necessary, as individual identities, and maybe especially diasporic ones, are prone to
change, to move elsewhere, to become other. Iranians having lived in the USA for the
better part of their lives might decide to leave for the UK, or Germany, or anywhere
else. They might indeed decide to return to an Islamic Iran. When dealing with
individual identities, we have to allow for indefinite diversity.
Essential to my analysis is the understanding of selves and their narratives as
non-essential, but as constructed and fluid. This is not to say that the self is
completely free to invent and re-invent itself — external factors (mostly) cannot be
denied — but that it has considerable ability to see past events through the lens of the
present. After-the-fact statements should not be taken at face value, for they, as
William O. Beeman has it, “are designed more to render an action or an event
acceptable and intelligible rather than to necessarily convey some objective truth
about the event in question. To this end, communication systems are characterized not
only by ready-made strategies for dealing with ongoing social interaction, but also by
ready-made after-the-fact accounting procedures for making individual events and the
results of those events conform to large-scale ongoing schemes of reality.”11
Therefore, the way the self remembers its past says more about the self’s current
constitution and situation than about the past itself, which always only exists as
subjective memory. Autobiographical narratives then always are, in a sense, a
performance of identity, at once both conscious and unconscious, automatic and not
deliberate but at the same time fraught with politics and intentions. Also, IranianAmerican autobiographers are not writing in a void; they have agendas of identity
construction, are influenced by the desires of the diaspora, by the desires of the book
markets, and by American society as a whole.
9
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession 91 (1991) 33-40. 33.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies –
Presidential Address to the American Studies Association.” American Quarterly 57 (2005):17-57.,
Hornung, Alfred. “Transnational American Studies: Response to the Presidential Address.” American
Quarterly 57.1 (2005): 67-73., Elliott, Emory. “Diversity in the United States and Abroad: What Does It
Mean When American Studies Is Transnational?” American Quarterly 59.1 (2007) 1-22., Fluck,
Winfried. “Inside and Outside: What Kind of Knowledge Do We Need? A Response to the Presidential
Address.” American Quarterly 59.1 (2007): 23-32.;
11 Beeman, William O. Culture, Performance and Communication in Iran. Tokyo, Japan: Institute for
the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1982. 17.
10 Cf.
12
Autobiography and ‘identity’ scholarship has long had a strong focus on the
literature of ethnic communities in the USA, yet it is still dominated by discussions of
the works of African-American, Chicano/a and Asian writers. However, a shift in
attention is in order as more and more Middle Easterners call America their home, but
live in an atmosphere of continuing racism and hostility. Especially the IranianAmerican population has had to face adverse attitudes from many sides. At the same
time, there is no way back for the Iranian diaspora: the ‘home’ country is no longer
home, as government and society have changed dramatically since the Iranian
Revolution. Iranian Americans, then, are poised in between, and have no choice but to
make as good a home as possible.12 Constructing a self to suit this situation of quasihomelessness becomes both particularly arduous and essential, and explicitly so when
publishing in English, as these books at once have to cater to their own ethnic group
and American mainstream audiences, negotiating possibly divergent loyalties. It is
these extremes that make Iranian-American autobiographical writing particularly
interesting to autobiography scholarship.
Here, I will analyze memoirs of Iranians who live in America and write in
English, and who have been published between 1995 and 2012. In particular, I will
focus on a core corpus of thirteen monographs. Whenever necessary, I will present
additional evidence from other memoirs. 13
0.2 History and Sociology of the Iranian-American Diaspora
The United States’ relationship to Iran is largely characterized by a general
ignorance towards this country in the Middle East: little is known about its rich
history reaching back to the oldest civilizations that archeologists have discovered.
Nor is there much knowledge of Iran’s pre-revolution development,14 even though the
USA have been actively involved in it. The current tense relationships between these
two countries had in fact once been quite positive, since Iran had become an U.S. ally
during Cold War times. In 1953 though, America, together with Britain, planned and
supported a coup d’état against Prime Minister Mossadeq who had threatened the
West-friendly monarchy of Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi — a move that Iranians
still give as a prime example for foreign (and especially American) meddling in their
country. After the authoritarian Shah had eventually been toppled in the 1979
revolution, extremists feared that the U.S. could mastermind a coup once again and
seized the American embassy; the hostage-taking would last 444 days and worsen
Iranian-American relationships considerably. Post-revolution years up until today
12 The
notion of home for (among others) Iranians has been explored in Bahareh Lampert’s Voices of
New American Women: Visions of Home in the Middle Eastern Diasporic Imagination. Madison: U of
Wisconsin P, 2008.
13 For a detailed discussion and justification of the corpus, see subchapter 0.3 “Corpus.” For an
overview of the analyzed books, please refer to 9.1 “Main Corpus” and 9.2 “Additional Corpus.”
14 For historical information cf. Clawson, Patrick, and Michael Rubin. Eternal Iran. Continuity and
Chaos. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
13
have seen the further deterioration of relations with American media coverage
(stereo-)typically showing Iranian women in full black chador and Iranian men
shouting and demonstrating against the ‘Great Satan.’ After the terrorist attacks of
9/11, American President George W. Bush declared Iran to be part of an ‘Axis of
Evil’ and claimed that the Islamic Republic actively pursued or supported terrorist
actions. Moreover, there are concerns in the United States about Iran’s nuclear
enrichment program, its poor human rights record, its involvement in Iraq and
opposition to the Middle East peace process as pursued by Western governments.
Hints by the U.S. government that it might consider taking military action against
Iran did not ameliorate the state of affairs between the two countries.
Despite all these negative developments, many Iranians, before, during and
after the revolution chose to emigrate to or seek asylum in the States. This is
especially due to the very favorable image of America that a lot of Iranians nurture,
despite all propaganda by the Islamist government. Since the embassy seizure,
however, Americans’ general ignorance towards Iranians has transformed into
hostility. This also plays out against the Iranian diaspora in the USA15 — although
these exiles and expatriates mostly do not agree with the current Iranian government,
as many are political refugees. The discrimination has subsided slowly, but because of
Iran’s alleged links to terrorism, there has been a revival. In spite of these unfavorable
conditions, the diaspora has adapted to American culture to a considerable extent. At
the same time, they are still immersed in Iranian culture. The term ‘IranianAmerican’ therefore denotes their cultural double affiliation.
A concise description of the diaspora will serve for a better understanding of
Iranian Americans and their literature. Historically, Iranians have been coming to the
United States already decades before the revolution. The America-friendly Shah had
encouraged students to go abroad and come back with an American education to put
to use in building up Iran. Also, in the tense atmosphere leading up to the popular
uprisings, some dissenters had to flee the Shah’s wrath, members of religious
minorities were anticipating persecution and nervous royalist sympathizers moved
their families abroad, often together with substantial financial assets. Both groups
joined mainly the already existing community of Iranian students in the U.S. This first
of three waves that Shirin Hakimzadeh suggests 16 was followed by socialist and
liberal revolutionaries that would not put up with the clerical regime or had to fear
prison, torture or execution. Also young men fleeing a sure death in the war with Iraq,
women and families fed up with confining gender restrictions, and large numbers of
15 Bozorgmehr,
Mehdi, and Georges Sabagh. “Iranian Exiles and Immigrants in Los Angeles.” Iranian
Exiles and Refugees Since Khomeini. Ed. by Asghar Fathi. Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1991. 121-144.130.;
Bozorgmehr, Mehdi. “No Solidarity. Iranians in the U.S.” The Iranian (May 2, 2001)
<www.iranian.com> (last retrieved August 15, 2012)
16 Hakimzadeh, Shirin. “Iran: A Vast Diaspora Abroad and Millions of Refugees at Home.” Migration
Information Source, September 2006. <http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?
ID=424> (last retrieved August 17, 2012)
14
academics and professionals in search of a more liberal lifestyle left the country. This
second wave led to a veritable brain drain, yet up until then, most émigrés had not
considered their departure permanent, as Hakimzadeh argues. Further, she describes a
third wave from roughly 1995 to the present, consisting of highly skilled individuals
on the one hand, and of working-class labor migrants and economic refugees on the
other. This last period of emigration was caused by Iran’s deteriorating human rights
record and by its economic crisis. With 34,343 asylum applications submitted in
2000, Iranian emigration has reached a dimension last seen in 1986. Also in 2000, the
by far largest part of the Iranian diaspora was living in the United States (roughly four
times as many as in the next country), followed by Canada, Germany, Sweden, Israel,
the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, France and Armenia.17
The community of Iranians in America lives mostly in California. Although
Iranians abroad tend not to cluster in one area, 18 Los Angeles is sometimes proudly
referred to as ‘Tehrangeles’ or ‘Irangeles.’19 The exact size of the Iranian diaspora in
the United States is widely disputed, though, with the highest estimates ranging at
about two million in 1984 already.20 The 2010 census counted 463,552 (+/-18,925)
individuals from Iranian cultural background in the U.S., 21 yet this figure is unreliable
due to “the diversity of Iranians ethnically, the tendency of many (…) to choose (…)
not to classify themselves as anything other than white/Caucasian and the failure of
census-makers to include appropriate options for Iranians.”22 Thus many community
leaders believe that these figures represent an undercount of the overall IranianAmerican population.23 The actual number might to be closer to the 690,000 that the
independent Iranian Studies Group (ISG) at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology suggests in its study.24 In spite of their small number in comparison to
other minorities, “Iranian exiles have been more active producers of popular culture
and television programs than most new émigrés in the United States.”25 Furthermore,
17 Global
Migrant Origin Database at University of Sussex, Version 4, March 2007, <http://
www.migrationdrc.org/research/typesofmigration/global_migrant_origin_database.html> (last retrieved
August 17, 2012)
18 Bozorgmehr, Mehdi. “From Iranian Studies to Studies of Iranians in the United States.” Iranian
Studies 31 (1998) 5-30. 20.
19 Karim, Persis, ed. Let Me Tell You Where I Have Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian
Diaspora. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 2006. 23.; Ghorashi, Halleh. “Multiple Identities between
Continuity and Change. The Narratives of Iranian Women in Exile.” Focaal – European Journal of
Anthropology 42 (2003) 63-75. 70.
20 Beard, Michael, and Javadi, Hasan. “Iranian Writers Abroad: Survey and Elegy.” World Literature
Today 60.2 (1986) 257-261. 257.
21 US Census Bureau, S0201 SELECTED POPULATION PROFILE IN THE UNITED STATES, 2010
American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, Iranian (416) <http://factfinder2.census.gov/> (last
retrieved August 15, 2012)
22 Malek, Amy. “Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production: A Case Study of Marjane Satrapi’s
Persepolis Series.” Iranian Studies 39.3 (2006) 353-380. 358.
23 Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), Demographics and Statistics <http://
www.paaia.org/CMS/demographics--statistics.aspx> (last retrieved August 15, 2012)
24 Moshtari, Ali. Iranian Studies Group (ISG) at MIT, Factsheet on the Iranian American Community,
Iranian Studies Group Research Series, last updated February 2004 <http://web.mit.edu/isg/
PUBLICATIONS/factsheet_feb_04.pdf> (last retrieved August 15, 2012)
25 Naficy, Hamid. The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1993. xvii.
15
Iranian exiles and immigrants “have an unusually high level of income, education,
self-employment, and professional skills,”26 which most probably can be traced back
to the fact that most originate from middle and upper classes that were forced into
exile through the revolution.27 Surprising might be the diaspora’s heterogeneity and
internal ethnic differences, 28 as several religious groups can be differentiated: most
numerous are Shi’i Muslims, followed by Armenian Christians, Jews, Baha’is,
Zoroastrians and Assyrian Christians. 29 All groups of Iranians are highly secular,
though, and only about two to five percent of Iranian Muslims are reported to be
observant. 30 This might partly be due to the fact that many exiles emigrated because
they were secular, but also the instrumentalization of religion by the Iranian clergy
since the revolution has to be taken into account.31 Also, and in defiance of religion,
most Iranian immigrant women have a liberal view of women’s role in society.32 The
fact that there is no dominant religion but a high degree of secularity “seems to have
heightened the significance of other factors of ethnicity — particularly the shared
Persian language”33 and has thus helped the different ethnic factions to identify with a
common Iranian identity. As sociological research has shown, pride of being Iranian
is a major factor that unifies the diaspora.34 In conclusion, Iranians’ education, class
membership and cultural discourse make literary production quite likely. Their
secularity and their high level of income and education have facilitated a quick and
successful integration into American society. However, the diaspora is also proud of
its Iranian heritage. As Bozorgmehr puts it, “Iranians (…) outwardly look very
Americanized, but inside are very Persian.”35
Such a double affiliation, which has been described in-depth by Nilou
Mostofi,36 is calamitous, however, as neither the attachment to Iran nor the one to the
States is rewarding and double estrangement from both the home and host country
ensues. 37 On the one hand, Iranians in America have had to suffer the dilemma of
26 Naficy
1993:26
For social class membership cf. Mahdi, Ali Akbar. “The Second-Generation Iranians: Questions and
Concerns.” The Iranian 9 (1997): 77-95. <http://go.owu.edu/~aamahdi/S-G-questions.htm> (last
retrieved August 15, 2012); for education and employment cf. Bozorgmehr 1998:10; Bozorgmehr 2001
28 Naficy 1993:26; Bozorgmehr 1998:8; Naficy 1993:25
29 Karim 2006:22
30 Sabagh, Georges, and Mehdi Bozorgmehr. “Secular Immigrants: Ethnicity and Religiosity among
Iranian Muslims in Los Angeles.” The Muslim Communities of North America. Ed. by Yvonne Yazbeck
Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith. New York: State U of New York P, 1994. 445-473. 451.; Naficy
1993:26; Bozorgmehr 2001; if one looks at all ethnicities’ observance, the number rises to 13.8% of
people who regularly perform religious duties, as Mahdi reports (1998:85).
31 Mahdi 1997; Bozorgmehr 2001
32 Mahdi, Ali Akbar. “Perception of Gender Roles Among Female Iranian Immigrants in the United
States.” Women, Religion and Culture in Iran. Ed. Sarah Ansari et al. London: Curzon P, 2001. 185-210.
33 Naficy 1993:29
34 Mahdi 1997; Mahdi, Ali Akbar. “Ethnic Identity among Second-Generation Iranians in the United
States.” Iranian Studies 31.1 (1998) 77-95. 78.
35 Bozorgmehr 2001:18
36 Mostofi, Nilou. “Who We Are: The Perplexity of Iranian-American Identity.” The Sociological
Quarterly 44.4 (2003) 681-703. 682.
37 Naficy 1993:131f.; Rahimieh, Nasrin. “Iranian-American Literature.“ New Immigrant Literatures of
the United States: A Sourcebook. Ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling. Westport: Greenwood, 1996. 109-124.
110.
27
16
every diaspora: the spatial and psychological distance from their homeland to which
they cannot or do not want to return. 38 This estrangement is worsened as the home
many want to remember is the Iran from before the revolution, a country that no
longer exists. On the other hand, Iranians in the United States have been met with
racism and discrimination, particularly during and shortly after the hostage crisis. In
more recent years, this has picked up again, with the bombing of the World Trade
Centre in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the
debate about Iran’s nuclear program. To make matters worse, “[m]ost Americans,
lacking (…) knowledge of the Middle East (…), cannot distinguish Middle Easterners
by country of origin”39 and especially cannot tell Iranians from Arabs. As a result,
Iranians in the USA were also victimized, for instance during the Persian Gulf War.40
To sum things up, as the Iranian diaspora cannot return to Iran and it is hard to settle
in a hostile America, they find themselves suspended between cultures, constantly
negotiating their identity.
The diaspora has seen some changes, though: since the revolution, more than
thirty years have passed and a young generation of Iranians in America has grown up
— those born in the USA or having lived in American society for most of their lives.
This 1.5th and second generation has grown up with both Iranian and American
culture, the respective values and, for some, hazy memories of a childhood in Iran.
Still, the psychological pressure remains the same as for their parents: neither culture
accommodates them fully. They are not familiar with the ‘home’ country anymore
and life in the U.S. is no less difficult as they encounter discrimination in everyday
life situations. Some of these post-1st generation Iranians cling to their childhood
memories of Iran (or to their parents’ memories) while at the same time being
confronted with their fellow Americans’ prejudiced view of Iran. They want to lead
individualist American lives, but clash with their parents who want to bring them up
with Iranian values. The question arises to these children of the Iranian diaspora as to
how they should identify themselves — as Iranian or American? They see themselves
as both and neither at the same time and develop a split identity: two oppositional
selves, “between the Western and the non-Western world,”41 “between tradition and
modernity,”42 which they have to continuously negotiate. Often, Iranian Americans
need to pretend towards their own family that they adhere to their cherished Iranian
values and towards Americans that they are fully comfortable with all aspects of U.S.
38
The plight of Iranian exiles of the first generation has been described in detail by Abbas Milani in
“Ghorbati. The purgatory of exile: Persian intellectuals in America.” The Iranian 3 (2003)
<www.iranian.com.> (last retrieved August 15, 2012)
39 Bozorgmehr, Mehdi, and Claudia Der-Martirosian, and Georges Sabagh. “Middle Easterners: A New
Kind of Immigrant.” Ethnic Los Angeles. Ed. Roger Waldinger et al. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1996. 345-378. 346.
40 Karim 2006:23
41 Dossa, Parin Aziz. Politics and Poetics of Migration. Narratives of Iranian Women From the
Diaspora. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ P, 2004. 12.
42 Tohidi, Nayereh. “Iranian Women and Gender Relations in Los Angeles.” Irangeles: Iranians in Los
Angeles. Ed. Ron Kelley et al. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1993. 175-217. 185.
17
culture. They make all efforts to fit in with both cultures. This constant pretension
makes it extraordinarily hard to find one’s individuality and a positive ethnic
identity.43
Yet the Iranian-American diaspora has now existed for over 30 years and is
becoming more and more self-confident. Through constant interaction and
communication via its internal media, such as cinema, newspapers, TV44 and radio
stations, blogs, academic magazines, through societies that organize exhibitions,
talks, conferences and festivals,45 and not lastly through its literature, it is slowly
finding into itself. Diasporic organizations, be it human rights NGOs, 46 foundations
for the promotion of Iranian culture47 or mouthpieces for diaspora politics,48 mirror
the increasing tendency of Iranians in the USA to form a — and function as a —
community. The oft-repeated truism that Iranians abroad rarely acknowledge each
other does not hold any more, as more and more diasporic subjects recognize the
advantages of being part of a politically and culturally active Iranian-American ethnic
minority: on the one hand, group identity, on the other, getting a voice within
American society. The best example for this process is the recent nationwide
campaign IraniansCount. 49 In a joint effort of PAAIA, Farhang Foundation, PARSA
Community Foundation, thirty Iranian-American supporting organizations and fifteen
media partners, Iranian-American community leaders attempted to raise awareness
about the importance of the U.S. Census for the group: Missing categorization options
for Iranians and reluctance to reveal one’s ethnic heritage had led to
underrepresentation in previous censuses. To cite IraniansCount.org, “[s]howing the
growth of the community translates into increased influence and recognition within
American society”50 — in terms of public awareness, financial and political benefits,
civic and research uses.
But it is especially in the diaspora’s autobiographic writing that the question
of ‘How can one be Iranian-American?’ is being addressed over and over again.
Increasingly, negative external definitions of Iranians through American mainstream
society are being repudiated, and Iranians see and portray themselves as an ethnic
community that has its home in the United States.
43
Tohidi 186
e.g. Naficy 1993
45 National Iranian American Council <http://www.niacouncil.org/>, Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian
Americans <http://www.paaia.org/>, Farhang Foundation <http://www.farhang.org/>, Iran Heritage
Foundation <http://www.iranheritage.org/> (all last retrieved August 16, 2012).
46 Such as: United4Iran (<http://united4iran.org> last retrieved November 30, 2012), International
Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (<http://www.iranhumanrights.com> last retrieved November 30,
2012), Iran Human Rights Voice (<http://www.ihrv.org> last retrieved November 30, 2012), and Human
Rights and Democracy for Iran <http://www.iranrights.org> (last retrieved November 30, 2012).
47 Such as the Farhang Foundation and the Persian Cultural Foundation (<http://
www.persiancultural.org> last retrieved November 30, 2012).
48 Such as the National Iranian-American Council and Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans.
49 <http://www.iranianscount.org> (last retrieved November 30, 2012).
50 <http://www.iranianscount.org/FAQ.html#QUESTION5> (last retrieved November 30, 2012).
44 Cf.
18
0.3 The Corpus
0.3.1 Iranian-American Literature and Its Focus on Autobiographical Writing
Basically ever since Iranians have been living in the USA, they have also
been writing and, indeed, publishing (also) in English. From the beginning, the
overwhelming focus has been on memoirs, starting with Najmeh Najafi’s 1953 Persia
is My Heart and Mohamed Mehdevi’s 1962 Something Human.51 Up until the 1990s,
however, literary output remains sporadic. Yet the gradual settling-in of the first wave
diaspora after roughly a decade in the USA led to an increase in confidence and voice,
and when anti-Iranian sentiments were resurfacing because of the Persian Gulf War
(1990-91), the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City
Bombing in 1995 (none of which is actually linked to Iranians), the diaspora started
to ‘write back’ in earnest. Between 1995 and 2012, about 40 memoirs have come out;
besides that, a range of novels, but also short stories and especially poetry, often also
autobiographical, have been published in magazines and anthologies.52 Authors of the
1st, 1.5th and 2nd-generation have published by now, resulting in a new ethnic
American literature, as Persis Karim has claimed53 — one of the youngest in the
United States.
The Iranian-American focus on autobiographical writing is not surprising:
Depkat has shown that the experience of disruption of identity and marginalization
are primary motivations for writing autobiographically.54 Firstly, Iranian Americans
experience marginalization, as they are, due to anti-Iranian and anti-Middle Eastern
sentiments in U.S. society, often discriminated against. Self-writing then first of all is
self-explanation, an attempt to educate fellow Americans and an effort to come to
terms with one’s own marginalized identity. Secondly, Iranian Americans find
themselves to be constantly split between their two cultures, Iranian and American.
They are both and neither at the same time, not unlike in W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of
double consciousness.55 Iranians, too, examine their bodies with Americanized eyes,
two ‘souls’ clash, and often, there is the wish to melt these two identities into a
transcultural one. Yet Iranian Americans have to negotiate not only two identities, but
also reality and imagination: Yearning for the Iran of before the revolution, they are
faced with the fact that it does not exist anymore but as an ‘imaginary homeland’ in
the narrative discourse of the diaspora. Suspended between identification with the
new home America, the ‘good Iran’ of yore (many diaspora subjects now call
51 Najafi,
Najmeh. Persia is My Heart. With Helen Hinckley. New York: Harper&Brothers, 1953.;
Mehdevi, Mohamed. Something Human. New York: St. Martin’s, 1962.
52 Karim, Persis M., and Mehdi M. Khorrami. A World Between: Poems, Stories, and Essays by IranianAmericans. New York: George Braziller, 1999.; Vatanabadi, Shouleh and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami,
ed. and trans. Another Sea, Another Shore: Persian Stories of Migration. Northampton, MA: Interlink,
2004.; Karim 2006; Zanganeh, Lila Azam, ed. My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your
Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
53 Karim, Persis. “Writers in Our Midst. First Conference of Iranian-American Writers.” The Iranian
(1998) <www.iranian.com> (last retrieved August 15, 2012)
54 Depkat, Volker. Lebenswenden und Zeitenwenden. München, Germany: Oldenbourg, 2007. 99.
55 Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. NY: Signet Classic, 1982.
19
themselves ‘Persian’ to reference the past) and the Iran of today’s political reality,
where many still have family, and with which many still feel connected, Iranians have
to juggle multiple allegiances. The writing of autobiography then becomes a means of
negotiating these often conflicting identity facets — but it is also an attempt of seeing
one’s life as a whole despite all the internal turmoil. Thus, these autobiographical
narratives should be regarded as both meaningful constructions of individual and
collective identity in the stress field of Iranian and American cultures, and as
emancipatory inscriptions into American literature and culture at large.
0.3.2 Choice of Corpus
Choosing my core corpus, I have concentrated on books with a large outreach,
preferably not only within the diaspora, but also in American society. I have done so
in order to capture identity constructions that are communicated more widely within
the Iranian-American community, contributing to the negotiation of a collective
identity, and that are received by mainstream America, thus re-defining what it means
to be Iranian and Iranian-American.
However, U.S. publishers and markets have considerable influence on which
books are published.56 As publishers are trying to anticipate market interests, it has
mainly been female ethnic authors who have been accepted by reputable houses
“according to the repressive hypothesis: out of silence or absence comes the
reconstruction of selfhood, and this effect is redoubled with the female [ethnic]
subject.”57
For Iranian-American autobiography in particular, this means that
women’s considerably more restricted lives in Iran might have resulted in their
increased need to express themselves freely, and their wish to respond to how Iranian
women are portrayed by the Western media.58 Publishers are thus co-opting especially
female autobiographers in their efforts of catering to the American middle brow’s
desire to ‘peek behind the veil’ of Muslim societies. What is more, female ethnic
authors seem to be better marketable in general, maybe as they do not appear as
‘threatening’ to American culture (such as the stereotype of the male Middle Eastern
fundamentalist does). More importantly still, their books are aimed at a
predominantly female market — women that want to read about other women’s lives.
Whatever the exact reasons may be, a veritable outpour of women’s autobiographies
has come onto the market.
Similarly indicative of the important role of publishers is the fact that also
Iranian-American men have written a number of memoirs. As their books, with very
few exceptions, appear in small publishing houses or in self-publication without the
56 Cf.
for example: Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. New York:
Routledge, 2001.
57 Muecke, Stephen. “Aboriginal Literature and the Repressive Hypothesis.” Southerly 48:4 (1988):
405-18. 409.
58 Karim, Persis. “Introduction.” In Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the
Iranian Diaspora. Ed. by Persis Karim. Fayetteville: U of Arkansas P, 2006. xix-xxix. xx.
20
help of editors, they are hardly visible on the general market, and also their reception
within the diaspora seems to be comparatively limited. 59 As a consequence, their role
in the emergence of an Iranian-American identity and agency in American society is a
minor one.
It is thus that U.S. publishers influence the Iranian-American community’s
self-perception: As autobiographers are overwhelmingly female, the process of
collective identity negotiation and construction is also carried out by mainly female
voices, from a mainly female point of view. Moreover, it is in this way that IranianAmerican literature has become dear to feminist literary criticism and political
activists supporting a regime change in Iran.
Still, I will resist the temptation of concentrating solely on Iranian-American
women’s memoirs in my study, as this would shift the focus of my research interest
considerably towards feminist literary studies — from which angle enough work has
been done.60 While my core corpus (of which eleven are of female and two of male
authors) mirrors the mainstream market and thus reception, incorporating, for
example, the widely read autobiographies of Azar Nafisi, Firuzeh Dumas and Azadeh
Moaveni, I want to gain as complete a picture as possible and have included five
examples of more visible men’s memoirs — such as Abbas Milani’s and Aria MinuSepehr’s works — within the ten monographs of my wider corpus. Thus, I will be
able to draw more generally valid conclusions on strategies of Iranian-American
identity construction, both individual and collective.
I will not, however, be able to evade the limited social profile of my sample,
as the Iranian diaspora in the USA is largely from a middle class background: of those
who were able to go abroad and study during the monarchy, of the educated and
politically active during the revolution, and of their children. Only since the mid-90s
have financially troubled Iranian laborers joined the migration in larger numbers.61 As
a result, the only author of my core corpus who traces back her history to a workingclass background is Farideh Goldin, and of my additional corpus, Reza Varjavand.
Within my chosen range of 1995 to 2011, I have tried to be as inclusive of the
different Iranian religious and ethnic factions as possible. However, I have decided
not to include autobiographies by religious or ethnic minorities who define
themselves first and foremost via their non-Iranian identity, such as Armenians and
Baha’is. They understand themselves to belong to separate diasporas.62 Therefore, I
am including mostly authors from a Muslim, but also Jewish and Muslim-Christian
59 This
was my personal impression during my research stay in Los Angeles in 2011.
fact, almost all studies regarding Iranian-American literature have been looking at memoir as a text
form engaged mostly by women, often disregarding the dynamics of the market.
61 Cf. Hakimzadeh
62 Their autobiographies include for example the 2006 Against Incredible Odds: Life of a Twentieth
Century Iranian Baha’i Family by Baha’i author Baharieh Rouhani Ma’ani, The Road to Home: My
Life and Times by Armenian-American professor Vartan Gregorian, published in 2003, and part Muslim,
part Christian Armenian-Azeri Jackie Abramian’s 2006 My Iranian Matriarchs.
60 In
21
religious background. 63 I have not found any autobiographies from minorities such as
Zoroastrians, Assyrians and Iranians Arabs.64
Furthermore, I have chosen to restrict this study to monographs for reasons of
sheer manageability. In anthologies, newspapers, magazines and in online fora,
shorter autobiographical prose and poetry has been published,65 which I could have
included, especially considering the fuzzy border of autobiographical writing and the
inevitable expansion of Autobiography Studies’ canon. Yet the monograph memoir
has lent itself to serve as corpus, especially in terms of available numbers,
comparability in length, plot structure and probable strength of reception.
Lastly, as this study concentrates on autobiographical writing that negotiates
both Iranian and American identities, I have only included authors that do broach the
issue of cultural identity and will not analyze some rather politically motivated
memoirs, such as those of royal family members Ashraf Pahlavi and Farah Pahlavi.
For the same reason, I will not include prison memoirs, i.e. autobiographical
narratives of Iranians that have had to experience imprisonment and torture in Iran.
Many such authors publish their stories in the US mostly with the help of translators
to gain media attention for these detestable violations of human rights. Yet they focus
solely on their experience in Iran, and do not reflect on their time in America at all.
However moving and politically charged they may be, in a project devoted to IranianAmerican identity, they would be out of place.
To sum up, my core corpus has come to encompass thirteen autobiographies,
yet at times I have also included quotes from a wider corpus of ten further
autobiographies. This wider corpus consists primarily of several follow-up memoirs
and a number of less visible male autobiographies. For an overview of works
analyzed, please refer to the glossary ‘Main Corpus’ and the list of my additional
corpus at the end of this thesis.
0.4 Theory and Methodology
0.4.1 American Studies: Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism, Transnationalism
As an American Cultural Studies scholar, my methodological and theoretical
framework is distinctly poststructural. Structuralism — and its continuation
poststructuralism — build upon the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure,66
whose ideas were taken up in the 1960s in what has been dubbed the semiotic turn.
Theorists like Jacques Derrida, who postulated “the encompassing power and the
63 The
only Iranian Christian memoir I could find is Marina Nemat’s After Tehran, a sequel to her prison
memoir Prisoner of Tehran. Nemat has emigrated to Canada.
64 An exception is a book by Zoroastrian Iranian Bahman Shahzadi and American Jacqueline Buckman
Shahzadi who, in a series of conversations and letters, reflect on their life together, yet hardly on life in
America: Goldoon and Professor: Memoirs and Reflection of a Bicultural Marriage.
65 Cf. e.g. Karim et al. 1999, Karim 2006, Zanganeh 2006
66 Saussure, Ferdinand de. Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967.
(1916).
22
already-thereness of the language or of the culture,”67 Michel Foucault, whose
concept of ‘discourse’ became highly influential, 68 Judith Butler, who postulated that
identity is a performative construct, and Roland Barthes, who opened up the concept
‘text’ to refer not to a literary work but to an endlessly layered texture of meaning
situated within the texture of cultural discourse69 regarded text and culture to be
intimately connected and changed literary studies completely. Ever since, American
Studies has found much inspiration in the idea that elements of culture are always to
be understood within the structure they have been produced in, i.e. individuals’
interrelations. Particularly the study of American autobiography has profited from
these developments, as seeing autobiographical texts as a product within the process
of self-construction has shed new lights on this arguably most American of genres.
Poststructuralism together with theories of postcolonialism also helped to
change conceptions of identity, of self and other, in American Studies considerably, as
can be seen, for example, in Edward Said’s Orientalism,70 Benedict Anderson’s
Imagined Communities71 and discussions about the postcolonial subject, such as
Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture 72 and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay
“Can the Subaltern Speak?”73 In all these approaches, identity is regarded as
constructed, as existing in discursive representations of self and other. Such
representations are always also instruments of power, as marginalized groups have to
put up with being represented and defined by dominant culture. Attempts at selfrepresentation — such as Iranian-American autobiographical writing — thus should
be seen as subversions of dominant power, as a claiming of a place within American
society.
Furthermore, poststructuralism has contributed to the development of new
transcultural and transnational perspectives, especially as hybrid identities
increasingly attract attention. In American Studies, this has happened particularly in
Borderland Studies. Their focus has largely been the American Southwest, yet it has
rightly also been transferred to other areas of cultural contact, such as the contact
zones 74 that ethnic-American communities and diasporas constitute. In the 21st
century, a veritable transnational turn has come about in American Studies, promoted
67 Derrida,
Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. (1967). 161.
Michel. The Order of Things An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon,
1971. (1966).; Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New
York: Pantheon, 1972. (1969).
69 Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” Reprinted in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in
Poststructuralist Criticism. Ed. by Josue V. Harari. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1979. 73-81.; Barthes,
Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill, 1977.
70 Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
71 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
London: Verso, 1983.
72 Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
73 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice.” Wedge
7-8 (1985): 120-30.
74 Pratt
68 Foucault,
23
mainly by a series of essays in the journal American Quarterly.75 According to
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, America is to be seen as “a participant in a global flow of
people, ideas, texts, and products.” 76 This turn then calls for an expansion of research
interests to go beyond the nation state, and for a “conceptual frame of transnational
interconnectedness.”77
Analyzing Iranian-American writing as a subject matter
pertaining to American Studies allows me to contribute to the discipline’s
transnationalization.
0.4.2 The Constructedness of the Self
Individual Identity
This background in Cultural Studies means that a constructivist understanding
of autobiographical texts as sites of identity negotiation and construction is essential
to my analysis. It should be pointed out that sociologists have been supporting a nonessentialist approach to identity 78 and culture for decades; both are regarded to be
neither static nor coherent.
Already at the turn of the 20th century, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud claimed
in his theories of the unconscious mind that identity is largely the result of (culturally
conditioned) feelings we are not aware of, that gender and sexuality are significant to
identity, and that it is not fixed, but the result of conflicts and different
identifications.79 In the 1930s, social philosopher George Herbert Mead postulated
that individuals construct their identities by imagining themselves and using symbols
such as clothes and ways of behaving to present this image to the outside.80 Following
Mead, Judith Williamson suggested we have a choice as to how to present ourselves,
and that other people will understand what we want to express with these choices.81
In the late 50s, sociologist Erving Goffman claimed that identity is dramaturgical, that
it is based on performances — differing roles that are necessarily addressed to a
specific audience.82 These early approaches already regard the shape and expression
of identity as conditioned by an element of choice, but also the socio-cultural
framework it exists in. Following, yet transcending these assumptions, identity started
75 Ickstadt,
Heinz. “American Studies in an Age of Globalization.” American Quarterly 54 (2002)
543-62.; Fishkin; Hornung 2005; Fluck; Elliott;
76 Fishkin 24
77 Ickstadt 560
78 I regard ‘identity’ and ‘self’ as synonymous. The static term ‘identity’ itself is controversial because
of its echoes with Enlightenment ideas of the individual as self-contained and coherent. Especially the
term ‘identification’ has been suggested, understood as being “constructed on the back of a recognition
of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and
with the natural closure and allegiance established on this foundation,” as “a process never completed,”
and with special reference to the agency implicated in the process (Hall 2). Nevertheless, ‘identity’
continues to be used by most academics with an implicit understanding of its fluidity and openendedness.
79 Freud, Sigmund. “Das Unbewusste.” Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse 3 (4)
(1915) 189-203 and (5) 257-69.
80 Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1934.
81 Williamson, Judith. Consuming Passions. London: Marion Boyars, 1986.
82 Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1959.
24
to be described as fluid in the late 60s.83 What is more, Appadurai and Friedman do
not only think of the ‘self’ as changing diachronically, but as multiple at any one
time.84
But how do these identities come about? Already in his 1969 essay
“Ideological State Apparatuses,” Louis Althusser, influenced by Lacanian
psychoanalysis, formulated his theories about interpellation, a process by which the
individual is hailed by particular, quasi pre-formed identity positions both consciously
and unconsciously.85 Examples may be political propaganda, film or advertisements,
and the identities offered — often situated within dimensions of social class, gender,
ethnicity and place — make clearer than before how individual identity construction
is linked to and stands in tension with the social realm. On the other hand,
autobiography has — not only by William Dean Howells in 190986 — been referred
to as the “most democratic province of the republic of letters,” as writing about one’s
own life appears to be open to everyone. This is not completely true, however, as
publishers and markets select which books are successful and arguably also hail
specific identities that authors might take on in order to attract larger readerships.
Coming from a different angle, Michel Foucault posits that it is through and
within discourses that the subject — and even its body 87 — is produced, but offers
little explanation as to how the individual comes to ‘accept’ a particular identity. Also,
he gives no attention to ways in which interpellation might fail, be resisted, or
negotiated. It is only in the introduction to The Use of Pleasure that Foucault allows
for a response of the subject, but leaves it practically untheorized and does not take
into consideration unconscious aspects of identification.88 What is required then is, in
Stuart Hall’s words,
a theory of what the mechanisms are by which individuals as subjects identify (or do not identify
with the ‘positions’ to which they are summoned; as well as how they fashion, stylize, produce
and ‘perform’ these positions, and why they never do so completely, (…) or are in a constant,
agonistic process of struggling with, resisting, negotiating and accommodating the normative or
regulative rules with which they confront and regulate themselves. 89
Others have attempted to give a more detailed answer, notably Jacques
Derrida, the Argentinian post-Marxist Ernesto Laclau and, most successfully, Judith
Butler. Derrida makes the case that the constitution of identity is always based on
83
Barth, Fredrik. “Introduction.“ Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural
Difference. Ed. Fredrik Barth. Boston: Little Brown, 1969. 10-38.
84 Appadurai, Arjun, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1986.; Friedman, Jonathan. Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage, 1994.
85 Althusser, Louis. “Ideologie und ideologische Staatsapparate.” In Ideologie und ideologische
Staatsapparate: Aufsätze zur marxistischen Theorie. Ed. by Louis Althusser. Hamburg/Berlin: VSA,
1977. 108-153.
86 Howells, William Dean. “Autobiography, a New Form of Literature.” Harper’s Monthly 119 (1909):
798.
87 Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In The Foucault Reader. Ed. by P. Rabinow.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
88 Hall 10
89 Hall 13f.
25
excluding something and establishing a hierarchy between the two,90 and Laclau
expands this thought by claiming that identity comes into being by the exertion of
power, since “an objectivity manages to partially affirm itself (…) only by repressing
that which threatens it.”91 And also Judith Butler, who in her works Gender Trouble
and Bodies That Matter, analyzes the relationship of subject, body and identity and
argues that the subject is, discursively produced through its materialization,92
maintains that identities are defined by exclusion of a constitutive outside — for
example the construction of sexual or racial others. Such a conceptualization limits
the ways in which subjects can engage in identity politics; and yet identities for Butler
always remain flexible: “Identifications are never fully and finally made; they are
incessantly reconstituted, (…) constantly marshalled, consolidated, retrenched,
contested and, on occasion, compelled to give way.”93
This process is reinforced in a rapidly changing globalized culture, where,
according to Anthony Giddens, identities become more fluid, intensifying the
uncertainty and insecurity of identity on the one hand and diversity and freedom in
forming and choosing new identities on the other. 94 Hall describes identity as
“increasingly fragmented and fractured (…) [and] multiply constructed across
different, often intersecting and antagonistic discourses, practices and positions.”95 As
these multiple identities of a person can stand in conflict with one another, they have
to be negotiated96 — a process that is reflected in the narratives people tell of their
lives. As I will point out below in more detail, scholars like Paul John Eakin maintain
that it is exactly through life narratives that conceptions of ‘identity’ and ‘self’ come
into being.97
Collective Identity
Yet how does individual identity relate to collective identity? Influenced by
the work of George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman and Fredrik Barth, sociologists
like Richard Jenkins maintain that individual and collective identity can be
understood as similar, if not the same, in that they are constructed and changed by the
same social processes.98
Collective identity is constituted in the same way as the individual self is
constructed: by exclusion, by identifying the other. Like individuals, groups can be
90 Derrida,
Jacques. Positions. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.
Ernesto. New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso, 1990. 33.
92 Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York, Routledge, 1993. 1.
93 Butler 1993:105
94 Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge:
Polity, 1991.
95 Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs Identity?” Questions of Cultural Identity. Ed. by Stuart Hall
and Paul du Gay. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996. 4.
96 Ewing, Katherine P. “The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience of Inconsistency.”
Ethos 18.3 (1990): 251-79.
97 Eakin, Paul John. How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999.
98 Jenkins, Richard. Social Identity. New York: Routledge, 1996.
91 Laclau,
26
categorized from the outside — something that often happens to minorities. Such
external identification may be internalized, but can also be resisted. Furthermore,
Anthony Cohen has described how collective identity — similarly to individual
identity — is constructed in interaction with others: group identification and
categorization by others are negotiated. The boundaries of the group are permeable,
however, and allow individuals to leave and enter the group. 99 Symbols and rituals
that are invoked and repeated at regular intervals have been described as central
factors in the construction of national identity, especially as they exclude those who
do not belong to the group and thus construct boundaries and a constitutive outside.
The experience of a collective identity can vary widely from person to person, and
Barth has explained this already in 1969 by distinguishing ‘boundary’ and ‘content.’
While boundaries can be seen as the signifier, or name of the group, content is the
signified, or experience of identity, and can take different meanings.100
Collective identity is closely entangled with the idea of ‘culture,’ which could
maybe seen as the diachronous aspect of collective identity, and represented in
materiality. Mike Crang defines the term as follows: “[C]ultures are sets of beliefs or
values that give meaning to ways of life and produce (and are reproduced through)
material and symbolic forms.”101 He stresses that the individual is not necessarily free
to pick and choose and that these sets of beliefs can change over time. So while
materiality can be regarded as a source of collective identity (as we will see below
when I talk about Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire), culture is the
machinery that produces both such materiality and its meaning.
Research on collective identity has focused especially on national identity.
Benedict Anderson famously described the nation as an imagined community, having
only come into being with modernization and the advent of the nation state, an idea
that was disseminated by the new mass media of capitalist modernity, thus allowing
people of a much larger area to imagine themselves to be part of the same group.102
Not satisfied with this theory, Anthony D. Smith argued that national identity must
rest on a pre-existing ethnic community that shares a culture, history and/or language,
but that the nation was more determinate in that it defined a historic homeland,
common myths and historical memories, a public culture, rights and duties for all
members and a common economy. However, ethnic identities mostly continue to exist
next to national identity.103
The construction of a group’s collective identity can always only be seen in
instances of individual identity construction. While an individual might try to speak
for the group, it is only in the consonance (and dissonance) of the group’s voices that
99 Cohen, Anthony
P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. New York: Routledge, 1985.
Fredrik. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Construction of Culture Difference. Oslo,
Norway: Universitätsforlaget, 1969.
101 Crang, Mike. Cultural Geography. New York: Routledge, 1998.
102 Anderson
103 Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1986.
100 Barth,
27
collective identity is constructed and negotiated. Thus in autobiographical narratives,
authors not only construct their individual identity, but also contribute to their group’s
collective memory and identity.
Ethnic Identity
Identity is a contentious subject for the loosely connected groups we call
ethnicities. An ethnic group has been defined by Martin Bulmer in 1986 as
a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a
shared past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements which define the group’s
identity, such as kinship, religion, language, shared territory, nationality or physical appearance.
Members (…) are conscious of belonging to the group. 104
Importantly, ethnicity is not primordial, but socially constructed and is based on
individuals’ self-consciousness. 105
While also white Americans have ‘passive
ethnicity,’ and at times choose to be Italian, Polish, etc., mostly their ethnicity is not a
central part of their self-perception. It is those who are excluded from the dominant
group by their ethnicity for whom it takes center stage and becomes ‘active
ethnicity.’106
Ethnic identity arises from lived experience, a loose collective memory and
from cultural practices from the home country. However, ethnicity is not pre-existing;
like individual identity, it is a construction or, in Werner Sollors’ words, an
invention.107 The individual’s interpretation of his or her ethnic identity can thus
change over time, and is considerably shaped by interaction with coethnics and by the
debates, contestations and negotiations between group members about their cultural
content.108 What is more, it has been stressed by Joan Nagel, construction of ethnicity
is always informed by social, economic, political, cultural and religious agendas.109
This construction is an ongoing dialectical process between internal and external
identification. Ethnic identity can be opted out of, or can be compartmentalized to the
private realm — in short, ethnic solidarity can fluctuate.110 Even so, ethnicity does not
wane in modern society, as had been suggested by Max Weber111 and American
assimilation theories such as J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s ‘new man’112 and the
‘melting pot’ (derived from Israel Zangwill’s theatre play by the same name). Such
104 Bulmer,
Martin. “Ethnicities and Race.” In R. Burgess (ed.) Key Variables in Social Investigation.
London: Routledge, 1986. 54-75. 54.
105 Barth; Wallman, Sandra. “Boundaries of ‘Race:’ Processes of Ethnicity in England.” Man 13 (1978)
200-17.; Lal, Barbara. “Learning to Do Ethnic Identity.” In D. Parker and M. Song (eds.) Rethinking
‘Mixed Race.’ London: Pluto, 2001. 154-72.
106 Song, Miri. Choosing Ethnic Identity. Malden: Polity, 2003.
107 Sollors, Werner. The Invention of Ethnicity. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
108 Yancey, William L., Eugene P. Ericksen, and Richard N. Juliani. “Emergent Ethnicity: A Review and
Reformulation.” American Sociologist Review 41 (1976) 391-403.
109 Nagel, Joan. Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers. New York:
Oxford UP, 2003.
110 Cf. Wallman; Nagel;
111 Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Ed. by Guenther Roth and
Claus Wittich. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1968 (1922).
112 Crèvecœur, J. Hector St. John. “Letters of an American Farmer. Letter III: What is an American?”
1782.
28
theories tended to blend out the exclusion and discrimination many ethnicities are
confronted with, as well as their creativity in negotiating old and new allegiances and
in re-inventing their sense of ethnicity. 113
Ethnicity cannot only change over time, it also often is split or multiple.
Dislocated national-ethnic groups, for example, are, more often than not,
heterogeneous and ‘contain’ further ethnic subdivisions. Also, people of mixed ethnic
backgrounds often feel split, yet compelled to choose sides in an environment that
allows only for ‘either/or.’ An important aspect of this choice is ‘passing,’ which
possibly comes at high psychological cost as membership in the ethnic group is
endangered. While some ethnic subjects feel fragmented and confused, others see
their multiple facets as a source of inspiration and empowerment — each individual
negotiates his or her own identity. As a result, a central theme in ‘hyphenated’
autobiography is agency and choice regarding ethnic affiliations and loyalties.
The second generations of recently arrived ethnic communities are mostly
skilled cultural navigators, yet also often feel ‘in between’ two cultures. While this
might be too simplistic an idea, it is frequently described this way. As Miri Song
writes, concepts of hybridity such as the ‘Third Space’ hybrid forms proposed by
Homi Bhabha114 (and in the Iranian-American context, by Hamid Naficy 115) are
largely meaningless to people, as they have a localized sense of ethnic identity.
However, the concept can still be liberating. 116
Diasporic identity is largely synonymous with ethnic identity, while
conveying a stronger sense of difference to dominant cultural identity. Yet the term
‘diaspora’ has been subject to debate. William Safran has, following classical use,
defined diasporas as
expatriate minority communities whose members share several of the following characteristics:
1) they, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific original “center” to at least two
“peripheral” (…) regions; 2) they retain a collective memory, vision, or myth about their original
homeland (…); 3) they believe that they are not (…) fully accepted by their host society and
therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it; 4) they regard their ancestral homeland as
their true, ideal home and as the place to which they or their descendants would (or should)
eventually return (…); 5) they believe that they should, collectively, be committed to the
maintenance or restoration of their original homeland (…); and 6) they continue to relate (…) to
that homeland in one way or another, and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are
importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship. 117
While many of these aspects are acute observations, Safran has been criticized for
imposing too strict a definition and especially for identifying the idea of ‘diaspora’
too closely with the Jewish group — especially as also many Jews neither long for a
113 Song
9
114 Bhabha,
Homi. “The Third Space.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. by Jonathan
Rutherford. London: Lawrence&Wishart, 1990. 207-21.
115 Naficy 1993
116 Song 104ff.
117 Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1:1
(1991) 83-98. 83f.
29
literal return, nor closely identify with a physical homeland.118 By the 1980s, the term
‘diaspora’ was increasingly perceived to have changed to metaphorically designate
categories “like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest-worker, exile community,
overseas community, ethnic community.”119 Social constructionists like Clifford
James have, since the mid-90s, argued for an opening-up of the definition. They
maintain that cultural networks are ambivalent and transcend the criteria, and show
different intensities of diasporism at different times120
— especially as in a
postmodern world, identities are deterritorialized and constructed. They stress how it
is increasingly easier for diasporic communities to maintain ties with other parts of
the diaspora around the globe and to thus form transnational communities, 121 as
modern communication, media and travel speed up personal connections and the
dispersal of ideas. At the same time, second and third generation diasporic subjects
can both be part of mainstream culture and retain a diasporic identity in that they
maintain significant connections elsewhere.122 Yet whether we talk about ethnic or
diasporic subjects, as their communities settle in American society (or anywhere
else), they increasingly repudiate external definitions, especially in the form of
stereotypes and racialization, 123 and actively assert their own interpretations and
constructions of identity.
The Iranian-American community is part of a transnational, deterritorialized
diaspora and, on the one hand, subscribes and contributes to an Iranian diasporic
identity, but on the other, constructs its own, localized and specifically IranianAmerican identity. As I will show below, autobiographical writing has become their
primary medium for negotiating these diverse identifications.
Memory and Identity
For both individual and collective identities, for both nations and smaller
communities, the remembered past is the frame for interpreting the present. Memory
thus significantly influences identification. However, and more importantly, the same
is true vice versa, as the present situation is also the frame for remembering and
interpreting the past. Memory changes as the individual’s and the group’s identity
(and thus their needs in terms of remembering) change. Identity construction and
memory stand in a complex, mutually influencing, relationship.
Because of memory’s quicksilver character, its interdependency with identity,
Wulf Kansteiner reminds us, collective memory is not history, only made from similar
118 Clifford,
119 Tölölian,
4f.
120 Clifford
James. “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9:3 (1994) 302-338. 304f.
Kachig. “The Nation State and its Others: In Lieu of a Preface.” Diaspora 1:1 (1991) 3-7.
1994:306
that is also recalled by Paul Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic.
122 Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2008.
123 Song 10
121 A fact
30
material. 124 Collective memory has become a household term of cultural studies
especially through the work of Maurice Halbwachs, whose followers understand
collective memory as collectively shared representations of the past.125 His concept of
the social frameworks of memory, i.e. that “individual memories often, and perhaps
always, have a social component,”126 resonates with my argument. Individual
experiences are, according to Halbwachs, reinforced and validated by the group, a
process very much at work in published autobiographical works. As Halbwachs
maintains further, these collectively retained memories serve as the source for a
group’s social identity and thus also for the individual’s identity construction.127 Since
Halbwachs, a number of historians, sociologists and cultural studies have come to the
same conclusion: Collective memory is constructed and contributes to the
construction that is identity. 128
All the while, memory takes different forms, both material and immaterial,
and can be located in communication, rituals, customs and, maybe most importantly,
in what has been described as lieux de mémoire by Pierre Nora, i.e. places, but also
myths, events, institutions, terms, and artifacts. 129 An important source of collectively
retained memories of ethnic groups are their autobiographical writings. Such ethnic
autobiographical texts function, according to Costantino and Egan, like a museum
that preserves the remembered past. This becomes a way of constructing and
negotiating an identification and of creating a usable past for their community.130 The
dynamics and politics of remembering (and forgetting) the past in the light of the
present are central also to the autobiographical writing of new diasporas that are in
the process of developing an identification that is independent of their society of
origin in that it will reflect the experience of migration and the conditions this has
happened in.
What is more, ethnic communities exist in tension with national identity and
collective memory, especially as the collective memory of dominant society often
124 Kansteiner,
Wulf. “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory
Studies.” History and Theory 41 (May 2002): 179-197. 180.
125 Kansteiner 181
126 Poole, Ross. “Memory, History, and the Claims of the Past.” Memory Studies 1 (2008). 149-166.
152.
127 Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. (Translated from Les
cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952.)
128 Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
UP, 1983.; Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1989.; Samuel,
Raphael and Paul Thompson, eds. The Myths We Live By. New York, Routledge, 1990.; Fentress, James
and Chris Wickham. Social Memory. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1992.; Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and
Diaspora.” Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London:
Lawrence&Wishart, 1990. 222-37.; Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und
politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. München, Germany: Beck, 1992.; Assmann, Aleida.
Erinnerungsräume, Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. München: Beck, 1999.
129 Nora, Pierre. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. 3 vols. New York: Columbia UP,
1996-98.; Nora, Pierre. “From lieux de mémoire to realms of memory.” Realms of Memory: Rethinking
the French Past. Vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions. Eds. Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman. New
York: Columbia UP, 1996. xv-xxiv.
130 Costantino, Manuela and Susanna Egan. “Reverse Migration and Imagined Communities.” Prose
Studies 26:1-2 (2003) 96-111. 108ff.
31
diverges from their own. Ethnic autobiographers, by contributing to the construction
of a specifically ethnic collective memory in their texts, have the opportunity to
repudiate external definition of the group by the dominant society. As Hall and many
others have emphasized: “[T]he act of remembering is almost necessarily
empowering (…). [T]he idea of a shared history and shared culture provides a matrix
for ontological self-presence, one which allows them to position themselves within a
complex and shifting civic order.”131
Therefore, autobiographical texts have
emancipatory impact: They lend voice and agency to ethnic Americans and help
further a positive self-imagination and group history. Iranian Americans, for instance,
thus cannot only feel like a community, but, in spite of often being discriminated
against, as part of American society. The writing of ethnic autobiography constitutes a
self-inscription into American literature and culture, and a new ethnic-American
literary tradition comes into being.
Identity and Iranian-American Autobiographical Writing
Iranian-American autobiographical writing has to be analyzed with this very
background in mind: The diaspora’s collective memory takes center stage in the more
and more shifting context of today’s globalized world. It faces a double challenge:
preservation of cultural identity on the one hand, and flexibility regarding the new
(and always changing) situation of the diasporic group now living across the globe on
the other. The largest subdivision of the diaspora, Iranians living in the USA, could be
said to form their own group, and are certainly developing their own identity in that
they negotiate their individual and collective cultural memory with their new
environment. Iranian-American readers of Iranian-American autobiographical texts
have the opportunity to identify with or reject the memories conveyed.
Their autobiographical writings (monograph autobiographies, but also oral
narratives and internet blogs132) become an important means of doing that, as
individual constructions of identity always also contribute to collective memory.
Indeed, Iranian-American autobiographies increasingly seem to be written for their
own group.133 One reason for this might be the desire to share the memory of trauma
with a community of people with similar experiences of revolution and exile,
“bringing to light a belated mourning for traumatic events some two decades earlier
as the generations that recall pre-revolutionary Iran in the first person are
diminished.” Gillian Whitlock’s approach to Iranian-American memoir is thus
informed by recent trauma theory that has concentrated on second generation
Holocaust memoir: “like other symptoms of traumatic stress, autobiographical truth
131 Kunow,
Rüdiger and Wilfried Raussert. “Cultural Memory and Multiple Identities: An
Interdisciplinary Approach to 20th Century Identity Politics.” In Cultural Memory and Multiple
Identities. Ed. by Rüdiger Kunow and Wilfried Raussert. Berlin: LIT, 2008. 7-17. 8.
132 Alexanian, Janet. “Nothing is Sacred: An Interview with Jahanshah Javid.” MELUS 33:2 (2008):
169-176.
133 Motlagh 2008:29-32
32
will eventually manifest itself some decades later.”134 I will look further into this
subject in chapter 6 “Relative Identities.”
What is more, in negotiating multiple cultural identifications — Iranian and
American identities being not the least of them — these autobiographies create a new,
distinctly diasporic collective memory and thus show new ways of conceiving of
Iranian-American identity. Amy Motlagh is right in observing that it is not so much
the diaspora that has produced the genre of Iranian-American autobiography, but that
the writing has been central in the emergence of the diaspora. 135
0.4.3 Self-Narrative / Autobiography / Life Writing
‘Genre,’ Scholarship and Terminology
Autobiography is, as Georges Gusdorf136 and other scholars in the field claim,
a markedly Western genre that is often said to have had its beginnings in St.
Augustine’s Confessiones. It has developed out of Greek and Roman literature and
the Christian habit of confessing one’s sins to God,137 but according to Karl
Weintraub, it was not until the early 12th century that self-writing showed traces of a
beginning individualism. In most religious autobiographies of the Middle Ages,
however, the psychological dimension of experience remained neglected — it was
only in the Renaissance that autobiography turned towards individuality and became
independent from religion. Individualism also became important to Puritan
autobiography, and eventually was celebrated in Goethe’s and Rousseau’s works.138
William C. Spengemann postulates that, together with a developing sense of
individuality, the function of self-writing changes: Renaissance and Enlightenment
narratives try to explain the self with an historical approach, the late 18th, early 19th
centuries saw philosophical explorations of the self, later poetic self-expression
followed until in modern and postmodern autobiographical texts, the objective is to
construct the self through writing.139
While scholarship has for a long time regarded autobiography as a truthful
representation of reality — Georg Misch’s Geschichte der Autobiographie might be
early Autobiography Studies’ most important work 140 — it was especially the
poststructuralists that first voiced their doubts. Paul de Man, among others, argues to
134 Whitlock,
Gillian. “From Tehran to Tehrangeles: The Generic Fix of Iranian Exilic Memoirs.”
ARIEL - A Review of International English Literature 39:1-2 (2008): 7-27. 15. She also reminds us of
Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory.
135 Motlagh 2008:31
136 Gusdorf, Georges. “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography.” Autobiography: Essays Theoretical
and Critical. Ed. James Olney. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980. 28–49. 29.
137 Misch, Georg. Geschichte der Autobiographie. 8 vols. Frankfurt: Schulte-Bulmke, 1949-69. Vol. 1,1.
1949; Pascal, Roy. Design and Truth in Autobiography. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960.
138 Weintraub, Karl J. The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography. Chicago:
Chicago UP, 1978.
139 Spengemann, William C. The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1980.
140 Misch Vol. 3.2: Das Hochmittelalter im Anfang.
33
the contrary that autobiography “produce[s] and determine[s] the life.”141 This makes
autobiography similar to fiction — and yet critics have attempted to describe what
they see as a fundamental difference: autobiography’s referentiality. Already in the
1970s, Philippe Lejeune attempts to solve the paradox by suggesting an
autobiographical pact between author and audience that is instituted by the
congruency of the names of author and protagonist.142 Much the same has been
intended by Elizabeth Bruss, who maintains that the autobiographer commits an
autobiographical act, similar to linguistics’ speech acts.143 While acknowledging
poststructuralism’s claims, they thus try to differentiate between autobiography and
fiction.
Since the 1980s, literary criticism has experienced what could be called an
‘autobiographical turn,’ as after the long predominance of New Criticism, interest in
an increasingly autobiographical culture was rising. The cultural and political changes
of the 60s — minority and protest groups, new programs at universities such as
African American Studies and Women Studies — had prepared the way for sociology
and personal experience to enter scholarship. The different types of approaches in the
Autobiography Studies that have emerged can be categorized according to three basic
beliefs: the belief in a referentiality of written and lived life, the denial of such a
referentiality, and an assumption of a dialogical relation of the written self and its
cultural conditioning.144
Hornung, in his review essay, regards James Olney’s highly influential 1980
edited volume Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical,145 which combined
traditional and new ideas, as the turning point of autobiography criticism. From then
on, most attention has been given to innovative approaches, such as reading
autobiography in its importance for (ethnic) minorities, in its relation to gender, and
as cultural expression. In the nineties, (post)structuralist and linguistic theories, reader
reception theory, deconstruction, psychoanalytic observations and sociology of
communicative action gain more and more followers. Especially experimental texts
from the 20th century warrant a methodological approach that accounts for the
fragmentary nature of the self.
American Autobiography scholarship has traditionally focused on
autobiographical writing from three eras: Colonial Period, the Early Republic, and
modernity. Firstly, Puritan conversion narratives and Quaker diaries are of interest.
141 Man,
Paul de. “Autobiography as De-Facement.” MLN 94:5 (1979). 919-930. 920.
Philippe. On Autobiography. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989 (in the original French:
Le Pacte Autobiographique 1975).
143 Bruss, Elizabeth. Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Genre. Washington,
DC: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
144 Hornung, Alfred. “American Autobiographies and Autobiography Criticism: A Review Essay.”
Amerikastudien / American Studies 35 (1990). 371-407.
145 Olney, James, ed. Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.
142 Lejeune,
34
They have been explored by Daniel Shea and Patricia Caldwell. 146 Benjamin
Franklin’s utilitarian Autobiography is certainly central for the time of the Early
Republic and has been approached from a range of different perspectives.147 Yet is is
modern autobiography that has been studied most extensively.
Alfred Hornung has suggested that three ways of conceptualizing
autobiographical writing are most prominent: autobiography as a record of history
that is dependent on and changes with its environment, autobiography as a primarily
cultural act, or as necessarily fictional narrative. 148 It has been particularly the latter
two approaches that have been used to analyze modern and postmodern texts. Albert
Stone, for instance, is of the opinion that autobiography is a cultural act in that it
represents the attempt to re-live one’s life. Among the seven different motives of
doing so are not only old age’s retrospective, but also traumata and the experience of
a broken or fragmented self.149 Through the assumption that autobiography is always
also fictional — suggested, for example, by Paul John Eakin, Herbert Leibowitz und
Timothy Adams 150 — the border to other types of literature becomes blurry.
Conversely, fiction now can be interpreted as autobiographical as well. The selfinvention of the autobiographer is regarded to be dependent on culturally conditioned
self-conceptions 151 and thus offers a well of information to the researcher.152 Others
have also been questioning the autobiographical subject beyond the text, among them
Couser and Fichtelberg.153 Furthermore, American Studies has been interested in what
sets American autobiography apart, such as Couser’s suggested ‘prophetic mode’ 154
and McAdams’ ‘redemptive self,’ 155
democracy 156 and
the relationship of autobiography and
the many contributions to Eakin’s seminal edited volume American
146
Shea, Daniel B. Spiritual Autobiography in Early America. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1988.;
Caldwell, Patricia. The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.
147 Dippel, Horst. Individuum und Gesellschaft: Soziales Denken zwischen Tradition und Revolution:
Smith—Condorcet—Franklin. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Rupprecht, 1981.; Seavey, Ormond. Becoming
Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1988.;
Schmidt-von Bardeleben, Renate. Studien zur amerikanischen Autobiographie: Benjamin Franklin und
Mark Twain. München: Fink, 1981.
148 Hornung, Alfred. “American Autobiographies and Autobiography Criticism: Review Essay.”
Amerikastudien / American Studies 53:3 (1990). 371-407. 382.
149 Stone, Albert E. Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from
Henry Adams to Nate Shaw. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1982.
150 Eakin, Paul John. Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1985.
Leibowitz, Herbert. Fabricating Lives: Explorations in American Autobiography. NY: Knopf, 1989.
Adams, Timothy Dow. Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography. Chapel Hill: U of California P,
1990.
151 Eakin 1985
152 Adams 1990
153 Couser, G. Thomas. Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography. New York: Oxford UP,
1989.; Fichtelberg, Joseph. The Complex Image: Faith and Method in American Autobiography.
Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1989.
154 Couser, G. Thomas. American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode. Amherst, MA: U of
Massachusetts P, 1979.
155 McAdams, Dan P. The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.
156 Abbot, Philip. States of Perfect Freedom: Autobiography and American Political Thought. Amherst:
U of Massachusetts P, 1987.; Cox, James M. Recovering Literature’s Lost Ground: Essays in American
Autobiography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.
35
Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect focusing, for example, on historical periods
and ethnic and women’s autobiography. 157
Influenced by sociological and psychological research, various scholars have
suggested since the late nineties that identity comes into being through self-narration,
such as autobiographical writing.158 Self-narration thus is not only a way of producing
meaning by re-narrating biographical and historical experience, but has to be regarded
as the individual’s only way of perceiving itself as a diachronic unity. Authors of
autobiographies respond to the primordial need to perceive their lives and therefore
themselves as a continuum of some sort. This is not to say that life stories necessarily
need to be linear and perfectly coherent, as Hyvärinen et al. have shown,159 but they
need to provide the subject with identity and meaning.
I want to adopt a communication and text pragmatics approach towards
autobiographical self-construction in this thesis, as it allows me to analyze through
which strategies and narratives the author constructs his self.160 At the same time,
such an approach does not blend out the specific audiences in regard to which the
autobiographer positions himself, but conceives of autobiography as a type of social
communication. This is especially useful when looking at ethnic autobiographies, as
ethnic identity construction is situated in a complex web of relations in between
ethnic individual and its own group, ethnic individual and mainstream society, and
ethnic group and mainstream society — all of which may be impacted by the
influence of publishers.
A remark on my usage of the terms ‘autobiography’ and ‘memoir:’ In the
narrow sense of the word, autobiography refers to self-narrative that focuses on the
protagonist’s life, memoir focuses more on events and other persons. However, the
distinction is often fuzzy and, for the research interest at hand, obsolete. Therefore, I
have used the more general term ‘self-narrative’ in my thesis title and will,
additionally, use ‘autobiography’ in the literal, broad sense of ‘self-life-writing’ in my
analysis. ‘Autobiographical writing’ similarly encompasses all types of writing about
one’s own life. Moreover, as Iranian-American autobiography tends to refer to itself
157 Eakin,
Paul John. American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Madison, Wisconsin: U of
Wisconsin P, 1991.
158 Cf. e.g. McAdams, Dan P., Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich, eds. Identity and Story: Creating
Self in Narrative. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2006.; Eakin 1999; Eakin,
Paul John. Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
2008.
159 Hyvärinen, Matti, Lars-Christer Hydén, Marja Saarenheimo and Maria Tamboukou, eds. Beyond
Narrative Coherence. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010.
160 For communication pragmatics cf. e.g. Watzlawick, Paul, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson.
Pragmatics of Human Communication. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967.; Griffin, Em. A First Look at
Communication Theory. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2000.; West, Richard, and Turner, Lynn H.
Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 2000.
For text pragmatics cf. e.g. Austin, John L. How to Do Things with Words: The William James Lectures
Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1962.; Searle, John. Expression
and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.
Volker Depkat has explored how communication and text pragmatics can be applied to autobiographical
texts: Depkat, Volker. “Zum Stand und zu den Perspektiven der Autobiographieforschung in der
Geschichtswissenschaft.” BIOS 23:2 (2010): 170-187. 177ff.
36
as ‘memoir’ for reasons of mere style, I will use the term as synonymous during the
analysis. Objections have been voiced against the term ‘autobiography’ with the
reasoning that there should be a term describing all text types where selves are
recorded, ranging from retrospective autobiography, biography, testimony,
autoethnography, to diaries, journals, letters and blogs. Thus, the term ‘life writing’
has rightly been suggested, 161 which I will also adopt whenever this broad sense is
applicable. At other times, when I want to stress how authors construct their selves in
their narratives, I will refer to them as ‘self-writing.’ The term has, following the
thought of Frantz Fanon, been used regarding the African(-American) self162 — a
usage that I recognize and support, yet one that is independent from my approach.
Lastly, I do not consider autobiography a ‘genre’ per se, as self-narrative can take on
extremely different shapes. Rather, I find that autobiography is what Azade Seyhan
has called “a non-generic genre”163 in that the forms can differ widely, but they are
narratives with the same purpose: self-expression.
Female and Minority Autobiography
Especially since the 1980s, American Studies autobiography scholarship has
been increasingly interested in questions of ethnic and female self-writing. As a
result, an expansive revision and extension of the canon has taken place and
traditional conceptions of autobiography have been challenged. Self-Narrative in all
its diversity has proven to be a central medium for women and ethnic minorities, who
for a long time had no public voice to speak of. However, the cultural, literary and
political emancipation of marginalized groups in the USA through autobiographical
texts can be traced back to Colonial America and writing about oneself has come to
be a means of self-expression, claiming of agency in society and protest against
exclusion.164
Hornung has found three main approaches in feminist literary studies: Firstly,
the assumption that narratives by female authors are fundamentally different;165
secondly, the employment of poststructuralist theories;166 and thirdly, the conception
161 Jolly,
Margaretta, ed. The Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms.
London: Routledge, 2010.
162 Mbembe, Achille. “African Modes of Self-Writing.” Public Culture 14:1 (2002): 239–273.
163 Seyhan, Azadeh. “Ethnic Selves / Ethnic Signs: Inventions of Self, Space, and Genealogy in
Immigrant Writing.” In Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies. Ed. by
E. Valentine Daniel and Jeffrey M. Peck. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1996. 175-194. 178.
164 Hornung 1990:389
165 Cf. e.g. Jelinek, Estelle C. Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana UP, 1980.; Jelinek, Estelle C. The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography: From Antiquity to the
Present. Woodbridge, CT: Twayne, 1986.; Heilbrun, Carolyn C. Writing a Woman’s Life. New York:
Ballantine, 1989.
166 Cf. e.g. Stanton, Domna C., ed. The Female Autograph: Theory and Practice of Autobiography from
the Tenth to the Twentieth Century. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.; Benstock, Shari. The Private Self:
Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1988.
37
of gender as a social construct. 167 Later feminist criticism of women’s autobiography
started to regard the female genre as less distinct and has bridged the gender gap
somewhat. Further insights have come from opening up the canon to postcolonial and
third-world writers and new autobiographical media such as poetry and cinema.168
Feminist critic Françoise Lionnet has provided a new perspective on the
autobiographical writings of multilingual and/or multicultural authors with her
concept of métissage, or braiding: She regards these as multicultural
autoethnography. 169
This brings us to ethnic autobiography: Scholarship has largely focused on
African-American 170 and Native-American171 autobiographical texts, but also on
those of European,172 Mexican173 and (to a lesser extent) of Asian174 immigrants and
their offspring. However, African-American self-narrative has its roots in slave
narrative175 and therefore in bondage and oppression — a significant contrast to
immigrant autobiography that at least initially equates America with freedom. For this
reason, in African-American autobiographical writing, the self has been seen as
split 176 and as more or less collective;177 concepts that later also have been used to
describe other non-Western self-narratives. William Boelhower showcases in his
study of Italian-American autobiography four modes that immigrant autobiography in
general can take on. 178 Other than that, analyses of immigrant self writing have
mostly been group-specific — a tendency that has been vehemently criticized by
167
Cf. e.g. Smith, Sidonie. A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of SelfRepresentation. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.; Braxton, Joanne M. Black Women Writing
Autobiography: A Tradition Within Tradition. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989.; Hornung 1990:389
168 Cf. e.g. Bloom, Lynn Z. “Shaping Women’s Lives” a/b Autobiography Studies 4.1 (1988): 17-21.;
Brodzki, Bella and Celeste Marguerite Schenk, eds. Life/Lines: Theorizing Women’s Autobiography.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988.
169 Cf. Lionnet, Françoise. Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
UP, 1991.
170 Cf. e.g. Andrews, William L. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American
Autobiography, 1769-1865. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1986.; Butterfield, Stephen. Black Autobiography in
America. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1974.; Ensslen, Klaus. Einführung in die
schwarzamerikanische Literatur. Stuttgart: Kohlhummer, 1982.
171 Cf. e.g. Krupat, Arnold. For Those Who Come After: A Study of Native American Autobiography.
Los Angeles, CA: U of California P, 1985.; Bataille, Gretchen and Kathleen Mullen Sands. American
Indian Women: Telling Their Lives. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1984.; Brumble, H. David III. American
Indian Autobiography. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988.
172 Boelhower, William. Immigrant Autobiography in the United States: Four Versions of the Italian
American Self. Verona: Essedue, 1982.; Dittmar, Kurt. Assimilation und Dissimilation:
Erscheinungsformen der Marginalitätsthematik bei jüdisch-amerikanischen Erzählern (1900-1970). Las
Vegas: Lang, 1978.
173 Cf. e.g. Tonn, Horst. Zeitgenössische Chicano-Erzählliteratur in englischer Sprache: Autobiographie
und Roman. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 1988.; Padilla, Genaro M. My History, Not Yours: The Formation of
Mexican American Autobiography. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1993.
174 Cf. e.g. Meißenburg, Karin. The Writing on the Wall: Socio-Historical Aspects of Chinese American
Literature, 1900-1980. Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1987.; Davis, Rocío
G. Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood. Honolulu: U of Hawaii
P, 2007.
175 Cf. e.g. Davis, Charles T. and Henry Louis Gates. The Slave’s Narrative. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.;
Foster, Frances Smith. Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-Bellum Slave Narratives.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978.
176 Cf. Kerschgens, Edda. Das gespaltene Ich: 100 Jahre afroamerikanischer Autobiographie:
Washington und W. E. B. Du Bois. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1980.
177 Ensslen 1982
178 Boelhower 1982
38
Werner Sollors as inflexible and ahistorical. 179 According to him, autobiographies are
to be read for their aesthetic and literary contexts regardless of their cultural
specificity.180 This in turn has been rejected by Cynthia Sau-Ling Wong; she argues
that Sollors’ approach is, by being rashly transethnic, just as static and ahistorical as a
group-specific analysis as long there is not sufficient knowledge of how the
experience of a group becomes manifest in its literature. 181 This is especially true for
autobiographic writing as in most cases, it adopts a retrospective onto the author’s life
and therefore his or her home country. As a result, it is fundamentally determined by
its specific cultural background. As I will detail below, this seriously questions
Gusdorf’s conception of autobiography as typically Western: There is also selfnarrative in the ‘Orient’ — yet with a different self-consciousness in many nonWestern cultures,182 the development of autobiographies has taken other directions.
Obviously, the possible influence of specific cultural identities or hybridities has to be
taken into consideration when we examine immigrant or ethnic autobiographical
writing. For instance, Wong has shown for Chinese Americans that their selfnarratives do not concur with Boelhower’s macrotext. One of her main arguments can
also be witnessed in Iranian-American autobiography: The authors do not concentrate
so much on their own experience in the USA, but cater to their audiences’
expectations and act as a guide into their ‘exotic’ culture.183
Since the 1990s, the number of published autobiographical texts has risen
considerably. This phenomenon has been dubbed “The Age of the Literary
Memoir”184 already in 1996 and has to be seen as part of American cultural
memory. 185 As a result, literary theorists have begun to turn their attention more and
more towards autobiography, and with that, also ethnic self-narrative. While Jerzy
Durczak in 1999 still argues that bicultural or ethnic autobiography has “received
surprisingly little critical attention,” 186 this is not true any more today. Also
autobiographies of ethnic groups other than African or Native Americans are now
being investigated, notably Mexican- and Asian-American narratives.
179
Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford
UP, 1986. 11-19.
180 Sollors, Werner. “Comments.” Cultural Difference & the Literary Text: Pluralism & the Limits of
Authenticity in North American Literatures. Ed. Winfried Siemerling, and Katrin Schwenk. Iowa City:
U of Iowa P, 1996. 151–161. 153.
181 Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “Immigrant Autobiography: Some Questions of Definition and Approach.”
American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Ed. by Paul John Eakin. Madison, Wisconsin: U of
Wisconsin P, 1991. 142-170. 161.
182 Friedman 34
183 Wong 1991; Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong
Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and the Chinese American Autobiography Controversy.” In Maxine
Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: A Casebook. Ed. by Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong. New York: Oxford
UP, 1999. 29-53.
184 Atlas, James. “Confessing for Voyeurs; The Age of the Literary Memoir is Now.” The New York
Times Magazine. May 12, 1996 <http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/12/magazine/confessing-forvoyeurs-the-age-of-the-literary-memoir-is-now.html> (last retrieved June 27, 2012)
185 Hebel Udo, ed. Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures. American Studies Monograph
Series 101. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003.
186 Durczak, Jerzy. Selves Between Cultures. Contemporary American Bicultural Autobiography. San
Francisco: International Scholars, 1999. 1f.
39
However, exceedingly little attention has been paid to others,187 as for
example Middle Eastern authors in general and to Iranian writers in particular — the
few articles or contributions in edited volumes have been authored to an
overwhelming extent by scholars with an Iranian background. Interest by others has
been so limited that it cannot only be explained by the smaller number of immigrants
that have come to America from this region; it might be lack of cultural knowledge or
political reasons that have kept researchers from exploring their autobiographical
writing.188 However, it is especially these radical differences and difficulties that
highlight the necessity for scholarly attention. The conclusions that can potentially be
drawn from these texts are particularly significant as Iranian Americans’ selfnarratives are identity constructions and negotiations under extreme conditions,
individually, socially and politically.
Autobiography in the Arabic-Persian Tradition
Older autobiography studies scholarship has often claimed that autobiography
is an essentially Western literary category. Most well-known is Georges Gusdorf’s
assertion:
It would seem that autobiography is not to be found outside our cultural area; one would say that
it expresses a concern peculiar to Western man (…). The concern, which seems so natural to us,
to turn back on one’s own past, to recollect one’s life in order to narrate it, is not at all universal.
It asserts itself only in recent centuries and only in a small part of the map of the world. 189
But other critics have also reiterated this claim, notably Roy Pascal,190 and Georges
May, who has asserted that autobiography is inextricably linked to Christianity. 191
More specifically, it has been argued by Stephen Humphreys, autobiography
in general is a “very rare genre in Islamic literature”192 and Marvin Zonis even speaks
of a “relative absence.”193 While Franz Rosenthal has pointed out that there is a large
quantity of self-testimony, he does not regard them as ‘full-blown’ autobiography in
the sense of a cohesive work.194 However, these early scholars subscribe to a now
outdated definition of autobiography as an account of an individual’s internal
187
Durczak 1f.
exception is Gillian Whitlock who in her book Soft Weapons has devoted a chapter to
Iranian-American autobiography. Unfortunately, she focuses almost exclusively on Nafisi’s Reading
Lolita in Tehran, a book that is regarded to be highly problematic by many in the diaspora. (Whitlock,
Gillian. Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit. Chicago, Ill.: U of Chicago P, 2007.; Nafisi, Azar.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, 2004 (2003).)
189 Gusdorf 29
190 Pascal 1960:22
191 May, Georges. L’autobiographie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979. 17-25.
192 Humphreys, R. Stephen. Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
194.; ‘Islamic’ refers to literatures of Muslim societies, especially those of Arab and Iranian
background. Similarly, ‘Arabic’ autobiography includes writings of Iranians, who were for centuries
writing in Arabic as the lingua franca comparable to Latin. Arab and Iranian traditions interlink, which
is why we should speak of an Arabic-Persian tradition.
193 Zonis, Marvin. “Autobiography and Biography in the Middle East: a Plea for Psychopolitical
Studies.” In Middle Eastern lives: the Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative. Ed. by Michael S.
Kramer. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1991. 63.
194 Rosenthal, Franz. “Die arabische Autobiographie.” Studia Arabica 1 (1937) 1-40. 3.
188 A notable
40
personality — a tendency of life-writing of ‘Western’ (and predominantly male)
provenance. Their work judges whether texts texts are ‘true’ autobiographies
according to such subjective criteria as the degree to which the author reveals his
inner self, or evaluates his earlier self; it is in its Eurocentrism blind to the possibility
that autobiography as they know it is just one of many different variations of the
theme of writing one’s life. The work of scholars such as Aldo Scaglione, who
attempted to redeem this error, has had comparatively little impact.195
Dwight F. Reynolds, however, argues that “the genre of autobiography was
clearly established in the Arabic literary tradition no later than the twelfth century,
although the earliest examples can be traced back at least as far as the ninth
century.”196 This tradition, it should be noted, includes self-writing of Iranian authors,
who were heavily influenced by Arabic literature after the Muslim conquest.
Especially historiography, so intricately linked to life-writing in the Arabic tradition,
as I will show below, was conducted in Arabic. 197
While Georg Misch argues with Franz Rosenthal that autobiography had not
been regarded as a specific narrative form,198 Reynolds disproves this claim with an
excerpt of an autobiography of the Egyptian al-Suyuti (15th century AD) which
clearly shows how “[i]t is the act of writing an account of one’s life and not the
formal characteristics of the resulting text that defined autobiography for al-Suyuti
and his contemporaries.”199 Rather than there not being any autobiography at all,
autobiography here has different motivations: not confession, but thanking God and
providing an exemplary life story for others to emulate.
Also, Reynolds argues, Arabic auto/biography adheres to a different structure:
not inspired by the fictional counterpart of the novel, but by historical inquiry.200 It is
then especially the account of biographical data and the exemplary life story or sira 201
that gained prominence. Maybe comparable to European hagiographies, ArabicPersian autobiographies’ focus was on a person’s acts and works rather than on
personal idiosyncrasies and emotions. Autobiography, like biography, “was history in
the view of many of its practitioners”202 and history was always organized around the
lives of leaders. As Mary Ann Fay aptly notes, “[t]he Arab understanding of history
and historical method as biography exposes the Eurocentric nature of postmodernist
195 Scaglione, Aldo.
“The Mediterranean’s Three Spiritual Shores: Images of Self between Christianity
and Islam in the Later Middle Ages.” In The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics. Ed. by Leigh
A. Arrathoon. Rochester: Solaris, 1984. 453-73.
196 Reynolds, Dwight F., ed. Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition.
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: U of California P, 2001. 2.
197 Spuler, Bertold. “The Evolution of Persian Historiography.” In Historians of the Middle East. Ed. by
Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. 126-132. 127.
198 Misch Vol. 3.2 908f.
199 Reynolds 2
200 Reynolds 5
201 Misch Vol. 3.2 909, Reynolds 38ff.
202 Khalidi, Tarif. Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
44ff. quoted in Tucker, Judith. “Biography as History: The Exemplary Life of Khayr al-Din al-Ramli.”
In Auto/Biography and the Construction of Identity and Community in the Middle East. Ed. by Mary
Ann Fay. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 9-17.
41
claims that the autonomous individual or subject is the creation of Western humanism
and the Enlightenment”203 — a thought that connects well with above criticism of
older Eurocentric autobiography studies.
Not included in Reynolds’ account are the Persian-language traditions of
Iranian political and religious memoirs. Iranian political autobiography has a long
tradition including self-laudatory stone-hewn inscriptions of kings like Darius,204
royal Moghul memoirs like the babur nameh by Muhammad Babur, the founder of
the Mughal Empire205 and, probably mixed with the exemplary life story, leads up to
the memoirs of politicians in 19th and 20th-century Iran that Bert Fragner describes.206
In terms of religious autobiography, Misch finds that life-writing from an Iranian
background — like the early 12th century autobiography of al-Ghazzali — often
especially exhibits the speculative mysticism of Sufism. All in all, however, Persian
auto/biographical production is not peculiar to Iran, its “characteristics are shared to a
greater or less [sic] degree with similar writings in other parts of the Islamic
world.”207
Iranian Autobiography
The late 19th to mid-20th century brought about a transformation of Iranian
literature not least through the reception of European literature.208 For centuries,
poetry, especially epics, philosophical and love poetry — “lyric and panegyric genres
that were not intended to be autobiographical”209 — had prevailed over prose;210 then,
travel literature, historical novels, satirical portraits and short stories were on the rise.
By now, prose fiction is firmly established in the Iranian literary scene and market.
203 Fay,
Mary Ann, ed. Auto/Biography and the Construction of Identity and Community in the Middle
East. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 2.
204 Lewis, Bernard. “First-Person Narrative in the Middle East.” In Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice
of Biography and Self-Narrative. Ed. by Michael S. Kramer. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1991. 20-34.
22.
205 Dale, Stephen F. “The Poetry and Autobiography of the Babur-nama.” The Journal of Asian Studies
55.3 (1996): 635-664.;
The babur name is considered even by Misch a description of “a real person, natural and unadorned,” in
spite of the tradition of kingly self-representation it rests on (958) [my translation: “einen lebendigen
Menschen in schlichter, unvergoldeter Natürlichkeit”]
206 Fragner, Bert G. Persische Memoirenliteratur als Quelle zur neueren Geschichte Irans. Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner, 1979.
207 Lambton, Ann K. S. “Persian Biographical Literature.” In Historians of the Middle East. Ed. by
Bernard Lewis and P. M. Holt. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. 141-151. 151.
208 Ghanoonparvar, Mohammad Reza. Prophets of Doom: Literature as a Socio-Political Phenomenon
in Modern Iran. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1984.; Mozaffari, Nahid, ed. Strange Times, My Dear:
The PEN Anthology Of Contemporary Iranian Literature. New York: Arcade, 2005. xvi.; for the
development of Iranian literature see Alavi, Bozorg. Geschichte und Entwicklung der modernen
persischen Literatur. Berlin: Akademie, 1964.; Kamshad, Hamid. Modern Persian Prose Literature.
Bethesda, MD: Iranbooks, 1996. (1966).; Hillmann, Michael C. “Persian Prose Fiction (1921-1977): An
Iranian Mirror and Conscience.” In Persian Literature. Ed. by Ehsan Yarshater. Albany: The Persian
Heritage Foundation, 1988. 291-317.; Stümpel, Isabel. “Die Literatur in der Iranischen Republik Iran.”
In Orientalische Erzähler der Gegenwart: Vorträge und Übersetzungen der Mainzer Ringvorlesung im
Sommersemester 1998. Ed. by Konrad Meisig. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 1999. 77-100.
209 Dale 635
210 Mozaffari xvi
42
Yet autobiographical writing has not enjoyed as much enthusiasm. “Iranians,”
writes Afsaneh Najmabadi, “have basically turned their backs on autobiography”211
and Marvin Zonis and William L. Hanaway claim that especially women in Muslim
societies like Iran generally do not write about their selves publicly. 212 This is not
fully true, as Iranian literature going as far back as pre-Islamic times shows
autobiographical traits: Fereshteh Davaran, for instance, explores Iranian advice
literature of before and after the Muslim conquest. Both andarz (pre-Islamic) and
adab (post-Islamic) are, in a wider sense, autobiographical and reflect Iranian cultural
identity, especially as Davaran argues that the influences of the pre-Islamic genre live
on in adab after the Muslim conquest. 213 Life writing also exists in later centuries,
Isabel Stümpel notes, giving the Iranian literary scholar Hasan-e Mir Abedini as her
source: Politicians of Qajar and Pahlavi Iran as well as a growing number of
intellectual private individuals published their memoirs, probably in imitation of
European sources.214 Also Bert Fragner notes this development, further specifying
that the early works of autobiography of the 19th century stood in the well-respected
tradition of travel writing, whereas later 20th-century memoirs were more and more
chronicling the country’s history from individual perspectives, thus catering to a
rising public interest.215 Also women, Abedini claims, are increasingly turning
towards autobiography. What is striking in these Iranian autobiographical writings is
the tendency towards fiction, whereas fictional writing often appears to be
autobiographically influenced. 216 A similar observation has been made by Farideh
Goldin, who reminds us that “[t]he Persian word khaterat is often used casually by
Iranians to refer to any autobiographical narrative. Khaterat [are not necessarily]
memoirs as defined by western literary standards.”217 It becomes quite obvious then
that a tradition of life writing does exist in Iran, but that it has a tendency to transcend
the norms of autobiography in the narrow sense.
Still, however, it is a relatively minor form of writing and has, historically,
always been. Also the aspect that has often been regarded as most important in
‘Western’ autobiography, the expression of individual personality, does not feature
centrally. Indeed, autobiographers only turn to it in the second half of the 20th
211 Najmabadi, Afsaneh,
ed. Women’s Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1990. 2.
212 Hanaway, William L. “Half-Voices, Persian Women’s Lives and Letters.” In Women’s
Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran. Ed. by Afsaneh Najmabadi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1990. 56.; Zonis 1991 60f.
213 Davaran, Fereshteh. Continuity in Iranian Identity: Resilience of a Cultural Heritage. New York:
Routledge, 2010.
214 Abedini, Hasan Mir. “Adabiyat-e dastani dar sal-e 1375. Bahsh-e avval.” Bohara 1:1 (1377/1998)
169-76. 173f., cited in Stümpel 84
215 Fragner 4
216 Abedini 174; Milani, Farzaneh. “Zan va hadith-e nafs nevisi dar Iran.” (“Women and self-narrative in
Iran”) IranNameh (1375/1996) 611-35.
217 Goldin, Farideh. “Iranian Women and Contemporary Memoirs.” Iran Chamber Society (2004) 20
Aug 2007. <www.iranchamber.com/culture/articles/iranian_women_contemporary_memoirs.php> (last
retrieved September 12, 2012).
43
century 218 — in spite of the fact that some of its ‘ingredients’ are readily available to
writers: Self-reflexivity, for example, is widely found in aforementioned Persian
mysticist literature, and poets are allowed to indulge in self-praise similar to the kings
and scholars of yore through the takhallos [pen name] tradition, but “the uninhibited,
unformulaic, public disclosure of self” has been suppressed.219 So while European
literature has influenced literary production in Iran in that the autobiographical genre
has been imitated, the existing tradition of life writing has persisted. There are several
possible reasons for this.
Certainly, the political climate since the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-07,
through Reza Shah Pahlavi’s overthrow of the Qajars, the repressive rule of his son
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the revolution and consequent theocracy has not helped
foster an atmosphere in which people feel free to reveal their innermost selves.
Iranian literature rather tends to be allegorical and allusive, owing largely to an
atmosphere of censorship and persecution of all-too-critical writers. 220 What is more,
many contemporary literary works are based on the premise that reality ultimately
cannot be known. 221
However, more compelling reasons for this dearth of self-writing in Persian
literary history might be found in a culture that has traditionally put much emphasis
on protecting external appearances, on keeping the private hidden from the public for
fear of such knowledge being exploited, a tendency that I will detail in chapter 5
“Between Fiction and Fact.” Moreover, Islam does not require the sinner to confess
sins committed in the private domain to anyone, and indeed “the preference is to
repent and keep it unpublicized.”222 This stands in stark contrast to a Christian
confessional culture — where disclosing one’s inner self has, since the
autobiographies of Rousseau and Goethe at the turn of the 18th century, become a
central ‘requirement’ for autobiography in the traditional ‘Western’ sense: the
combination of outside events with inside emotionality.
Iranian-American Life Writing and the Dynamics of the American Book Market
Iranian-American autobiographies have been published in English since the
1950s and their numbers started to rise considerably after the Iranian Revolution
when hundreds of thousands went into American exile. However, it took until the late
218 Fragner
5
219 Najmabadi
2
220 Davaran, Ardavan.
“Iranian Diaspora Literature Since 1980: Contexts and Currents.” Literary
Review 40:1 (1996): 5-13.
221 Mozaffari xxii
222 Kadivar, Mohsen. “An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islam.” In Social Research:
A Quarterly of the Social Sciences 70:3 (2003) 659-82. 668.
44
80s, early 90s that critics started to first pay attention to their literature.223 Since the
events of 9/11, the number of autobiographies — and public interest in them — has
grown quickly. So far, however, only a number of articles and a special issue of
MELUS224 have turned to the analysis of Iranian-American writings. 225 Most of them
are part of the Orientalism debate around Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran,226
but a few articles concentrate on French-Iranian author Marjane Satrapi’s
Persepolis 227 and on Jewish Iranian-American literature.228 Gillian Whitlock has
included a chapter on Iranian-American autobiography in her book Soft Weapons, but
she, too, has focused largely on Nafisi.229 So far, then, no in-depth study has been
conducted on Iranian-American literature, let alone on its predominant genre.
223
Beard, Michael and Hassan Javadi. “Iranian Writers Abroad: Survey and Elegy.” World Literature
Today 60 (1986) 257-261.; Naficy, Hamid. “The Poetics and Practice of Iranian Nostalgia in Exile.”
Diaspora 1:3 (1991) 285-302.; Rahimieh, Nasrin. “The Quince-Orange Tree, Or Iranian Writers in
Exile.” World Literature Today 66.1 (1992): 39–42.; Milani, Farzaneh. Veils and Words: The Emerging
Voices of Iranian Women Writers. London: I.B. Tauris, 1992.; Rahimieh 1996;
224 MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
33.2 (2008); specifically Karim, Persis M, and Nasrin Rahimieh. “Editors' Introduction: Writing Iranian
Americans into the American Literature Canon.” 7–16.; Motlagh 2008; Elahi, Babak. “Fake Farsi:
Formulaic Flexibility in Iranian American Women’s Memoir.” 37–54.; Darznik, Jasmin. “The Perils and
Seductions of Home: Return Narratives of the Iranian Diaspora.” 55–72.
225 Cf. Davaran 1996; Goldin 2004; Elahi, Babak. “Translating the Self: Language and Identity in
Iranian-American Women’s Memoirs.” Iranian Studies 39.4 (2006): 461–480.; Vahabzadeh, Peyman.
“Where Will I Dwell?: A Sociology of Literary Identity Within the Iranian Diaspora.” Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 28:3 (2008): 495-512.; Karim, Persis. “Reflections on
Literature after the 1979 Revolution in Iran and in the Diaspora.” Radical Historical Review 105
(2009): 151-155.; Naghibi, Nima. “Revolution, Trauma, and Nostalgia in Diasporic Iranian Women’s
Autobiographies.” Radical Historical Review 105 (2009): 79-91.; Darznik, Jasmin. “Forough Goes
West: The Legacy of Forough Farrokhzad in Iranian Diasporic Art and Literature.” Journal of Middle
East Women’s Studies 6:1 (2010): 103-116.
226 Vick, Karl. “Sorry, Wrong Chador: In Tehran, ‘Reading Lolita’ Translates as Ancient History.”
Washington Post 19 July 2004. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A60490-2004Jul18.html> (last retrieved September 11, 2012); Mottahedeh, Negar. “Off the Grid:
Reading Iranian Memoirs in Our Time of Total War.” Middle East Report Online Sept 2004. <http://
www.merip.org/mero/interventions/grid> (last retrieved September 11, 2012); Bahramitash, Roksana.
“The War on Terror, Feminist Orientalism and Orientalist Feminism: Case Studies of Two North
American Bestsellers.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 14:2 (2005): 223-237.; Rastegar,
Mitra. “Reading Nafisi in the West: Authenticity, Orientalism, and ‘Liberating’ Iranian Women.”
Women’s Studies Quarterly 34.1-2 (2006): 108–128.; Dabashi, Hamid. “Native Informers and the
Making of the American Empire.” Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1-7 June 2006 <http://
weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/797/special.htm> (last retrieved September 11, 2012); Dabashi, Hamid.
“Lolita and Beyond.” ZNet: The Spirit of Resistance Lives August 4, 2006. <http://
www.zcommunications.org/lolita-and-beyond-by-hamid-dabashi> (last retrieved September 11, 2012);
Rowe, John Carlos. “Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho.” American Quarterly 59:2 (2007):
253–275.; Asfour, Nana. “Women Under the Influence.” Bookforum April/May 2008
<www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_01/2247> (last retrieved September 11, 2012); Kulbaga, Theresa A.
“Pleasurable Pedagogies: Reading Lolita in Tehran and the Rhetoric of Empathy.” College English 70.5
(2008): 506–521.; Marandi, Mohammed Seyed. “Reading Azar Nafisi in Tehran.” Comparative
American Studies: An International Journal 6:2 (2008): 179-189.; DePaul, Amy. “Re-Reading Reading
Lolita in Tehran.” MELUS 33:2 (2008): 73-91.; Behdad, Ali. “Critical Historicism.” American Literary
History 20:1-2 (2008): 286-299.; Mannani, Manijeh. “Reading Beyond Jasmine and Stars: Reading
More Than Lolita in Tehran.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29:2
(2009) 322-334.; Sedarat, Roger. “Veiling Hypenated Identities: Iranian-American Poets’ Appropriation
of Orientalism.” In Orient and Orientalisms in US-American Poetry and Poetics. Ed. by Sabine Sielke
and Christian Kloeckner. Frankfurt a.M., Germany: Lang, 2009.
227 Ramazani, Nesta. “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, and Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in
Books.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24.1 (2004): 278–280.;
Naghibi, Nima and Andrew O’Malley. “Estranging the Familiar: ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Satrapi’s
Persepolis.” English Studies in Canada 31:2-3 (2005): 223-247.; Malek 2006;
228 Harris, Marla. “Consuming Words: Memoirs by Iranian Jewish Women.” Nashim 15 (2008): 138–
164.; Goldin, Farideh. “The Ghosts of Our Mothers: From Oral Tradition to Written Words—A History
and Critique of Jewish Women Writers of Iranian Origin.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s
Studies and Gender Issues 18 (2009): 87-124.
229 Whitlock 2007
45
An overview of the framing of Iranian-American life writing will help us
understand and analyze these writers’ narrative strategies. For, as Helen Buss puts it,
to understand memoir as a genre (…) we need to consider genre not only in the traditional
way, as a set of writing practices, but also as a particular ideologically shaped discourse, in
which we take into account the functional aspects of genre, the way in which a genre arises
from particular social needs, empowers a particular class of people, and becomes a cultural
practice. Such a view of genre is always sensitive to issues such as gender, class, race, and
sexual orientation.230
Ethnic life writing in general has a tendency toward autobiography. The need
to explain oneself and one’s cultural background, to lend the authority of ‘reality’ to
one’s narrative,231 and to overcome the trauma of migration or of being part of a
minority by writing, 232 are powerful motives that have led authors to life-writing time
and again and certainly are at play in Iranian-American literary output.
But also the market and publishers have decisive influence on the production
of literature, as has been pointed out, for instance, by Gabriele Linke, Lori Ween, and
Gillian Whitlock.233 Firstly, American readers often desire texts by ethnic authors, as
they “signal the possibility of indirect access to ‘exotic’ cultures whose differences
are acknowledged and
celebrated even as they are rendered amenable to a
mainstream reading public.”234 Ethnic cultures’ perceived authenticity, their being
somehow more spiritual, more ‘natural’ than dominant culture, is linked to a nostalgia
for a primordial, bucolic existence which we can also find in pastoralism. Indeed,
Iranian-American autobiographers seem to cater to this nostalgia especially well with
their imagery of Persian paradise gardens, as I will show in chapter 7 “Imagining
‘Home:’ Between Persian Paradise and American Arcadia.” The flip-side of the coin
is that ethnic cultures are not only associated with paradisiacal places and a more
instinctual-sensual way of life, but can also be seen as backward and oppressive — a
fallen Eden. This is, I argue, especially the case for Muslim cultures. Mainstream
audiences’ voyeurism, however, extends to both types of ‘exotic’ culture.
This demand for ethnic writing is anticipated by publishers who then further
promote the texts — especially autobiography, as I will point out below — and
package them in specific ways as ‘ethnic.’ They use the work’s ‘paratexts’ “to shape,
redefine, and sell [it] for the larger reading audience and provide important clues
about how the text functions in its reading communities as a cultural commodity.”235
230 Buss,
Helen. “Memoirs.” The Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Ed. by Margaretta Jolly. London: Fitzroy
Dearborn, 2001. 595-97. 595.
231 Huggan, chapter 6 “Ethnic autobiography and the cult of authenticity.” pp. 155-176
232 Volker Depkat differentiates three causes for autobiography in general: old age, a major break in the
continuity of the autobiographer’s life, and marginalization. Cf. Depkat 99
233 Linke, Gabriele. Populärliteratur als kulturelles Gedächtnis: Eine vergleichende Studie zu
zeitgenössischen britischen und amerikanischen popular romances der Verlagsgruppe Harlequin Mills
& Boon. American Studies Monograph Series 104. Heidelberg: Winter, 2003. 52; 74-81.
Ween, Lori. “This is Your Book: Marketing America to Itself.” PMLA 118:1 (2003): 90-102. 91.
For Iranian-American memoir in particular, cf. Whitlock 2008:10
234 Huggan 155f.
235 Ween 91
46
Gérard Genette has categorized these forces into peritextual and epitextual elements:
those physically attached, like cover design and blurbs, and those “located outside the
book,” like interviews and book readings. 236 These dynamics become all too obvious
regarding Iranian-American autobiography, as ‘oriental’ designs and veiled women
abound in their cover art, and book reviews frequently also thematize female
oppression in Islamic countries. However, I want to stress with Ween that “it is
important to remember that the 'original' text of a novel should not be seen as a pure,
untouched document that is corrupted or changed by the publishing industry and
marketing schemes. The various ‘layers of rhetorical accretion’ become part of the
book.”237 Although pursuing these questions further would go beyond the scope of
this project, they will certainly inform my analysis.
Secondly, autobiographers frequently respond to their American audiences’
and publishers’ demands by acting as a culture guide, as has been observed by
Wong238 — but in the process often succumb to the temptation of exoticizing their
own cultural background. This is true in particular for the life writings of Muslim
women, which have grown especially popular. They seem to lift a perceived ‘veil’ of
an otherwise hidden and little-understood society and its even-more-hidden female
lives. Iranian-American autobiography additionally promises insight into the lives of
a people that ever since the hostage crisis during the Iranian revolution have been
stereotyped by many Americans as ‘evil Islamic fundamentalists’ and ‘suppressed
Oriental women.’239 It is most probably the audience-publisher-dynamic that should
be ‘credited’ for the overwhelming presence of Iranian-American female
autobiography — for also Iranian-American men have published their memoirs, albeit
virtually neglected, published by small houses, diasporic publishers or by selfpublication. 240 Particularly feminist audiences have taken to celebrating Iranian
women’s autobiographical writing without realizing the ways in which these books
are subject to the exoticist dynamics of the book market. A number of scholars,
however, have harshly criticized the tendency of (female) authors becoming culture
guides, as markets pressurize authors to narrate themselves as more and more
exotic241 and the position of culture guide virtually forecloses the possibility for
autobiographers to inscribe themselves into American culture.
236 Genette,
Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 5.
91
238 Wong, Sau-ling, Cynthia. Sugar Sisterhood: Situating the Amy Tan Phenomenon.” In The Ethnic
Canon: Histories, Institutions and Interventions. Ed. by David Palumbo-Liu. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1995. 174-210.; Wong 1999;
239 Whitlock 2008:10
240 See subchapter “Corpus”
241 Cf. Nomani, Asra Q. “Veiled Babes: Why are Western publishers so keen on shrouded cover
models?” Slate. 7 Nov 2006. <http://www.slate.com/id/2153013/> (last retrieved September 11, 2012);
Osanloo, Azita. “The Pressure to be Exotic.” Poets & Writers, Inc. (2006). <http://www.pw.org/content/
imperative_pressure_be_exotic?article_page=2> (last retrieved September 11, 2012)
237 Ween
47
What is more, exoticized autobiographies have been accused of reinforcing
neo-Orientalism. 242
Orientalism has long served as implicit justification for
colonialism and imperialism and contemporary critics are concerned that
autobiographies of Middle Eastern immigrants are now being used and abused
politically, for example to sanctify American intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq and
possibly Iran to the larger public.243 Autobiography’s apparent claim of truthfulness
makes it easy prey for political propaganda.244 Especially women’s memoirs from the
Middle East seem to provide ‘factual’ knowledge and thus become tools within
American politics of ‘promoting democracy’ in this region.245 As Jeanette Mageo puts
it: “[No] memory is innocent”246 — there is always choice and intention involved
when it comes to the question of what to remember, and in what way. For instance,
(feminist) Iranian-American women writers have been charged with a ‘latent
Orientalism’ in Edward Said’s sense. 247 Their usage of tropes like the veil, argues
Roger Sedarat, “exposes the hidden effects of Orientalism that both threatens to limit
the extent of what they say and allows them to be heard.”248 Particularly Azar Nafisi’s
book Reading Lolita in Tehran has stirred an ongoing debate, but also other authors’
writing has been noted as being “dense with exotic aromatics.” 249 Nafisi has been
criticized for casting Iran in stark colors, depicting Islam as irrational und oppressive,
most Iranian men as agents of malevolence or even violence, and Iranian women as
passively suffering.250 The book has been discussed as outdated, representing a past
period,251 and yet, being autobiography, consumers without background knowledge
tend to read it as current reality.
Lastly, one has to realize how market economy has made nonautobiographical genres virtually inaccessible to Iranian Americans, as publishers
push authors towards life writing, anticipating the American readers’ desire for
‘authenticity’ and their voyeurist curiosity to peek behind the veil. 252 Only recently, or
else online or in anthologies, the diaspora is freeing itself from this dictate and
publishing larger quantities of poetry and fiction — while the tide of autobiography is
242
Cf. e.g. Dabashi 2006a and 2006b; Behdad, Ali and Juliet Williams. “Neo-Orientalism.” In
Globalizing American Studies. Ed. by Brian T. Edwards and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 2010. 283-299.
243 Dabashi 2006a and 2006b; Rowe;
244 Motlagh 2008:18
245 Cf. Mottahedeh; Nomani; DePaul; Kulbaga;
246 Mageo, Jeanette Marie. “On Memory Genres: Tendencies in Cultural Remembering.” Cultural
Memory: Reconfiguring History and Identity in the Postcolonial Pacific. Ed. by J.M. Mageo. Honolulu:
U of Hawaii P, 2001. 11-33. 29.
247 Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979. 206.
248 Sedarat 311
249 Whitlock 2008:10f.; cf. also Tahani-Bidmeshki, Amy. “Reading Funny Lipsticks Through Jihad: The
Politics of Feminism and Nationalism in Iranian-American Women’s Memoirs.” Thinking Gender
Papers, UCLA Center for the Study of Women 2007 <http://escholarship.org/uc/item/45n5r8gm> (last
retrieved June 4, 2012)
250 Cf. e.g. Keshavarz, Fatemeh. Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran. Columbia,
SC: U of North Carolina P, 2007.; Bahramitash; Rastegar;
251 Cf. Vick; Mottahedeh;
252 Malek 2006:364
48
not abating. 253 Iranian-American autobiographers indeed achieve their own voice in
the American public for the first time,254 ameliorating their image and explaining their
cultural heritage, even constructing a group identity, but this happens in constant
negotiation with their American audiences’ exoticist desires.
In my analysis, I try to keep a critical consciousness of these dynamics of the
book markets: Audiences’ exoticism and desire for authenticity may lead to
autobiographers’ self-orientalization. Likewise, feminism and neo-Orientalism
interact with how Iranian-American writers present themselves. Even the choice of
genre may at times be a result of market preference. While mostly, the influence of
audiences and publishers is hardly tangible, it is necessarily also always there.
Therefore, we have to be reading ethnic autobiographical writing with these dynamics
in mind and should not assume that self-construction in these texts happens in
isolation. After all, autobiography is never innocent, is always fraught with intentions
— both the authors,’ but also the readers’ and publishers.’ The autobiographer is
constructing his self not only for himself and his group, but also always in reaction to
the interests of the publisher — who, in turn, tries to anticipate the desires of the
mainstream audience.
0.5 Organization of Chapters
My empirical approach to self-construction and negotiation in IranianAmerican autobiographical writing was inspired by Grounded Theory,255 as this
offered a way to filter out central topics with least interference by Eurocentric
preconceptions. The resulting topics are reflected in the chapter titles and will be
outlined below. In each chapter, I will first investigate the cultural and theoretical
background of the respective subject matter, then quote evidence from a range of
memoirs and analyze these quotes to support my supposition.
All the while, I do not aim to homogenize the diversity of constructions of
Iranian-American identity. While there is often a common tendency to these
narratives, just as often there are competing versions, diversions and divergences. All
partake in the ongoing and rhizomatic process of Iranian-American identity
negotiation. Also, this project cannot claim to be exhaustive for the same reason. I can
only hope to point out the most important trends of self-construction that are common
to otherwise individual life narratives.
253 Autobiographies
after 2010 include Bahara, Niki. Unpaved Road: An Iranian Girl’s Real Life Story
of Struggle, Deception, and Breaking the Rules. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2011.; Bijan, Donia. Maman’s
Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen. New York: Algonquin, 2011.; Bundy, Ariana.
Pomegranates and Roses: My Persian Family Recipes. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012.; Darznik,
Jasmin. The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life. New York: Grand Central, 2011.;
Nafisi, Azar. Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter. New York: Random
House, 2010.; Nemat, Marina. After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed. New York: Penguin, 2011.
254 Malek 2006:362
255 Cf. Strauss, Anselm and Julien Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage,
1990.; Charmaz, Kathy. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative
Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006.
49
The threefold structure of this thesis reflects three entangled ways of narrating
the self — reconstructing one’s past, coming to terms with one’s physical present, and
negotiating the tug of old and new cultures, continually hovering between stability
and change, between heritage and fluidity.
The first part, “Troubled Heritage,” focuses on how Iranian-American
autobiographers reconstruct history and religion. Chapter 1 argues that many
(especially female and/or Jewish) authors narrate themselves as victims of the Islamic
regime in order to account for their leaving Iran. Chapter 2 analyzes how
autobiographers distance themselves from political Islam and consequently endeavor
to create an alternative, non-Islamic past. Predominantly, they identify with an
allegedly Aryan, Zoroastrian and Persian past, i.e. pre-Arab and pre-Islamic, but also
Islamic mysticism and and the concept of ‘shared humanity’ allow for a new
interpretation of Iranian identity.
The second part, “Language, the Body and the Iranian-American Self,” first
explores the interlinkages between authors’ self-constructions and language in chapter
3. While self-conscious autobiographers reflect on their language (in)abilities in both
English and Persian and the respective impact on their self-images, the performance
of self-confidence in both languages represents a claim to authority. In chapter 4, I
look at the interdependencies of self-construction and writers’ perceptions of their
own bodies, their skin color, their dress and sexuality as they stand in tension with
American cultures, or with Iranian cultures when diasporic subjects return to the
homeland.
Finally, the third part, “Culture: Inherited/In Flux,” traces some of the changes
Iranian cultures are going through as they oscillate between tradition and diasporic
transformation. In chapter 5, I concentrate on strategies of framing self-narratives as
fictional, which arguably stands in a certain Iranian tradition, or factual, which
answers to the desires of American book markets and helps the diaspora deal with its
trauma. Subsequently, in chapter 6, I delineate Iranian-American self-writing in its
shifting relationality, as for example autobiographers write themselves in relation to
proximate others not only to root themselves in their ancestry, but also to write the
history of the diaspora. Lastly, in chapter 7, I focus on changing metaphors of
belonging in Iranian-American autobiography as they continually shift in the force
field of Iranian and American conceptions of ‘paradise.’ While Iran is seen as a (lost)
paradise, the rebuilding of gardens on American ground stands for the diaspora’s
taking root.
I want to thus provide a multitude of aspects regarding Iranian-American selfconstruction, starting from how Iranian-American autobiographers deal with their
past, to how they incorporate the physical ‘realities’ of language and body into their
self-narratives, to how they present their cultures to both persist and transform in
diaspora. Most importantly, however, I argue that these self-constructions exemplify
50
distinctly Iranian-American identities, and that these autobiographies — even if partly
a result of market desires — enable Iranian Americans to inscribe themselves into
American literatures and cultures.
51
52
PART ONE: TROUBLED HERITAGE
History and Religion in the Diasporic Re-Construction
53
54
1. Explaining Departure: Narratives of Victimicy
In their endeavor to make sense of their lives and to bring their past and
present into some sort of narrative coherence, 256 Iranian diaspora subjects are faced
particularly with one event that changed their lives abruptly and completely: the
Iranian Revolution of 1979-81 — and, in its wake, the autobiographers’ departures.
Anticipated by few foreign experts, this revolution had been a popular
uprising against the then ruling Shah by a multitude of groups: religious people,
conservatives, socialists, Marxists, feminists and the clergy alike joined forces for a
limited time to oust the monarch. Considered a Western puppet, Shah Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi was despised for his lavish spending and his imposing of Western
values. While the country was growing richer, society’s expectations grew faster and
led to disenchantment with the Shah’s promises of social improvement; people from
rural backgrounds flooded the cities in hope of a better life and formed a huge
impoverished working class that saw nothing of the money that was made selling
Iran’s oil reserves.
Before and during the revolution, royalists and those who were perceived to
be sympathizing with the monarchy fled the country, along with cautious members of
religious minorities who had enjoyed comparative freedom under the Shah and now
feared persecution. These groups sometimes took vast amounts of assets with them
which enabled them to establish themselves abroad quickly. In the later days of the
revolution, when the clergy under Khomeini started to gain more power, their onceallies and now political enemies started to opt for exile, adding a second wave to the
already considerable number of Iranians in diaspora. This wave would continue
throughout the Iran-Iraq war with young men dodging the draft and people migrating
due to the bad economy well into the 90s, when, under the more relaxed government
of president Khamenei, it slowly abated.257
No matter under what circumstances individual subjects came to be part of the
Iranian diaspora in the USA, though: leaving Iran is the one event that is key to their
past and present. Life-changing, departure calls for an explanation, demands a central
position in the subject’s life narrative and the subject’s positioning towards its
politics. Of course, this plays out very differently for the first generation, who left
Iran on their own account, and for the 1.5th and 2nd generation, who did not have to
make the momentous decision of leaving the home country. The first generation, then,
has much more to come to terms with, has the burden of responsibility, which is why
I will exemplarily analyze the narratives of Azar Nafisi, Nahid Rachlin, Farideh
256 This
narrative ‘coherence’ might be still disruptive, as Hyvärinen et al. have shown.
257 Hakimzadeh
55
Goldin, Roya Hakakian and Abbas Milani here.258 With most of the memoirists being
women, one could argue that much of their narratives is based on specifically female
perception. However, I think that this would constitute an over-simplification. Abbas
Milani’s account of coming back to a revolutionary Iran (and leaving it again) reveals,
in many cases, similar experiences that warrant and merit analysis. While Rachlin and
Goldin leave Iran already before the actual upheavals, they both see pre-revolutionary
conservative attitudes and an increasingly heated social atmosphere as organic parts
of the revolution. Nafisi does not reflect much on her first departure from Iran, as she,
like Milani, comes back at the onset of the revolution and then narrates a painful
process of realizing that there is no place for her after all. I will include Hakakian
although she is only a teenager at the time of departure, as she, like the others,
examines her life in revolutionary Iran and engages in much soul-searching as to why
it was necessary to leave.
I will argue here that first-generation Iranian Americans carefully construct
their narratives to show that their departure was forced: by discrimination,
misogynism, and oppressive traditionalism. Not reading these self-narratives as
ethnographic representations, I argue that it is the autobiographers’ very selection of
themes that speaks for itself, as they comply with Jerome Bruner’s concept of
‘victimicy:’ “If our Self-concept cannot be constructed by assembling and
conceptualizing instances of our own agentive acts, then it can be constructed
according to the same principle by attributing it to the agency of another” [emphasis
original]. 259 Iranian-American autobiographers cannot attribute their departure to their
own volition, as the guilt of leaving one’s home country in times of distress is
considerable and can lead to questions of legitimacy regarding identity: What ‘real’
Iranian would ‘opportunistically’ leave his/her home country and not defend it against
all evil? Under what circumstances can Iranians leave and still legitimately perceive
themselves as ‘authentic’ Iranians?
To counter these questions, authors of Iranian-American autobiographies
resort to showcasing why living in the home country was no longer an option: either
because of discrimination as Jews, oppressive traditionalism or simply because they
no longer felt accepted and relevant as Iranians. Blaming an Other, in this case an
Iranian traditionalism and its agents, the Islamic Revolution260 (seen as a direct result
of traditionalism) and the politics and practices in its wake, and presenting oneself as
a victim offers a way of legitimizing departure. Authors often blame Islam’s influence
258 Autobiographers
that had left earlier, like Mahmoud Sarram and Shahab Nahvi, seem not to
experience the same guilt and focus much more on how they ‘made it’ in the USA. (Sarram, Mahmood.
Transplanted: A Memoir of Faith and Vision for American Muslims. Beltsville, Maryland: Amana,
2008.; Nahvi, Shahab. Ingrained Way of Living. Los Angeles: Narengestan, 2006. (Kindle Edition).)
259 Bruner, Jerome. “The ‘Remembered’ Self.” In The Remembering Self: Construction and Accuracy in
the Self-Narrative. Ed. by Ulric Neisser and Robyn Fivush. 41-54. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
41.
260 I distinguish ‘Iranian Revolution,’ by which I mean the popular uprising that included many different
movements, and ‘Islamic Revolution,’ by which I refer to the take-over and re-branding of the
revolution by religious forces.
56
— frequently regarded as Arab and thus as ultimately foreign, as I will show in
chapter 2. Legitimizing their departures with such reasoning allows them to cast
revolutionary Iran as inauthentic and relieves them of the guilt of disloyalty. As a
result, the victimicy narrative becomes the sanctioned form of remembering departure
in the Iranian diaspora and becomes a powerful definition of diasporic identity.
What is more, such narratives of victimicy cater to neo-orientalist
preconceptions of Iran as a fallen Oriental paradise, irrational and aggressive. I will
go deeper into this subject matter in subchapter 7.2.1 “Constructions of a Persian
Paradise.”
1.1 “The stranger I had become”261 — Losing One’s Identity in Revolutionary
Iran
Strikingly, many autobiographers who lived through the revolution, the time
leading up to it and the Islamic Republic afterwards, narrate a loss of or forced
change of identity, be it in a rather abstract way or even a feeling of losing their
physical bodies. Representations of identities that become irrelevant or subjects that
disappear are probably the most powerful tool of victimicy narratives. It is a way of
saying: I had to leave, I was losing my self — or rather: They were taking away my
self in this Iran that was becoming so different. The authors are casting themselves as
victims in order to come to terms with their departure from the home country and
deflect their feelings of guilt, but also to evoke feelings of sympathy from their
American readers.
Certainly one of the most vocal and outspoken — though herself not
uncriticized 262 — critics of the Islamic Revolution (and the Islamic Republic) is Azar
Nafisi. She portrays the clergy’s rise to power as distinctly involving confiscation and
theft of identity: “My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was
created when our past was stolen from us, making us exiles in our own country.”263
Nafisi suggests that there had been a true past that the regime has taken away from
Iranians of her generation. As a result, the subject becomes past-less and its life and
identity is no longer whole. Already in Iran, she is an exile and the act of emigration
is only the fulfillment of what had already been done to her by the revolution and its
leaders.
According to her, the gap in selfhood is filled by a re-creation of Iranian
identity; a new identity which she describes as fictitious: “A stern ayatollah (…) had
come to rule our land. He had come in the name of a past, a past that, he claimed, had
been stolen from him. And he now wanted to re-create us in the image of that illusory
past.”264 Nafisi rejects the mullahs’ interpretation of Iran’s past as shaped by Islam
261 Nafisi, Azar.
“Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books.” USA: Random House, 2004. 165.
others: Dabashi 2006a and 2006b; DePaul; Marandi; Rastegar; Rowe;
263 Nafisi Reading 76.
264 Nafisi Reading 28
262 Amongst
57
and thus refuses an Islamic identity, at least as envisioned and imposed by the
theocratic leaders. Arguing that the revolution has rendered her and others
“irrelevant”265 and denies them individuality, she exemplifies this in the very
beginning of her book by describing two pictures of her students — one veiled, one
unveiled:
In the first there are seven women, standing against a white wall. They are, according to the law
of the land, dressed in black robes and head scarves, covered except for the oval of their faces
and their hands. In the second photograph the same group, in the same position, stands against
the same wall. Only they have taken off their coverings. Splashes of color separate one from the
next. Each has become distinct through the color and style of her clothes, the color and the
length of her hair; not even the two who are still wearing their head scarves look the same. 266
The “law of the land,” according to Nafisi, condemns women to lose their distinctive
features, to lose their individuality. Looking all alike, they become a colorless and
dark group. It is only in the privacy of their homes, where they are no longer victims
of the clergy’s decrees, that they can exercise their personalities and become
themselves.
While Nafisi is criticizing the theocratic regime, she also goes to great pains
to ‘prove’ that her feelings are shared by pious Iranians, too. Her exhibits are, as
everywhere in her novelistic memoir, her students — in this case, the two religious
ones, Mahshid and Yassi, whose selves are shown to be turned inconsequential by the
now-obligatory veil. She half describes, half imagines the story of Mahshid, giving it
a very subjective interpretation:
I imagine her in those pre-revolutionary days, walking along the uphill street leading to the
college on countless sunny mornings. I see her walking alone, her head to the ground. Then, as
now, she did not enjoy the day’s brilliance. I say ‘then, as now’ because the revolution that
imposed the scarf on others did not relieve Mahshid of her loneliness. 267
Nafisi suggests that, having worn the headscarf already before the revolution,
Mahshid may have been ostracized then, but that her sacrifice set her apart, gave her a
voice and identity. However, with the revolution enforcing the garment, “her action
became meaningless,”268 the veil ubiquitous, her identity as a (voluntarily) religious
person invisible — without even relieving her loneliness. Nafisi insinuates that the
regime has taken away at least part of the relevance the headscarf had had for
Mahshid’s self, making her religious self invisible and irrelevant instead of fostering
it.
A little later, Nafisi writes about her student Yassi, whose religious family
allegedly “felt the Islamic Republic was a betrayal of Islam rather than its
assertion.”269 Yassi, too, is portrayed as being defined by the imposition of the veil
following the revolution: “It was like this veil that meant nothing to her anymore yet
265
Nafisi Reading 150
Nafisi Reading 4
267 Nafisi Reading 13
268 Nafisi Reading 13
269 Nafisi Reading 31
266
58
without which she would be lost. (…) She said she could not imagine a Yassi without
a veil.”270 Rather than obscuring just her hair, the veil seems to be obscuring Yassi’s
personality and becomes the primary characteristic of her identity, even to herself.
The rest of her self is, according to Nafisi, rendered irrelevant.
Nafisi stresses, though, that it is not the veil itself that she rejects — indeed
she mentions, even longingly, her grandmother’s chador 271 — but the confiscation of
her identity as an individual in favor of an Islamic ideal: “No, (…) it was not that
piece of cloth that I rejected, it was the transformation being imposed upon me that
made me look in the mirror and hate the stranger I had become.”272 Not only is the
transformation forceful, Nafisi describes Khomeini as “blind”273 and with that adds a
layer of arbitrariness to the revolution. It is out of touch with the reality of normal,
everyday Iranians and, as such, a fiction that has been forced into existence. Nafisi
repeatedly underlines how she felt “fictional” during her time in the Islamic
Republic. 274 The author portrays herself as passive and victimized here; she feels
“light” as her substance has been taken away from her, and her self has been “erased.”
Her subjectivity seems to vanish, leaving only the pod of a woman as imagined by the
theocracy.
The climax of Nafisi’s victimicy narrative is when she narrates how she starts
to actively erase her self: “Gradually, I pretended that when I wore the robe, my
whole body disappeared: my arms, breasts, stomach and legs melted and disappeared
and what was left was a piece of cloth the shape of my body.”275 Marking a turn to
inner exile, she presents herself as so completely dominated by the regime of the
Islamic Republic that there is no other way but to fictionalize herself: “I decided to
make my body invisible. The woman’s coarse hands were reverse X-rays that left
only the surface intact and made the inside invisible. By the time she had finished
inspecting me, I had become as light as the wind, a fleshless, boneless being.”276
Nafisi takes her narration of victimicy to the top by telling the reader how she,
eventually, even questioned her own existence: “Sometimes, almost unconsciously, I
would withdraw my hands into my wide sleeves and start touching my legs or my
stomach. (…) Do I exist?”277
270
Nafisi Reading 32
Nafisi Reading 192: “All through my childhood and early youth, my grandmother’s chador had a
special meaning to me. It was a shelter, a world apart from the rest of the world. I remember the way
she wrapped around her chador around her body and the way she walked around her yard when the
pomegranates were in bloom. Now the chador was forever marred by the political significance it had
gained. It had become cold and menacing.”
272 Nafisi Reading 165
273 Nafisi Reading 165
274 Nafisi Reading 167
275 Nafisi Reading 167f.
276 Nafisi Reading 168
277 Nafisi Reading 168
271
59
Having reached the conclusion that she has been rendered irrelevant and thus
has no agency within the Islamic Republic, Nafisi goes on to explain her reaction to
the confiscation of her identities:
What do people who are made irrelevant do? They will sometimes escape, I mean physically,
and if that is not possible, they will try to make a comeback, to become part of the game by
assimilating the characteristics of their conquerors. Or they will escape inwardly and (…) turn
their small corner into a sanctuary: the essential part of their life goes underground. 278
This self-victimization prepares for what follows in Nafisi’s memoir: her emigration
to the United States and thus leaving Iran to the clergy. The logic of Nafisi’s narrative
of victimicy is compelling: They took away my existence and place in Iran, they took
away my identity — that’s why I had to leave. Nafisi claims that the same holds true
for many of her compatriots, both secular as well as religious. Narrating her story to a
large part through her students’ stories, however, she herself could be considered to be
confiscating their lives and identities for her own politics.
But not only in Nafisi’s memoir do selves become irrelevant and even seem to
disappear: Roya Hakakian describes the attitude of the theocratic regime to its
everyday subjects and their past as outright warfare: “To cleanse the city of any
lingering ‘decadence’ of the old monarchs, the imam declared the greatest jihad of all:
the one against the ‘self.’”279 Similarly to Azar Nafisi, Hakakian positions the
revolution and its eventual leaders in direct opposition to individuality. She presents
the situation as a Manichaean distinction between good and evil — the Islamic
revolutionaries being the enemy, of course: “A new line, invisible but terribly
palpable, was drawn. On one side of it, they stood. On the other, we. (…) They began
their speeches in the name of Allah. We began ours with good old God. They called
themselves the ‘faithful.’ We called ourselves Iranians.”280 Hakakian’s “we” here
again insinuates that all ‘normal’ Iranians, including the privately religious, have been
subject to this new categorization. She fashions their individual identities to have
been rendered void; all that matters now is the confrontation of ordinary Iranians
against the thugs of the clergy — victims and oppressors.
Moreover, Hakakian stresses that her group regards itself as Iranian, whereas
she does not grant this attribution of a national identity to the enemy. Indeed, she
carefully words her sentence to imply that “they” themselves have relinquished their
Iranian identity, their authenticity, in favor of belonging to the “faithful.” With that,
they also make the other group’s individual identities irrelevant: while they are, at
least, still Iranians, they only matter as an opposing group.
Like Nafisi, Hakakian seems to be of the opinion that ordinary Iranians have
to shed the garments enforced by the revolution and the Islamic Republic in order to
become individuals: “She (…) stood up to take off her veil and scarf. I took off my
278
Nafisi Reading 169
Hakakian, Roya. Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood in Revolutionary Iran. New York:
Crown, 2004. 201.
280 Hakakian 202
279
60
scarf, too. And doing so, we peeled away the years to become ‘us’ again.”281 In
Hakakian’s construction, hidden beneath the layers of forced de-individualization are
people’s ‘real’ selves, which they can only exercise in the privacy of their homes.
These selves, however, are vulnerable: similarly to Nafisi’s game of making
herself invisible, Hakakian narrates a distinct feeling of disappearing:
I felt lost, not in the city but inside my clothes. Under my uniform, I was a blur. Where had Roya
gone? I stopped, opened the top buttons of my uniform, and peeked inside: Where am I? I saw
only darkness, a cave that led to a pair of denim cuffs, faded blue suede shoes, and dirty asphalt.
Somewhere under that musty blackness I was hidden. (…) I saw no sign of myself under the
hardened shrouds. My body had atrophied.282
Hakakian’s imagery is stark: not only does she feel lost and blurred, she does not see
herself any more at all. Where she used to be, there is only blackness; her Islamic
clothing is described as “shrouds.” She has wasted away and died under it. Her whole
being has vanished and her existence is only defined by her cerement of a veil. In the
end, Hakakian has to acknowledge that not even her beloved Jewish students’
organization is the refuge she had thought it to be: “The organization was not a
bastion. It was a place where Jews gathered. It was a ghetto and therefore irrelevant.
We were insignificant. (…) Deep in this day was a feeling of aging, not by growing,
but by diminishing.”283 The autobiographer portrays herself — and, indeed, women
with their veils and Jews that are restricted to ‘ghettos’ — as irrelevant and
disappearing in the hostile environment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Farideh Goldin constructs this environment as so hostile with herself as the
victim that she recognizes herself in the calf that her family sacrifices: “I felt as if my
own body was being torn apart. (…) My mother made kabob for us, but I couldn’t eat.
It was cannibalism, eating my own flesh. My grandmother broke the legs with a
hammer, took the hooves off, and made my favorite stew. My broken legs; I couldn’t
eat.”284 Again, a body is vanishing, yet this time in a much more violent fashion. Also,
the ones shown to cause the body to disappear are not the revolutionary guards or the
clergy, but the author’s own family: For Goldin, what is wrong with her country is
closely related to long-standing customs of her conservative Jewish background, is
closely related to Iran’s traditional morals and values. Thus she depicts her own
relatives as figuratively breaking her legs and taking away her freedom.
Goldin does not, like Nafisi and Hakakian, narrate her body becoming
invisible, but she, too, constructs herself as disconnected from it. Like a stranger, she
observes herself from the outside: “This wasn’t my life. I wasn’t living inside my
body. I watched myself from above, (…) an artificial smile on my lips, politely
answering questions. Who was that woman? Was it really me?”285 Goldin explains
281
Hakakian 217
Hakakian 221
283 Hakakian 195
284 Goldin, Farideh. Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis UP,
2003. 166.
285 Goldin 166
282
61
that, fighting to get outside a crowd that is both harassing her and shouting antiAmerican slogans, she understands that post-revolutionary Iran is changing her self:
“By breathing the hatred hanging in the air, by sharing the uneasiness surrounding me
at the house and on the streets, I was being transformed into a person I didn’t know
and now didn’t like.”286 She goes on to explain that this is the reason for her
emigration: “I had to leave Iran soon in order to save myself.”287 So in Goldin’s
construction, similarly to others, it is the forced change of her identity, the feeling of
losing herself and being victimized that makes her leave.
The autobiographers’ approach of narrating tales of victimicy is
understandable: The need to explain their departures from their home country — in
order to counter (their own) charges of disloyalty — makes them stress how Iran did
not feel like home any more, but inauthentic, how they did not feel real and
themselves, not even relevant any more. The resulting tales of being a stranger to
oneself, of vanishing and dismembered bodies, of individual identities rendered
irrelevant are instances of victimicy and mean to make migration the inevitable result.
The guilt of having left is thus turned around and given entirely to those who made it
impossible to stay after the revolution. What is more, such narratives of victimhood
speak to American audiences and are meant to distance Iranian Americans from those
who forced the diaspora abroad, thus creating a more positive image for the new
ethnic group.
1.2 Jewish Victimicy Narratives
The Jewish Iranian group initially made up for a considerable portion of the
Iranian-American community (more than 1/5 in an early study, whereas a more recent
poll reflects the lower percentage of 9% 288), as most Jews left Iran before the
revolution or rather early on. It might have been this collective experience of
‘exodus’ that has led to their increased cohesion,289 or it might have been their ties to
the American-Jewish community.290 At any rate, Jewish Iranian Americans in some
respects form an own subgroup, and at times construct their identities in similar ways.
For Jewish authors Farideh Goldin and Roya Hakakian, the revolution is
inextricably linked with a rise in anti-Semitic sentiments, about which they reflect
extensively. Yet their approaches are diametrically opposed: Hakakian conceives of
the situation in Shah-time Iran as a dream come true, only to be completely destroyed
286
Goldin 183
Goldin 183
288 Bozorgmehr, Mehdi and Georges Sabagh. “Iranian Exiles and Immigrants in Los Angeles.” In
Iranian Exiles Since Khomeini. Ed. by Asghar Fathi. Los Angeles: Mazda, 1991. 137, table 5; PAAIA.
National Public Survey of Iranian Americans. 2011. <http://www.paaia.org/CMS/Data/Sites/1/PDFs/
2011surveyofiranianamericans.pdf> (last retrieved March 8, 2012)
289 Feher, Shoshana. “From the Rivers of Babylon to the Valleys of Los Angeles: The Exodus and
Adaptation of Iranian Jews.” In Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New
Immigration. Ed. by R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1998. 71-94.
290 Feher 84
287
62
by the revolution. Jewish Iranians, in her narrative, are integrated in society, but then
start to be victimized. Goldin, while also acknowledging the destructive force of the
revolution in particular for the Jewish population, sees the grievances in Iranian
society more as a result of beliefs and customs deeply engrained in society’s texture.
These conservative values and anti-Jewish sentiments are, in her construction, only
re-kindled by revolutionary religious fervor.
1.2.1 The Heterogeneous Jewish Experience
The differences in these two memoirs showcase the heterogeneity of the
Iranian Jewish community at the time of the revolution: Not only are they set apart by
location, but also, it seems, by social class. Whereas Hakakian’s narrative takes place
in the center of the capital Tehran — and with that, in the most westernized and
wealthy place in pre-revolutionary Iran — Goldin’s memoir revolves around her
family’s city of origin. Shiraz, while a minor center in its own right, is said to be a
considerably more religious place. There, Goldin grows up in the impoverished
Jewish quarter, or mahaleh, which she also refers to as a ghetto. This comes as quite a
contrast to the Hakakian estate, located in an upscale neighborhood. Moreover, while
the Hakakians mingle successfully in a largely Muslim environment and are treated
warmly,291 the Goldins’ life is described to be characterized by poverty and low-level
discrimination. Not only does she remember her grandmother telling stories about
jude-koshi, the killing of Jews in the past,292 Goldin portrays their Iranian lives as still
permeated with fear. Eventually, the Goldin family manages to move out of the
mahaleh into a better area, an all-Muslim neighborhood,293 but they are met with antiSemitism there as well.294 She narrates how she is never fully accepted, especially
when the atmosphere becomes more and more revolutionary.295 With the beginning of
student riots, the lingering anti-Semitism grows worse296 and together with the more
general traditionalism becomes unbearable to her.
While Goldin narrates how her father expects discrimination and violence
against Jews as a result of many bad experiences, 297 Hakakian describes prerevolutionary Iran as a dream come true for the Jewish population, as home. As
tension rises before the revolution, Hakakian tries to make clear that she did not give
up on her home country easily, in spite of mounting discrimination and an
increasingly hostile atmosphere. As the situation grows unbearable in her narrative,
she and her family are constructed as victims who nevertheless stand by their home
country until the last moment.
291 Hakakian
28
71f.
293 Goldin 117
294 Goldin 122
295 Goldin 158
296 Goldin 159
297 Goldin 121f.
292 Goldin
63
It is Hakakian’s popular uncle Ardi with his successful insurance business,
expensive taste and love of life who best personifies the affluent time before the
revolution and the Hakakian family’s dreams of being perfectly integrated in Iran’s
society:
What Uncle Ardi had really shed was fear, the fear of claiming his share of the good life like any
other middle-class citizen. (…) And the place he knew best to live, where he belonged, was Iran.
(…) He was so settled that he was even willing to invest in vanity, to buy depreciating goods —
like a BMW. No other car would have matched his optimism, the exuberant claim he laid to
Tehran. Tehran and no other city. And never more confidently than in 1977.298
Uncle Ardi thus embodies to Hakakian the family’s successful and carefree life in
pre-revolutionary Tehran, their possible passing as Muslims or, as Hakakian puts it,
their “most glorious reality.”299
And yet Uncle Ardi’s embracing of a non-Jewish life style is not met with
complete acceptance: when he falls seriously in love with a Muslim girl, the family
fights him bitterly 300 — an example for the lingering traditionalism in Iran’s society
and, maybe, a hint at the difficult times to come. The autobiographer, however,
describes how she supports the couple301 and how she feels that they are united by the
same progressive spirit. 302 Experiencing her relatives being so fervently opposed to
her uncle’s happiness because of religion, she confesses herself disenchanted with
both faith and family:
Until Uncle Ardi’s affair, being a Jew had been a blithe experience for me. (…) But seeing the
family react to Uncle Ardi’s affair with Neela, I felt the blitheness waning. I became leery of
God, whose love had once come so easily to me. I became wary of my family, its lugubrious
underlife, its lugubrious wrath, and the lugubrious practices that had come so easily to them. 303
With the revolution already looming on the horizon — and thus tradition and religion
as a threat to her everyday ‘lugubrious’ life — Hakakian’s disenchantment with
religion comes at a convenient time in her reconstruction of events. This is how she
wants to remember her past self, or how she wants readers to see her: a progressivethinking individual, already outgrown the restrictive traditionalism of the theocracy
that is about to be installed and that will take away her agency as an Iranian citizen.
At the same time, she points out her disdain for both conservative Jewish and Muslim
attitudes, constructing herself as a believer in a shared humanity already at an early
age.
It is not only her family who cannot overcome old prejudices and attitudes;
also in larger Iranian society, the mood swings towards discrimination again. When
Uncle Ardi leaves for Israel after the fight with the family and fearing discrimination
because he ran over a Muslim, the good times seem to be over: “He went without
298 Hakakian
51
49
300 Hakakian 61
301 Hakakian 59
302 Hakakian 61
303 Hakakian 62f.
299 Hakakian
64
fanfare, leaving the family to itself, to its yearning for him.”304 The yearning for Ardi
is also the yearning for the possibility of perfect adaptation in a Muslim society, as
with Ardi’s departure, this illusion cracks. The revolution is just two years away now,
and slowly, tension against Jews rises. After Hakakian’s brother is detained for a
night, her father sends both brothers abroad as a precaution. She recalls that when
protests against the Shah commence, they are tinged with religion, and she describes
a mounting feeling of pressure: “I had never had to say words in Arabic, to chant in a
language other than my native Persian. I had never been expected to sound like a
Muslim. Must I choose?”305 Interestingly, it is not so much her Jewish religious
identity that she feels is at stake here, but her Persian language and thus her Iranian
national identity — again an instance in which Iran is shown to have changed and
become inauthentic, not the autobiographer.
The atmosphere continues to become even more ominous and foreboding in
her description306 and it is not long any more until the first discriminative graffiti and
swastikas appear in their neighborhood.307 Frightened, the Jewish community seeks
Khomeini’s support during the revolution and is assured of it 308 — but the
autobiographer’s tale of post-revolutionary life is characterized by discrimination and
attempts to convert her and other Jewish girls. 309
In spite of the adversarial
atmosphere, the author tells us about how she was one of the “dreamers” of the
Jewish Iranian Students Organization, and stresses how they believed “Enlightenment
would be the cure to (…) anti-Semitism.”310 It seems to be of utmost importance to
Hakakian to prove to the reader that she did not give up on her home country Iran
easily, that even in the eye of discrimination, she believed that things would improve.
But things do not improve: Hakakian describes how anti-Semitism becomes
ubiquitous, how there remain no spaces of freedom: “The city as I knew it, as Uncle
Ardi knew it, had died.”311 Significantly, she mentions her uncle at this point again,
the personification of the good life that Jews enjoyed before the revolution. She
describes how, as a result of her desperation, she starts dreaming of murdering
Khomeini.312 Yet still, the author stresses how she is “not contemplating leaving Iran,
as so many Jews were”313 — even when others consider her lucky to be a Jew, as this
means she can get a visa for abroad.314 Indeed, with a great deal of sarcasm she tells
the reader about the pain and guilt she feels at being Jewish, at thinking that she had
304 Hakakian
66
112
306 Hakakian 113
307 Hakakian 135
308 Hakakian 153ff.
309 Hakakian 162
310 Hakakian 179
311 Hakakian 200
312 Hakakian 198
313 Hakakian 204
314 Hakakian 221
305 Hakakian
65
not stood up to her ideals as her Muslim friend Bibi had done, and probably at
starting to think about leaving Iran:
Excuse me, brother, but you don’t want to arrest me. What would I have to do with politics? You
see, I am a Jew. Allow me to spell it: capital S, p, i, n, e, and then ‘less,’ as in ‘without.’ My
mother, father, brothers, and all of our ancestors are Jews. Generation after generation of
cowards. (…) You look at me: Do I look like someone who gives a damn? (…) My real
homeland is Israel. True, I wasn’t born there, went there as a child once, can’t carry on a
conversation in Hebrew, don’t write in it, or speak it with my family. Still, sister, for me there’s
only Israel.315
It is only at the very end of the book, when she finds her father burning her books as a
precaution — an extreme measure recalling the Third Reich as I will show below —
and announcing that it was time to leave for America316 that departure is narrated to
be imminent and unavoidable. With that, Hakakian renounces all responsibility for
leaving Iran behind: Iranian Jews are victimized and practically forced to leave the
country in spite of their deep loyalty.
Jewish Iranian authors thus explain their departure with discrimination. Both
constructions — sudden change from acceptance of Jews to discrimination and
always existent anti-Semitism increased by the revolution — should be regarded as
Jewish-Iranian variants of the victimicy narrative. While their mis-en-scène differs in
when and how the situation becomes unbearable, they show two central topoi,
references to the Third Reich and the Exodus, that I will explore below.
1.2.2 Constructing Ultimate Victimicy: References to the Third Reich
In order to construct the Jewish situation in Iran as unbearable,
autobiographers liken it, more or less explicitly, to Third-Reich Jewish discrimination.
Goldin, for example, points out the use of swastikas in their neighborhood: “[O]ur
neighbor’s son raised a bright red, glass swastika in his bedroom facing our house.
We couldn’t escape its colossal presence: at night, it shone under a display lamp, and
during the day, it glittered in the sunlight — sickeningly beautiful.”317 The reference
to Nazi Germany is obvious and, associated with the Holocaust, such construction of
Jewish victimicy becomes very persuasive.
What is more, Goldin tellingly begins her memoir with a description of her
father finding and burning her books:
If I had to pick one defining moment in my Iranian life, it would be 5:00 A.M. one Friday in the
fall of 1968. I was fifteen. (…) My father stood near the mud stove (…). He was chewing his
mustache, so I knew he was angry, but at what? Then I saw it. He was throwing books in the
fire, my books, the books I had hidden underneath the bed, behind my clothes in the armoire, in
the pocket of my winter coat. 318
315 Hakakian
222
227
317 Goldin 122
318 Goldin 1
316 Hakakian
66
While not a direct reference, the image immediately conjures images of the Nazi book
burning in 1933. Yet here it is not anti-Semitists who burn the books, it is the Jewish
father. On the one hand, this constitutes a criticism at patriarchy, on the other, a
criticism of traditionalist society: The same traditional-repressive society that
discriminates Jews also imposes strict rules on everyone as to what behavior is
permissive. Acquiring knowledge is not considered proper for women at that time, the
autobiographer argues; she is perceived as “corrupting herself, giving [the family] a
bad name.”319 She describes herself as being influenced to such an extent as to
conduct a burning herself: “Later in the week, when no one was around, I uncovered
my last hidden spot in the floor of an armoire, pulled out my journal, and burned the
pages in the same stove. Now I was truly alone.”320 Goldin thus presents Iran as a
society opposed to progress and learning that forces all members — and maybe
especially Jews — to comply with its rules; so much so that they engage in selfpolicing.
Much the same goes for Hakakian, who, like Goldin, tells her readers of discriminative graffiti
and swastikas that appear in her neighborhood during the revolution48 and who ends her
autobiography with the same startling image with which Goldin begins hers: her father burning
her books out of fear of society.
The book-burning incident in both Goldin’s and Hakakian’s narrative may be
considered what Jerome Bruner calls a turning point, an event that the remembering
self regards as central to its life. As Bruner underlines, these events are at the heart of
an individual’s self-construction:
[R]ather than regarding them simply as ‘true reports’ about ‘what happened,’ we do better to
consider them as preternaturally clear instances of narrative construction that have the function
of helping the teller clarify his or her Self-concept. (…) They serve as generative ‘gists’ for the
life as a whole, and in this sense they are as much tropes as literal accounts of ‘what
happened.’ (…) Indeed, with literary power, these tropelike turning points get turned into the
leitmotif of a life. 321
For Goldin and Hakakian, a feeling of victimicy as inflicted by the book-burning
becomes the defining characteristic for their Iranian life. While Iran’s traditionalism is
central here, the imagery of book-burnings bears special significance for Jewish
autobiographers: When Goldin writes that “the idea of burning books may jolt many
Western readers,”322 she explicitly hints at the Nazi book burnings. Linking Iran to the
Third Reich, the archetype of both a repressive and anti-Semitic society, these
narratives braid constructions of Iran’s conservative traditionalism and the
victimization of Iranian Jews tightly together.
319 Goldin
1
2
321 Bruner 50
322 Goldin 2
320 Goldin
67
1.2.3 Casting Departure as Jewish ‘Exodus’
While both Hakakian’s and Goldin’s narratives feature the Jewish topos of the
Exodus, their approaches again differ significantly. As mentioned above, the former
stresses how good life in pre-revolutionary Iran is, and how nobody so much as thinks
of leaving. For example, the Ha Lachma, the retelling of the liberation of the
Israelites from slavery in Egypt at the Passover seder, does not have any relevance
when her uncle reads them out before the revolution: “They vowed, ‘Next year in
Israel,’ but knew, even as the words rang in the air, how hollow they were. The family
dreamed of the land of milk and honey but wanted to wake up in Tehran.”323 Indeed,
Hakakian fashions Iran to become a version of ‘America, Land of the Free’ or
‘Promised Land’ during the early days of the revolution, only hinting at how things
would eventually go wrong:
Ships carrying the poor, the tired, the huddled masses, were sailing to the wrong shores. Iran was
vying to be the Ellis Island of the world. A full 98.2 percent of Iranians had marked the ‘Yes’
box next to ‘Islamic Republic’ for their choice of government in a referendum, and now stood as
one proud, righteous nation, crowned with benevolence, with the torch of hope in hand. And in
their other hand there was a tablet; its inscription, not yet legible, is a sore matter best left for
another chapter. 324
Even when things do not look as rosy any more, Hakakian stresses her and her
family’s allegiance and loyalty to Iran, their home country.325 Up to the last pages of
her memoir, she never thinks of leaving.326 It is only at the very end of the book that
her father decides that life in Iran is no longer safe and that the family has to leave for
the United States. The Exodus is portrayed as a last resort here, not aspired to and not
wished for, but the culmination of the victimicy narrative.
Goldin, however, situates the topos of the exodus right at the beginning of her
memoir and, by immediately pointing out the eventual departure, her intentions are
clearly different than Hakakian’s:
[T]he 1979 Islamic Revolution had forced a mass exodus of Iranian Jews, leaving nothing but
the rubble of Jewish life in Iran. I could extract only fragments of recollection, both what I could
recall and memories told to me by family and friends in exile, numb, lost, almost as if still
wandering through the desert in a weary exodus from Egypt. 327
Her narrative portrays Iran as an ‘Egypt’ characterized by narrow-mindedness and
discrimination which only gets worse during the revolution — a place where a
modern, freedom-loving person cannot really live.
Goldin’s personal freedom as a progressively thinking person and the Jewish
population’s freedom are curiously mixed up in her narrative. For example, she
relates her Jewish friends’ fear of discrimination to her own of being molested by her
323 Hakakian
52
141
325 Hakakian 119
326 Hakakian 158, 221
327 Goldin 3
324 Hakakian
68
uncle.328 When she and a friend walk in public without hejab and are cursed as
“Whores!”329 she links that moral assessment and restriction of her personal freedom
to a rise in revolutionary tension that is threatening Jews. Also, a crowd that is
harassing her as a single woman quickly turns into a mob chanting anti-American
slogans, leaving her shaking in fear330 — whether for her personal freedom or for a
humane rationality, we do not know. Through this narrative braiding of a concern for
her personal freedom as a modern woman with a fear for Jewish life, Goldin fashions
an Iran that seems unbearable to live in, a society that curbs individual freedom
through its conservative traditionalism, revolutionary fervor and discrimination of
minorities, begging the question how any person, and especially a Jew, could not
strive towards exodus.
What is more, she describes how, already at a young age, she is dreaming of
leaving for the USA ever since she received an American chocolate bar from a Jewish
humanitarian agency:
The gift of chocolate by the American humanitarians made me realize for the first time in
my life that there were people somewhere far away who knew I existed and who cared
about me. They had reached out to me. I hung onto these anonymous American benefactors
as my saviors for many years. At that moment, I knew that I was going to leave and find a
new home, my very own place in the world. I knew that there was hope in my future. For
the first time, I started to dream of America. 331
Iran and America are juxtaposed here as places denying and, respectively, promising
freedom, and Goldin presents herself as destined to leave for America which signifies
“home,” “hope” and her “saviors.” Her tale culminates in her glowing praise for
America as the ultimate Promised Land at the very end of her book: “What a long
journey this had been for us all, filled with biblical-like tales of our wanderings from
Iran. (…) Many were still trapped in Iran, but others, dazed and unsteady on their
feet, had finally come to be cradled in the arms of America. Our last refuge. Our only
safe place in the world.”332 The exodus in Goldin’s narrative is not part of the
victimization of the Iranian Jews (like for Hakakian), but deliverance from it, taking
the Jewish people to the Promised Land.
In summary, Hakakian’s main interest seems to lie in creating a positive
image of pre-revolutionary Iran, of a home country Iran worth living in that is
gradually changing in the time before, during and after the uprisings until life there is
no longer bearable. In contrast, Goldin fashions Iran as an inhospitable place from the
beginning, with traditionalism and anti-Jewish sentiments closely intertwined — and
in that way very much resembling Mary Antin’s The Promised Land, a classic
immigrant autobiography — a place that is going from bad to worse through the
328 Goldin
159f.
168
330 Goldin 184
331 Goldin 144
332 Goldin 199
329 Goldin
69
revolution. Whereas in Hakakian’s account the Exodus is the last resort in their
defense against victimization, Goldin’s memoir is fixated on the liberating quality of
the Exodus, and is directed towards a glorified America, a Promised Land. Both are
tales of Jewish victimicy, but in very different frameworks.
1.3 Leaving Behind Traditionalism
Detailed descriptions of the traditionalism prevailing in Iran’s society — and
the misogynism that comes with it — loom large in accounts of 1st generation Iranian
Americans and should be seen as another way of constructing victimicy and thus
explaining their departures from Iran. In this chapter I could have focused on
misogynism alone, but I am wary of over-simplifying the matter. To be sure, the
subject of traditionalism is particularly important to women, but both men and
women authors explore, for example, the difficult relationships with their dominant
fathers, often closely resembling their unhappiness with their home country’s
patriarchy. Arranged marriage and attempts to revolt against this tradition (insisted on
especially by fathers) is also an issue for both men and women writers. Women’s
more difficult situation does find special expression, though: As a reaction to
patriarchal society, several female autobiographers portray themselves to have sought
relief from it in (temporary) madness.
It is also important to note that most of the autobiographers see the revolution
and post-revolutionary Iran as an organic continuation of pre-revolutionary
traditionalism. Therefore, also those authors who left before the revolution perceive
themselves to be victims of the same factors as those who stayed on in Iran for longer.
The topic of women’s rights, missing, waning or not sufficiently enforced,
goes hand in hand with descriptions of traditionalism. As a result, mandatory veiling,
and in particular the headscarf, become the foremost symbols of misogynism as they
are often perceived as restricting and curbing women’s rights. Both male and female
autobiographers make a point of narrating the dark side of traditionalism and religious
propriety: instances of skewed morality in the form of harassment and abuse. Last but
not least, many link the female experience in Iran to pain and suffering and compare
their situation with the sacrificing of animals in the name of religion and tradition. All
in all, the construction of victimicy in Iranian-American autobiography is intricately
entangled with descriptions of traditionalism.
1.3.1 Regulated Children, Unfree Lovers, Madwomen: Victims of Patriarchy
While all the female autobiographers of the first generation elaborate on their
society’s patriarchy, I am going to focus on the narratives of Nahid Rachlin and
Farideh Goldin here, in which the topic is especially pronounced. Interestingly, both
for the most part take place before the upheavals, with the protagonists leaving for
America before the situation for women worsens considerably in the revolution’s
70
aftermath. Not being able to ‘blame’ the revolution for forcing them to leave their
home country, both Rachlin and Goldin stress Iran’s conservative values under the
Shah while portraying the ensuing theocracy’s misogynism as an organic extension of
older attitudes. They construct this patriarchy especially through their relationships
with their fathers, the pressure for arranged marriage, other women’s unhappy
relationships, and women’s madness as a result of society’s misogynism. Both authors
portray these instances of misogynistic victimization as absolutely necessitating their
going abroad and present the United States as a haven for the subjugated women of
Iran. Patriarchy thus becomes a key aspect of Iranian-American constructions of
victimicy.
Fleeing from Father, Fleeing from the Fatherland
The patriarchy that most of the authors describe starts early in their
childhoods, as they detail the power they feel their fathers have over them. IranianAmerican autobiographers remember fathers to be the first characters to determine
their lives, to take away their agency. Thus, the narrated relationships with them
become foreshadowings of the feelings that the authors develop towards the
fatherland: love, coupled with fear of authority. These dominant fathers also embody
the larger currents of patriarchy that the authors perceive in Iranian society, restricting
their every move.
While not feeling unloved by her father, Goldin narrates him to be overly
restrictive, and notes how he forbids her even the most innocent activities, like
running and laughing, which he calls shameless.333 She remembers him taking her
books away, restricting her only way of both fleeing from reality and educating
herself, as he is of the opinion that reading corrupts girls, making them obstinate and
disobedient.334 As he refuses to let her go, but wants to keep her in Iran, adhering to
tradition and consenting to an arranged marriage, he embodies everything that to
Goldin means oppression of her self and individuality. He is presented to be the one
authority standing between her and what she perceives as her freedom: America. In
the end, he and the traditional, patriarchal society that he embodies are depicted to
almost have worn her down to staying within the ‘system.’ At the last moment, he
consents to letting her go, but only by declaring her dead to the family. 335 Finally,
Goldin can leave behind Iran that she constructs as a place where she has no agency,
as it is taken away by patriarchy.
Similarly, Rachlin observes that “[f]athers were distant figures in the lives of
Iranian girls — except when it came to rules and punishment”336 — both mirroring
and exemplifying her portrayal of women’s standing in Iranian society at large, as she
333 Goldin
121
1
335 Goldin 186
336 Rachlin, Nahid. Persian Girls: A Memoir. New York: Penguin, 2006. 19.
334 Goldin
71
narrates how she and her sisters are expected to follow tradition, submit to men and
put family honor over individual happiness.337 Her relationship with her father is
extremely strained, as he had taken her away from her beloved aunt and foster mother
against her will. From an early age, Rachlin remembers fearing him 338 and thinking
that he had too much power over her.339 He is criticizing the women in the family, but
not her brothers,340 and thus becomes a symbol of patriarchy and the oppression of
the female. Like Goldin’s father, he confiscates and destroys her books, 341 restricting
her ways of educating herself. Even when she manages to get his permission to attend
college in America, she feels still within his range of power: “I tried to tell myself that
even if he came after me, he would have no power to force me back to Iran, that I was
living in a different country with different rules now.”342 It is only when she writes to
her father that she will stay on against his will that she gains independence: “Putting
that letter in the mailbox was more painful, even frightening, than I had anticipated. It
was as if I had been dangling from a rope that Father held and just been cut loose.”343
Like Goldin’s departure, Rachlin’s staying in the USA marks not only a flight from
Iran, but also from her father and the patriarchy he stands for. With it, Rachlin
constructs her Iranian life to be characterized by victimicy brought about by her
father and patriarchy in general, and, in opposition to that, her American life by
agency.
While patriarchy is an especially virulent term for diasporic Iranian women
autobiographers, also male writers like Abbas Milani turn toward the topic. Milani
describes his father’s fear-inspiring power over him and the whole household when he
was a child and, in the same passage, compares his father’s influence with the Shah’s
authority in society: “Fear was also a cardinal element of pedagogy in my childhood.
(…) [I]n those days the king had an aura of absolute authority, while father and
mother conjured sentiments of love, reverence, and fear. (…) My father’s authority
was god-like.”344 Thus for Milani, too, the father becomes a symbol for patriarchy in
Iran and he feels the necessity of breaking loose from both fatherly authority and
Iran’s restrictive atmosphere. Milani constructs this atmosphere to be distinctively
Iranian and as stemming from a past that traditionally tried to prevent
individualization.345 As a result, or part of this tradition, “[p]arents, teachers, rulers,
and preachers all dreaded self-assertion in children [and adults], and praised and
expected quiet submissiveness.”346 He thus sees his father to be part of a larger
337 Rachlin
171
28
339 Rachlin 39
340 Rachlin 47
341 Rachlin 125
342 Rachlin 180
343 Rachlin 176
344 Milani, Abbas. Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir. Washington, DC: Mage, 2006. 28.
345 Milani, Abbas 224
346 Milani, Abbas 224
338 Rachlin
72
picture of patriarchal oppressors which not only includes the Shah and his restrictive
regime, but also Khomeini and post-revolutionary Iran; all inflicting victimization on
their ‘subjects.’
Marriage and Madness
Further into authors’ lives, it is arranged marriage that determines female fates
in both Rachlin’s and Goldin’s narratives, a tradition that they describe and condemn
as a prime example of misogynistic traditionalism and victimization. But Milani too,
a male autobiographer, describes his rebellion against this tradition and his parents’
authority over him, showing that also this particular instance of patriarchy is not
restricted to female memoirs and their (re-)constructions of Iran.
Milani narrates how, after having come back from studying in the U.S., he
wants to marry the woman he has fallen in love with. His family is vehemently
opposed to this, and arranges for a marriage with a “rich, young, innocent girl of their
choice.”347 He recounts how they forbid him to marry his lover and, when he refuses
to change his mind, threaten with disinheriting him and divine wrath. As a man,
Milani presents himself to have more agency to defy his parents than his female
counterparts and marries his bride against their will. Tellingly, though, from then on
he does not mention his parents or his relations with them any more, not until he goes
to prison two years later, indicating that this might have hurt their relationship more
than he publicly acknowledges. In any case, Iran’s traditional patriarchy is presented
as outdated and restrictive; Milani wants to free himself from it but only succeeds
partly.
Girls like Rachlin’s sister Pari are married off mostly against their will at a
young age. Even if they marry willingly, like her other sister Manijeh, Rachlin makes
sure to mention how the marriage is never a happy one, as it is lacking love and
affection: Manijeh is divorced twice in the end, her children living with their
fathers.348 After her parents forcing Pari to marry a man she does not love, Rachlin
ruminates about the system and how to get out of it:
I wondered if Father and Mohtaram were evil. But my grandmother, whom I loved so much, had
done the same to her daughters, had forced them to marry men she and my grandfather chose.
They themselves were victims of the oppressive system that dictated to people how they should
feel and live their lives. This was the time Pari should resist marrying anyone but Majid, break
the chain, as we had promised to each other.349
In her narrative, the struggle against arranged marriage becomes the struggle against
patriarchal oppression. Rachlin seems to hail her readers’ approval as she narrates her
journey from Iran to America to be one from victimicy to agency.
347 Milani, Abbas
109
348 Rachlin
285
349 Rachlin 69
73
Goldin comments similarly on her situation and on the need to fight when she
gets her period, marking her entry into womanhood and thus getting closer to the
threat of arranged marriage: “We were on a long voyage against the strong tides of
superstition and female inferiority.”350 Indeed, the first proposal even comes before
that, when she is only twelve.351 Goldin’s memory of the incident showcases how
cruel she perceives both the tradition, but also the lack of support by her mother. In
fact, she narrates how her mother points out threateningly: “I could have given you
them, you know. That’s what happened to me.”352 When, years later, her family wants
her to marry a suitor of their choice in Iran instead of going back to America to marry
her lover, she stubbornly refuses all proposals even though this angers her father and
shames the family.353 Her family seems to slowly wear her down, though, and she
remembers having lost the spark to fight until she finally loses her temper and speaks
up against her father and the family: “I had become soft-spoken, never disagreeing,
and even covered my mouth with the palm of my hand if I laughed to suffocate its
sound, to be lady-like. Now I screamed gibberish as I threw plates of food against the
walls and the floor. I pulled the tablecloth from underneath the serving dishes and tore
it.”354 Goldin constructs how, by acting and shouting uncontrollably, she wins back
her voice and agency that she feels her father, her family and Iran’s patriarchy in
general have taken away from her, as they made her obedient and silent.
Arranged marriage also plays a central role in Rachlin’s memoir: after being
dominated by their fathers, all the girls have to marry 355 and are then ruled over by
their husbands. Even widow Maryam is persuaded to marry again, but the author
narrates how the most regulated and unfree is her sister Pari: first, she is decided over
by her father, then she cannot get out of her unhappy marriage with Taheri to be with
her beloved Majid. Gentle Majid, though, has just as much power over Pari’s life as
abusive Taheri: he makes her leave her husband at great personal cost and then
refuses to leave his own family. Pari eventually is admitted to a mental hospital,
where, at last, she is freed from male domination and feels a certain amount of
happiness and freedom.356 The only one to get ‘out’ is Nahid Rachlin herself, who
manages to leave for America — in her memoir the only way for a woman to shake
off the yoke of Iran’s patriarchy and thus victimization. Rachlin narrates feeling
elated about having freed herself from the rule of her father and of Iran’s conservative
values: “Free, free, free, I sang to myself.”357 When she marries the man of her choice
in the United States, she feels happy that she can do so without her family looking for
350 Goldin
10
148
352 Goldin 149
353 Goldin 179
354 Goldin 180
355 Rachlin 124
356 Rachlin 229
357 Rachlin 137
351 Goldin
74
virginal blood the next morning. 358 America is portrayed as the safe haven where
women can be free of men’s domination and of traditionalism, where they have the
freedom to choose their own spouses.
However, her sister Pari is still dominated by abusive Taheri and wellmeaning, but equally imprisoning Majid.359
Ultimately, Pari is constructed as
Rachlin’s Other, as what could have happened to her had she not fled Iran’s
patriarchal society. Pari’s prison is multi-layered, it comes in the shape of a marriage,
a love affair, a family, a society. Even the sanatorium where Pari had experienced
some freedom is portrayed as a misogynistic place in the end, as Rachlin writes about
being derided by one of the doctors on account of being a woman.360 The encounter
that she describes as a “nightmare” becomes even more unreal and frightening when
several of the female patients implore her to free them:
As I entered the courtyard, a patient sitting on a bench got up and came over to me. She gave me
a folded piece of paper and walked away. I unfolded the paper. Please get me out of here. As I
continued to the entrance, another patient came into the yard. ‘Get me out of this cage,’ she
shouted. ‘What have I done to be punished like this? Get me out, get me out.’ Another woman
joined in. ‘I want to die, please let me.’ 361
Although these are women in a mental hospital, their cries for freedom and help
uncannily echo Iranian women’s situation in the context of Rachlin’s memoir. The
autobiographer seems to ask the reader with this episode, What have we women done
to be punished like this? Please, get us out or let us at least die; we cannot go on
living like this. Iranian women are presented to be held hostage or imprisoned — a
stark image, especially to an American audience, but also an offer of identification to
other Iranian-American women, and a way of fashioning her departure from Iran as a
last-minute flight from a doomed existence, a flight from victimization to agency.
It is striking how women are narrated to have been rendered mad by society’s
misogynistic attitude in both Goldin’s and Rachlin’s memoirs. Goldin herself loses
her temper, “shout[s] like a madwoman”362 and thus achieves temporary relief from
her situation, whereas Rachlin ‘witnesses’ women’s madness as an outsider and
perceives them crying out for help. In both cases, women are presented as the targets
of restrictive traditionalism which eventually makes them seek refuge in madness.
Both Goldin and Rachlin’s sister Pari experience a certain freedom in madness; the
authors appear to consider it a way of gaining some voice and agency. Whereas
Goldin can oppose her father openly, Pari can finally pursue her acting and notes:
“We said what we wanted.”363 However, in neither memoir, madness is ultimately
freeing. Rachlin retraces her sister’s stay in the sanatorium and experiences it as a
confining and thoroughly misogynistic place and Goldin observes herself reacting
358 Rachlin
187
134
360 Rachlin 262
361 Rachlin 262
362 Goldin 180
363 Rachlin 229
359 Rachlin
75
like a madwoman as she hits men with her car intentionally, but resents herself for
what she has become:
I was strangely stoical. Looking indifferently at their faces for a few minutes, I put the car in
first gear and pressed the gas pedal. The men in front of me ganged harder on the windows, now
cursing and calling me a whore. I accelerated a bit more. The men jumped aside, still pounding
on the car, telling me where they were going to put their penises. I calmly made a left turn,
grazing a few others, truly not caring, a smile on my face, enjoying the havoc. My revenge. I
stopped the car across the street, suddenly aware of the meanness that had penetrated me like a
virus. (…) I was being transformed into a person I didn’t know and now didn’t like. 364
She concludes she has to leave Iran soon “in order to save [her]self,”365 to become
free from male domination and madness. Both memoirists present a misogynistic
patriarchy that drives women into mental illness — a way to get some, however
temporary, relief from male domination. The only way to completely free oneself
from this situation of extreme victimization is, in both books, emigration to America.
Iranian society is thus constructed as fundamentally patriarchal: Not only do
fathers restrict their children’s agency, but families and their traditions do as well,
with arranged marriage as the most prominent example of such victimization. Authors
present especially women, be it themselves or others, to be deeply affected by their
consequent helplessness, and narrate how they resort to madness as a temporary
relief. Ultimately, however, in these constructions, departure is the only viable option.
Leaving the country, its society and its attitudes behind is therefore not only
excusable but presented as paramount for any freethinking Iranian man and woman
who does not want to suffer victimization but decide is or her own fate.
1.3.2 Women’s Rights Violated
All of the Iranian-American women autobiographers who experienced Iran
before and during the revolution narrate the state of women’s rights to have
deteriorated during the uprisals and under the theocracy afterwards. They make a
point of comparing the state of women’s rights in Shah-time — or, as some tellingly
call it, during their mother’s generation — with the situation during and after the
revolution. At the same time, they describe contemporary law enforcement to be
unfair. Women, depending on the mood of the revolutionary guards, can be arrested
for the smallest transgression or even on a fluke. In the construction of the
autobiographers, the new laws result in a veritable segregation of women à la
Apartheid and they detail women to be humiliated and discriminated against. Several
authors even compare the state of post-revolution women’s rights in Iran to the
situation of Jews during the Third Reich. Underlining how repressed Iranian women
are not only by tradition, but also by law — especially after the establishment of the
theocratic regime — these autobiographers construct a narrative of female victimicy
364 Goldin
365 Goldin
76
183
183
and thus provide compelling reasons to their audiences (and themselves) of why the
situation in Iran was untenable to them and why, in the end, it was necessary to leave
the country.
Her Mother’s Generation: The Deterioration of Women’s Rights
By comparing the state of women’s rights in Iran of before and after the
revolution, and by exemplifying how it has deteriorated, Iranian-American women
autobiographers stress how unacceptable the situation in Iran had become for them.
Nahid Rachlin, for instance, describes the situation during the monarchy as already
deficient and only further worsening during and after the revolution: “The small gains
women had begun to make under the Shah were set back. Now all women were
required to wear chadors. Women and men had to sit separately on buses, men in
front and women in the back.”366 She presents the revolution as just another event
couched in a larger downward trend regarding women’s rights.
Most autobiographers, though, point out how progressive Iran’s legal system
used to be in their opinion, as for example Azar Nafisi: “When I was growing up, in
the 1960s, there was little difference between my rights and the rights of women in
Western democracies.”367 She even opposes this positive image directly with a less
than favorable description of women’s rights after the revolution — yet not from her
own view but by asking leading questions about one of her students’ life:
Is she angry that women of her mother’s generation could walk the streets freely, enjoy the
company of the opposite sex, join the police force, become pilots, live under laws that were
among the most progressive in the world regarding women? Does she feel humiliated by the
new laws, by the fact that after the revolution, the age of marriage was lowered from eighteen to
nine, that stoning became once more the punishment for adultery and prostitution? 368
By expressing her opinion in rhetorical questions, Nafisi invites her readers to
empathize with women in Iran, their anger and their humiliation. Directing these
questions not at her own, but at her student’s life, she tries to not only make her
personal, but also many other women’s reasoning for leaving Iran immediately
accessible.
Roya Hakakian, too, externalizes her feelings and opinions about Iran’s
women’s rights situation. Yet she takes an acquainted Muslim woman as an example,
a pious woman who, in spite of her wearing the veil, still had embraced the reforms
under the Shah: “Mrs. Maroof had been thrilled by the great reforms of 1962 —
‘women granted the right to vote!’ — and of 1967 — ‘women granted the right to
divorce!’”369 It seems to be Hakakian’s strategy to show to her audience that every
woman, even believers, had welcomed the new state of law during the monarchy. By
fashioning the situation under the monarchy as an era characterized by reform and
366 Rachlin
238
Reading 261
368 Nafisi Reading 27
369 Hakakian 60
367 Nafisi
77
new freedoms that are embraced by women from all walks of life, she sets the scene
perfectly for the women’s rights disaster that the revolution embodies for her:
Women suffered an even greater loss of opportunities. Appearing in public without the veil
became unlawful. And the new Islamic dress code, consisting of a headdress, long, loose
overcoat, and pants, was implemented shortly after the victory of the revolution. Women lost the
right to divorce. Abortion was declared illegal. And most engineering fields as well as law
schools refused to accept female students. 370
And it is not only that many of women’s rights are taken away, also the remaining
ones are no longer reliable: writers like Hakakian, Nafisi and Rachlin also narrate the
enforcement of law to have become unreliable and unfair after the revolution, causing
the atmosphere for women to be even more restrictive. Nafisi describes how her
student Sanaz was arrested and punished even though she had observed the laws; she
underlines how arbitrary the revolutionary guards’ decision to arrest her is: they did
not want the warrant go to waste.371
The moderation of hejab laws a few years after the revolution does further
complicates the situation of women’s rights in Nafisi’s construction, as the law is
extremely ambiguous and up to interpretation. 372 As a result, young women become
rebellious and try to push the boundaries of what is allowed. Never knowing exactly
how little covering and how much make-up will be acceptable in a certain situation at
a certain time, the negotiation of the rules and laws is portrayed by these writers not
as a chance to achieve change, but as a dangerous dance with arbitrariness. Society
and, with it, women’s rights have changed dramatically since their mothers’
generation. Comparing the situation before and after the implementation of a
theocracy, autobiographers present themselves, as women, to have lost out during the
revolution. They describe their own and others’ experiences with the ambiguous
nature of law and its arbitrary and unfair interpretation, thus constructing women as
victimized by the dire state of women’s rights in Iran.
“Living in a Female Ghetto:” Humiliation, Segregation and Discrimination
What is more, Iranian women are not only narrated to have lost many rights
during the revolution, but descriptions of humiliation, segregation and outright
discrimination also abound. Authors Azar Nafisi and Roya Hakakian go as far as
likening the treatment of women to the Third Reich discrimination of Jews.
Nafisi remembers vividly the entrance gate of the university she is teaching at
after the revolution, the site of a lot of humiliation for all female students and
professors, as they are not allowed to pass through the beautiful portal like the men,
but have to enter through a small side door, behind which they have to undergo
inspections: “That small side opening was the source of endless tales of frustration,
370 Hakakian
7
Reading 73
372 Nafisi Reading 275
371 Nafisi
78
humiliation and sorrow. It was meant to make the girls ordinary and invisible.”373
Quoting one of her students at length, Nafisi narrates “what was done to her [student]
in this room,”374 invoking an atmosphere of abuse for the mundane, yet demeaning
process of clothes and make-up inspection. What is more, the author describes in
dramatic words her young daughter’s utter devastation after being body searched at
school, and seeing her friend’s nails cut until they draw blood: “I hate myself, I hate
myself, she repeated as I rocked her back and forth and wiped the mixture of sweat
and tears from her soft skin.”375 While Nafisi does not comment on the incident,
leaving readers to judge (and condemn) the scene for themselves, she describes how
her students try to calm her daughter by telling stories of similar encounters, thus
constructing the ubiquity of victimization for Iranian women after the revolution.
Finally, she also narrates how she herself is being inspected, approaching the topic
from a more obviously subjective and personal point of view. Her description closely
resembles an instance of rape:
They searched us from head to foot and of the many sexual molestations I have had to suffer in
my life, this was among the worst. The female guard (…) started to search me meticulously,
going over every part of my body. (…) My face was burning and I felt dirty — I felt like my
whole body was a soiled, sweaty T-shirt that had to be cast off. 376
It is important to note that it is a female guard that is inflicting the humiliation here.
Nafisi seems to insinuate that the skewed morals of the revolution have resulted in
women turning against each other. However, in her narration it is for the most part
men who humiliate women. One instance that appears to play a major role in her
autobiography is the exact opposite of the highly intrusive inspection that the female
guard submits her to. It is one of her students whom she engages with in a heated
debate, but who will not shake her hand for reasons of morality: “He silently,
deliberately, withdrew both his hands behind his back, as if to remove them from
even the possibility of a handshake. I was too bewildered, too much of a stranger to
the newness of revolutionary ways, to take this gesture in stride.”377 Muslim men are
not supposed to touch a namahram woman, a woman who is not part of their
immediate family. Nafisi interprets this encounter as deeply humiliating and
discriminating — not as the respectful gesture it might also signify. 378
Men’s humiliating avoidance of contact with women finds further expression
in autobiographers’ descriptions of how women are segregated almost à la Apartheid.
Autobiographers narrate how they have to use side entrances 379 or have to sit in the
back whenever they have to get on a bus. 380 The same happens when Nafisi and her
373 Nafisi
Reading 30
Reading 29
375 Nafisi Reading 59
376 Nafisi Reading 168
377 Nafisi Reading 98
378 Nafisi Reading 98
379 Nafisi Reading 30
380 Nafisi Reading 27
374 Nafisi
79
female students meet at a café: as they are unaccompanied women, they have to sit in
the back room.381 Hakakian, too, relates how girls and boys mingle nowhere in
public, how girls are incessantly exhorted by parents and society’s watchful eyes not
to socialize with the other gender. She, however, boasts with an alternative model, a
place of refuge from the revolution’s strict regime: the Jewish Iranian Students
Organization. There, she recounts, both genders are interacting freely and compete on
an equal level.382 In Hakakian’s narration, it takes a non-Muslim space, a space not
influenced by the ills of the revolution, for men and women to be able to socialize
without women being discriminated against.
Some autobiographers go as far as comparing women’s situations with
discrimination of Jews during the Third Reich. As Nafisi remembers one of her
students shouting out: “The law? (…) You guys came in and changed the laws. Is it
the law? So was wearing the yellow star in Nazi Germany. Should all Jews have worn
the yellow star because it was the blasted law?”383 Much the same is expressed when
Hakakian observes: “We were in exile in our own city. We were girls, living in a
female ghetto. Instead of yellow armbands, we wore the sign of our inferiority on our
heads.”384 These passages, like other references to the Third Reich that I have pointed
out above, appeal especially to the historical consciousness of Western and Jewish
readers, as they recall a time of discrimination and genocide which has entered minds
as essentially the worst case scenario for human rights. While never insinuating more
than that women have had to endure severe discrimination, subliminally, the
comparison to Nazi Germany carries heavy emotional connotations for many readers.
As such, it serves autobiographers well in painting their situation in Iran in stark
colors — and thus in their telling narratives of victimicy, in their reasoning of why it
was necessary to leave.
1.3.3 “My scarf cement around my head:”385 Hejab and the Victimicy Narrative
For Iranian-American autobiographers, a central symbol of the oppression of
women in the Islamic Republic of Iran is the veil — in both its full, body-covering
version, the chador and as headscarf and robe. Scandalous especially to Western
readers, it is a useful tool in explaining the diaspora’s departure from Iran to those
outside Iranian cultures and has thus entered the (especially female) diaspora’s
internal narrative of victimicy. The veil for them signifies a confiscation of
individuality and agency, and the slipping scarf stands for rebellion and fantasies of
freedom.
381 Nafisi
Reading 334
182
383 Nafisi Reading 134
384 Hakakian 212
385 Hakakian 221
382 Hakakian
80
Although many Iranian-American self-writings broach the issue of hejab, it is
particularly Nafisi who conveys how, in her opinion, hejab takes away women’s
individuality. In a memorable passage, she places two pictures before the reader’s
imaginary eye, one of which shows her and her students invariably dressed in black
robes and veils; in the other, “[e]ach has become distinct through the color and style
of her clothes, the color and the length of her hair; not even the two who are still
wearing their head scarves look the same.”386 Nafisi posits that mandatory hejab robs
women of their individuality, both those who would and who would not personally
choose to wear a headscarf. It is only in the safe, private realm of homes that women
can take off the mandatory covering and can become who they are. As she says a
couple of pages later: “In the first photograph (…) we are as we had been shaped by
someone else’s dream. In the second, we appear as we imagined ourselves.”387
According to Nafisi’s construction, the veil thus takes away women’s ability to shape
their own identities in the public space.
Other autobiographers, too, consider the veil to seriously limit women’s
agency and even regard it as a kind of bondage. Nahid Rachlin, for example, is
profoundly alienated by an American teacher who wants her to wear the chador for an
ethnic show, as she herself regards it as a way of subjugating women.388 In a similar
vein, Roya Hakakian describes her relationship to her covering in a vivid and imageloaden passage. She feels herself disappear and vanish into darkness under her hejab.
Moreover, it constricts her and weighs her down so she cannot move freely: “Each
side [of my collar] felt like a stiff mold, my scarf cement around my head. Would it
ever come off? (…) I saw no sign of myself under the hardened shrouds. My body
had atrophied.”389 What is more, Hakakian portrays even women’s subconsciousness
to be imprisoned by hejab, as she observes how infectious it is to watch another
woman fix her scarf in public.390 Much the same is expressed by Nafisi, who
describes how she and her students “discovered that almost every one of [them] had
had at least one nightmare in some form or another in which [they] either had
forgotten to wear our veil or had not worn it, and always in these dreams the dreamer
was running, running away.”391 The veil is required by law, but its ubiquitous
authority in both autobiographers’ constructions has women enforce the garment onto
themselves incessantly and even in their dreams.
Yet at times, autobiographers narrate how they let their scarves slip
intentionally and thus try to defy authority at least momentarily. Initially, Nafisi
recounts her rebellion towards the revolutionary system by refusing to wear the veil
386 Nafisi
Reading 4
Reading 24
388 Rachlin 144
389 Hakakian 221
390 Hakakian 184
391 Nafisi Reading 46
387 Nafisi
81
altogether.392 She describes with blunt words how she resents being forced to wear
hejab: “Little did I know that I would soon be given the choice of either veiling or
being jailed, flogged and perhaps killed if I disobeyed.”393 With this, she creates an
atmosphere that serves as a good backdrop for her rebellious scarf-slipping. That
back-sliding of the scarf sometimes seems to be a result of not paying attention or
carelessness, but goes hand in hand with her defiance: A lecture series she speaks at,
for example, is criticized and banned — in Nafisi’s words because of both her
“improper veil and inflammatory talk.”394 Also while teaching at university, she
narrates that she never wears her veil according to the rules and lets it slide back to
show more of her hair than is considered proper, even if that means that, as a result,
the authorities badger her. 395 Hakakian, although much younger in her book, lets her
scarf slip, too, when at the rebellious Jewish Iranian Students Organization, 396 or
when she goes hiking with friends in the Alborz mountains, their “republic of rock
and poetry.”397 In this public yet quasi-private space, Hakakian narrates, girls can defy
the law seemingly without too much danger and not adhere to the Islamic dress code
— which proves not to be true when they are arrested by the moral police.398 Her
moment of real defiance, though, comes after the revolutionary guards had let them
go again:
I lifted my hand to brush a lock of hair out of my eyes. Did I really just do that? My scarf had
fallen to my shoulders, and for the first time in months, the wind was blowing through my hair.
That sweaty, matted web, which lay under the scarf for most of my waking hours, still had life,
and bounced. 399
She recounts how she is overcome by a powerful rebelliousness400 — a turning point
in her narrative, as she describes how, from then on, she starts dreaming of murdering
Ayatollah Khomeini every night. 401 Hakakian constructs realizing that there is no
space to feel free, no agency; her pushing down her veil signifies her (however futile)
rejection of and rebellion against the Islamic Republic. Hejab thus becomes a central
metaphor for her mounting feeling of being victimized.
In summary, the autobiographers narrate how hejab takes away individuality
from Iranian women, how, indeed, it even serves as a kind of bondage. Women refuse
it, are letting it slip back or take it off and express their rebellion through that. Thus,
in Iranian-American autobiography, the veil becomes a prime image of women’s
oppression and is part and parcel of the authors’ strategy of explaining their departure.
The autobiographers’ representations seem to be relatively one-sided though, as none
392 Nafisi
Reading 152
Reading 152
394 Nafisi Reading 116
395 Nafisi Reading 184
396 Hakakian 182
397 Hakakian 175
398 Hakakian 183
399 Hakakian 194
400 Hakakian 195
401 Hakakian 196ff.
393 Nafisi
82
of them admits that hejab can also serve “as a camouflage for (…) women who
resolutely pursue their own goals and ideals, such as careers,”402 as Erika Friedl
points out. The construction of (imposed) veiling as a misogynistic practice thus
becomes a visible part of these autobiographers’ narratives of victimicy and
departure.
1.3.4 Victims of (Sexual) Harassment and Abuse
Narration of instances of harassment and outright abuse play a big role in
these writers’ memoirs, as they are seen as a result of traditionalism. Autobiographers
thus question the morals of a society purporting to be informed by morality and the
protection of the female and the young, or rather, the prevention of any form of
sexuality outside of wedlock. Therefore, narrations of such events can be seen as
intending to showcase a certain hypocrisy and become another important reason why
life in the Islamic Republic was just not bearable to the autobiographers (and others)
any more, leading up to their departure.
Such harassment already happens to innocent little girls, as Goldin makes a
point to narrate: A shopkeeper in her area, for example, is known as a pedophile, yet
she remembers herself as naive and unsuspecting, and thus being an easy victim. Just
in time, a friend warns her.403 A more important incident, however, is when her
father’s apprentice tricks her into giving him kisses, knowledge of whose meaning
she refutes.404 Her father hears about this, and shortly thereafter, the apprentice slips
while moving containers of acid and dies. This begs the question whether the
apprentice had had an accident after all, yet certainly fits Goldin’s construction of
herself as a victim, as I will show below.
It is not only girls, though, who are targeted, as Aria Minu-Sepehr recalls
almost becoming victim of an instance of abuse.405 And Abbas Milani also tells his
readers about how widespread pedophilia had been in his childhood: “[F]ear of God,
king, parents, and teachers was not all that cast its shadow on my school years.
Pederasty was another pestilence of those days. (…) [E]very stranger, we were told,
was a potential predator.”406 Milani does not describe himself to have been harassed
or abused, yet he writes about a boy he knew who committed suicide as a result. It is
telling how Milani lists pedophilia along with frightening patriarchal authorities, thus
building up a fearful atmosphere in the Iran of his youth. This atmosphere is, in his
account, only alleviated at very rare occasions. Iran thus is constructed as a fearful
place — a perfect backdrop for his later revolutionary struggles against the monarchy,
402 Friedl,
Erika. “Ideal Womanhood in Postrevolutionary Iran.” In Mixed Blessings: Gender and
Religious Fundamentalism Cross Culturally. Ed. by Judy Brink and Joan Mencher. New York and
London: Routledge, 1997. 143-157. 147.
403 Goldin 87
404 Goldin 114ff.
405 Minu-Sepehr, Aria. We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran. Free Press, 2012. Location 1517.
406 Milani, Abbas 31
83
its secret service SAVAK and his eventual prison sentence.407 Nahid Rachlin, too,
narrates no direct assaults at herself, but tells her readers how her sister Pari is being
abused by her husband. In the letters Pari writes and Rachlin gives an account of, he
is portrayed as an inconsiderate brute who killed a woman in a hit-and-run
accident.408 He is visiting prostitutes in spite of his extreme possessiveness of her,409
tortures her psychologically, will not let her pursue her acting, hurts her with lit
cigarettes 410 and even threatens her.411 And yet, Rachlin narrates how her sister shies
away from a divorce, as a “divorced woman living alone practically has the status of a
prostitute.”412 Pari is inextricably caught: either way, she will be the victim of abuse.
Striking is Rachlin’s portrayal of the hypocrisy of Pari’s husband, who claims to be a
good Muslim413 and thus moral, but will lose his temper easily and then cruelly abuse
his wife. Pari’s life becomes exemplary for the abuses Iranian women have to
succumb to and Rachlin counts herself lucky to have escaped such a fate.414
As mentioned above, Goldin repeatedly describes herself as victimized by
Iranian men, especially in the charged atmosphere leading up to the revolution. This
begins with smaller, everyday harassments in public: “I didn’t want to be jammed in
the back of a taxi with three men who weren’t afraid to touch. I didn’t want to walk
down side streets where men cornered women and groped them.”415 She also tells us
about how her Muslim friend is approached by mullahs regarding sigheh, temporary
marriage, coming close to prostitution.416 Goldin’s narrative of sexual victimicy picks
up speed when she narrates how her own uncle is leering at her 417 and when she
professes herself so terrified by these sexual intrusions that she still dreams of being
harassed when she is already in the U.S.: These dreams are painted in vivid colors and
include, in addition to anti-Jewish abuses, men who insult her as a prostitute, verbally
or by additionally pointing their penises at her. Thus her departure to the U.S. is
fashioned as an escape from this fate.418
Like the other autobiographers, Nafisi recounts instances of badgering and
molestation in mundane and everyday situations, constructing moral hypocrisy as a
main characteristic of life in the Islamic Republic. Her students, for example,
“complain of being harassed by bearded and God-fearing men”419 when riding in
taxis. Nafisi herself has to endure insults against her person, as she receives an
407 Milani, Abbas
114
168
409 Rachlin 159
410 Rachlin 103
411 Rachlin 134
412 Rachlin 159
413 Rachlin 83
414 Rachlin 134
415 Goldin 181
416 Goldin 182
417 Goldin 160
418 Goldin 189
419 Nafisi Reading 27
408 Rachlin
84
anonymous note at her work place calling her “adulterous.”420 But she also tells her
readers of rather serious assaults, exemplified by her student Nassrin. According to
Nafisi, Nassrin had been repeatedly sexually molested by her pious uncle, who
hypocritically “wanted to keep himself chaste and pure for his future wife and refused
friendships with women on that count.” 421 Nafisi narrates how Nassrin’s husband
goes even further than that — not in action, but in ideology: he differentiates between
his spouse and women he is sexually attracted to, ‘respecting’ his wife by indifference
and undressing other women with his eyes, hurting Nassrin terribly, not least because
she is reminded of her uncle’s deeds.422 Following the stories her student tells her,
Nafisi describes how the hypocrisy of false Islamic morals seems to pervade prisons
especially. There, female guards abuse female prisoners, and are hardly punished
when they are reported. What is more, a girl is brought in on trumped-up charges —
ironically regarding immoral behavior — and raped repeatedly because of “her
amazing beauty” alone. Nafisi also explains that it is common practice to marry off
and rape arrested virgins before executing them, so that they would, according to
Muslim belief, not go to heaven. 423 Strikingly, when deciding to leave Iran, Nafisi
strikes a dramatic comparison between life there and rape: “Living in the Islamic
Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe.”424 In summary, Nafisi does not
only, like the other autobiographers, narrate how, in her opinion, the followers of the
theocracy only pretend to be morally good, but hypocritically molest women when
they feel like it. She takes this argument one level higher, and posits that through this,
women’s whole existence in Iran resembles abuse. As a result, she constructs life in
the home country to be no longer bearable, so that, although she assures the reader of
her intentions of staying, she has to leave.
Whether the writers experience sexual assault themselves or narrate it as it has
happened to others, Iran is constructed as a fearsome place to both women and men.
It is seen as a place of abuse, physical and mental; abuse that one cannot defend
oneself against, as it takes place in a hypocritical and morally corrupt society.
Departure is constructed as the only defense against the sexual aggression and
victimization that the autobiographers see themselves and others exposed to in their
home country.
1.3.5 The Female Condition: Suffering, Silence, and Sacrifice
Especially two autobiographers, Roya Hakakian and Farideh Goldin, describe
womanhood in Iran to be intimately related to quiet suffering. They stress how the
lives of Iranian women involve a great deal of hardship and pain — brought about by
420 Nafisi
Reading 189
Reading 48
422 Nafisi Reading 323
423 Nafisi Reading 211f.
424 Nafisi Reading 329
421 Nafisi
85
traditionalism — and how motherhood is perceived as martyrdom. Pain, however, is
not voiced, but is to be suffered in silence. Both repeatedly compare the treatment of
the female in arranged marriages to sacrificing an animal. Through the linkage of the
female with silent suffering, they create an image of Iranian womanhood that makes
leaving Iran all the more legitimate, especially as the move to the U.S. promises
change.
Interestingly, it is primarily the two female Jewish authors that establish this
link. However, neither of the autobiographers attribute this characterization of female
life to Judaism, but seem to regard it to be a more general strain of Iranian society.
This assumption is supported by the fact that other Iranian-American memoirs also
include tales of quiet endurance by women, even if the references are more subtle.425
This construction of the (ideal) Iranian female is exemplified by the Muslim Iranian
devotion to Fatima, the prophet’s daughter, who is considered to have been the ideal
woman: devout, submissive, and enduring throughout a life full of hardship.426
According to Erika Friedl, models of ideal womanhood like this one transcend
religion and are deeply rooted in Iranian popular culture,427 thereby being accessible
to adherents not only of Islam, but also Judaism, for example. The authors’ social
status seems to make no difference: both Roya Hakakian, born into a family of
considerable status in a wealthy part of Tehran, and Farideh Goldin, growing up in a
lower-class Jewish ghetto in Shiraz, narrate Iranian female life to be intimately related
to pain.
Hakakian notes how, when she is still a little girl, her young aunt Farah tells
her that it is female destiny to suffer and sacrifice.428 It seems to be conventional
wisdom, something every woman knows and something that, with Farah only a few
years older than Hakakian, she passes on to her. Besides that, Hakakian narrates that
both she and Farah are destined to live the same life as their mothers, that they are
destined for motherhood themselves, which is, in turn, characterized by suffering.429
It seems significant that Farah does not answer Hakakian’s question of why suffering
is women’s destiny, 430 for pain is to be endured silently: “The words that described a
model woman were charged with muted stillness. Demure was the most spirited. (…)
Quietness was celebrated.”431 This description of a model woman reminds strongly of
the above-mentioned cultural ideal of Fatima, the prophet Muhammad’s daughter. Yet
Hakakian does not feel comfortable with the silence Iranian society expects from
women, she feels burdened432 and would rather express her emotions freely: “And I
425 e.g.
Darznik about her mother, Rachlin about her foster mother
148f.
427 Friedl 144
428 Hakakian 68
429 Hakakian 74f.
430 Hakakian 68
431 Hakakian 75f.
432 Hakakian 76
426 Friedl
86
began to keep so many cries of joy inside, I feared for my chest.”433 Eventually,
Hakakian uses these descriptions of her own and other women’s painful silence as a
backdrop for the voice she gains by leaving Iran for America, a voice with which to
break the silence and tell about women’s suffering, thus legitimizing her departure:
“And I am the lucky one, escaped only to tell thee.”434
Similar to Hakakian, Farideh Goldin recounts a warning regarding female
suffering when she enters womanhood:
When I told my mother of my first period, she folded her fingers into a fist and hit herself on the
chest, ‘Vay behalet!’ She used the Farsi words as if I had angered her. ‘You’ll suffer,’ she said.
(…) ‘Misery will be your share in life, for you have become a woman with all its inheritance of
pain,’ she said. ‘This is the beginning of your suffering. Be prepared!’ 435
Both a symbol of woman’s suffering and painful in itself, the monthly occurrence is
considered impure, endured in silence and only talked about in hushed voices.
“Speaking of blood, the women covered their mouths with the palms of their hands as
if trying to shove the words back, as if the language itself could pollute the air.”436
The silence about women’s suffering can only be broken amongst themselves, when
they dard-e del, speak to each other of their sorrows.437 Yet Goldin tells how even
dard-e del cannot relieve her mother of her worries, as her own female relatives
silence and reprimand her. 438 While originally, Goldin had believed in a “sisterhood
of women,”439 she now seems to perceive women to be active in their own silencing
and victimization.
Goldin links female suffering closely to both patriarchy and female
complicity, as she relates a nightmare of hers: “My father held my baby sister in my
dreams the way he prepared chickens for slaughtering. He jerked Nahid’s arms back
with one hand, grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, and slashed her throat.”440
With one move, the male immobilizes and silences the female, while the other female
is not intervening: “I stood there in this hallucination and watched with excitement,
not caring about my sister with her big, black eyes.”441 This dream occurs after
Goldin has backstabbed her mother by telling on her and thus references her own
failure to establish female solidarity — during the day towards her mother, in her
dream towards her sister. But also a more general lack of support among women is
being posited here.
Yet not only Goldin’s slaughtering dream criticizes traditionalism’s
dominance over women’s lives in Iran: both she and Hakakian directly compare
433 Hakakian
434 Hakakian
76
233, original italics
435 Goldin
5
6
437 Goldin 2009:92f.; Also Monir Shahroudy-Farmanfarmaian notes this practice (Shahroudy
Farmanfarmaian, Monir. A Mirror Garden: A Memoir. With Zara Houshmand. New York: Anchor
Books, 2007. 134.)
438 Goldin 137ff.
439 Goldin 7
440 Goldin 67
441 Goldin 67
436 Goldin
87
instances of female suffering (and being silenced) under patriarchy to ritual
slaughterings. Hakakian, for example, braids the narrative of her aunt Farah’s
wedding with her mental picture of the sacrificial animal that is killed for the
occasion: “Every time I think about Farah’s marriage, the image of the dying sheep
comes to my mind: four hooves jerking violently in the air while two masculine hands
press against its belly.”442 Farah is married against her will and when she tries to
speak up for herself, her father first tells her to make a sacrifice for the family. When
she still does not consent to the marriage, he chastises her. Both Farah and the sheep
are fighting for their freedom, both are being silenced by men, and both are sacrificed
for tradition.
In much the same vein, Goldin recounts the wedding preparations of her
cousin Ziba, whose pubic hair is plucked in a special ceremony. Significantly, Ziba’s
cries of suffering are being muffled by her bystanding female relatives’ ululations —
again it is women who will not let their own kind voice their pain. Goldin and her
mother are plucking chickens while the ceremony is conducted, a work that they are
forced to do because of their low status. She points out the similarity of the ceremony
and their work, as “the plucking of both the feathers and hair plainly symbolized our
mothers’ subjugation.”443 From this, she concludes that every generation of women
participates in passing on the tradition of suffering to the next.444
Years later, when Goldin is forced by her father to come back from the United
States, a calf is sacrificed for her. The description again is meant to exemplify her
own feelings towards Iran and it’s patriarchy: “There was a calf lying on the floor, its
legs held tightly by four men. Our eyes met, big black eyes, scared eyes, and I felt an
affinity with the familiar look.” She establishes identification with the animal, as it is
held and killed by the men who hold it down:
We stared at each other’s eyes as a hairy arm reached over with a sharp knife and sliced through
the long neck that was pulled back tightly. Blood gushed out and showered the walls, the
ground, and my shoes still dusted with American soil. I held my neck tight, trying to push the
words out: no, no, but my vocal cords would not obey. 445
Again, she narrates how her voice is taken away and she cannot express her pain. The
blood of the sacrificial animal stains her shoes and covers the dust of American soil,
thus symbolically obscuring her visions of a free life in the U.S. She takes the
constructed identification with the calf so far as to claim that her “fate was sealed
with that of the animal.”446 When she watches the distribution of meat to the family,
she writes feeling as if her body was torn apart, as if her legs were broken. In her
construction, she is the sacrificial animal, killed, dismembered and devoured by her
relatives. Goldin presents herself thoroughly alienated by the ritual and takes it as a
442 Hakakian
85
154
444 Goldin 153
445 Goldin 165
446 Goldin 166
443 Goldin
88
bad omen, a token of what she perceives as her home country’s oppressive
traditionalism.
On a side note, also Abbas Milani uses the sacrifice of an animal as a
comparison: when he is arrested by the police for his political subversiveness. He
remembers: “I saw the bewildered face of a bystander, and the pity so prominent in
his eyes reminded me of religious occasions during my childhood, watching the
slaughter of sacrificial lambs in our backyard.”447 The image is, therefore, not only
used for female victimization, but seems to be of a more pervasive nature, which is
put to use in narratives of victimicy.
Goldin, being forced to stay in Iran by her father, describes how she loses all
energy to fight. She cannot even talk about her misery and suffers quietly, as she feels
unable to speak: “I lost my voice, my language.”448 When she eventually manages to
leave Iran for good, she considers the USA a refuge, and she even finds the strength
to speak up to one of her male tormenters of her childhood, her uncle Morad, who had
made her suffer with his abuses, about which she had kept silent. 449 In a similar
fashion, Hakakian underlines how the move to the U.S. sets things right and the
suffering comes to an end. Farah, for instance, who had been married against her will
to a man she does not love, finally manages to get a divorce.450 Hakakian sees herself
as “the lucky one,”451 who has escaped and thus gained a voice to tell her story.
In summary, both Goldin and Hakakian portray female life in Iran as
characterized by pain and silent suffering. Both recall being warned by their female
relatives that this is their destiny as Iranian women. Hakakian in particular reflects on
how women are expected to be submissive and quiet, not voicing their sorrows and
pain, while Goldin describes how, in her experience, women contribute to the
perpetuation of this cycle of pain and silencing by inflicting onto the next generation
the same as had been done to them. Most strikingly though, not only they, but also
male author Milani links narratives of oppression to ritual slaughterings, thus
constructing life in Iran to equal death, figuratively speaking. Through their narrative
practices of Iran as a place of female silent suffering and victimization, Goldin and
Hakakian are able to further legitimize leaving their home country.
1.4 Conclusion
As I have argued in 0.4 “Theory and Methodology,” memory and identity
stand in a mutual relationship. My findings in this chapter show how this also pertains
to Iranian-American self-constructions: As their identities as ‘authentic’ Iranians are
endangered by their having left their homeland, Iranian-American autobiographers
447 Milani, Abbas
134
186
449 Goldin 160, 194
450 Hakakian 231
451 Hakakian 233
448 Goldin
89
stress those aspects of their remembered past that explain their departures and make
them excusable, if not absolutely necessary — to themselves as much as to the rest of
the diaspora. Through this ‘new’ memory of victimicy, they lay a claim to being
authentic and legitimate Iranians, in spite of having left Iran.
Autobiographies thus are carefully constructed to show that departure was the
only option, and was necessary to flee from discrimination, misogynism, and
oppressive traditionalism. Some of the authors explain in detail how they felt their
individuality was confiscated, how their identities became increasingly irrelevant and
how, eventually, they felt like they were vanishing. The images of disappearing and
dismembered bodies, the feeling of not knowing oneself anymore and of being
irrelevant are meant to present their living conditions in Iran as unbearable and
construct their departures as missions to save themselves and their selves. Others
describe the discrimination they had to endure as Jews and how this discrimination
eventually led to their departures. This plays out in different ways: On the one hand,
Iran can be portrayed as an inhospitable place from the beginning because of longstanding anti-Jewish sentiments and the autobiographer can be fixated on the exodus
and on leaving for a better place, a Promised Land. On the other hand, the
autobiographer can try to show pre-revolutionary Iran in the best of lights, but
gradually changing throughout the revolution to make the point how things went
wrong and how departure was absolutely necessary in spite of deep loyalty to Iran.
The most important strategy for explaining their departures from Iran though
is an in-depth portrayal of what autobiographers perceive as Iran’s traditionalism.
Most see the revolution as an organic continuation of oppressive tradition. Their
discontentment with tradition thus connects in meaningful ways with the revolution
— and therefore their eventual departures. Whereas both women and men describe
themselves as struggling with dominant fathers and arranged marriage, some female
autobiographers describe how the only temporary relief they can find is through
expressions of madness. Furthermore, the topic of women’s rights, severely curbed on
the one hand, and ambiguous and unreliable on the other, is a sore spot that
memoirists continuously point out. Hejab becomes a symbol of female oppression for
these authors, and all of the authors construct morality in Iranian society to be
skewed, as they depict themselves and others to be harassed and abused. Departure
thus also frees them from such threats. Last but not least, being female is narrated to
be closely linked to pain and suffering; their victimization is compared to the ritual
slaughter of sacrificial animals. Especially these narratives of female victimhood also
should be seen as responding to the interests of a specific group of American readers:
those interested in the situation of human (and in particular women’s) rights in Iran.
This is not to cast doubt on these authors’ accounts, but to point out how the
anticipation of market interest (by authors themselves or through publishers) guides
the choice of and stress on certain themes.
90
All in all, the writers employ a number of strategies to show how their lives in
Iran were no longer bearable, how they were victimized. The diaspora’s guilt of
leaving is turned around and projected onto those who have ‘spoilt’ the home land —
and such disidentification also constitutes an aspect of the emergence of a new
diasporic collective identity. Constructing their Iranian lives as victimicy narratives,
writers engage in an apology of departure of the Iranian population abroad, making
their existence as Iranians abroad acceptable and, indeed, inevitable. In the process,
they go to great pains to ‘prove’ how it is not them but the home country that has
changed, that has become ‘inauthentic’ through the revolution. They thus stake out an
Iranian diasporic identity, an identity that is ‘authentically’ Iranian in spite of having
left the homeland. Additionally, they respond to their American audiences’
expectations regarding Iran as a place of traditionalist oppression; framing themselves
as victims, they are able to distance themselves from potential stereotypes against
Iranian immigrants.
91
92
2. A Usable Past: Construction of Religion and Alternative
Identifications
Religion (read: Islam 452) is important to Iranian Americans and their identity
as it has had a significant impact on their past and is, even more so, made their most
distinct characteristic by their American surroundings. There is, however, often a
disjuncture in what Islam means to Iranian Americans and what American audiences
think Islam means to Iranian Americans. Therefore, Iranian Americans do not only,
individually and as a diaspora, need to come to terms with the fact that the revolution
that forced their departure was religiously inspired, but they also need to explain to
their American readers what role religion really plays in their lives.
This is uneasy terrain: Although a certain distancing from Islam seems
inevitable — after all, the Islamic revolution forced them to go abroad — this means
renouncing a central feature of Iranian identity. Again, like in chapter 1, questions of
authenticity arise that need to be negotiated. Disidentifying with Islam, IranianAmerican autobiographers need to find and stress alternative ‘historical’ or mythical
backgrounds in order to construct an Iranian-American identity. Also, such
disidentification, such identification of the ‘other,’ constitutes, as I have pointed out in
0.4 “Theory and Methodology,” an aspect of collective identity construction. But this
remains contested, as there are also those who refrain from such distancing from
Islam. They not only face the judgment of their ethnic peers, but also the problem of
making their identity palatable to American audiences. Whatever they decide to do,
these strategies of identity negotiation are bound to shift the focus of what it means to
be ‘authentic’ Iranian.
2.1 Religion in Lives Reconstructed
As mentioned in chapter 1 “Explaining Departure,” autobiographers underline
traditionalism’s stifling influence on their lives in Iran in order to prove that it was
necessary to leave. Here, I want to examine specifically how they reconstruct the
Islam of their past lives as a source of mourning and suffering and thus as a source of
oppression. Jerome Bruner’s concept of victimicy becomes relevant here again: self-
452 Religion
is to be equated with Shia Islam here, as it is nominally the religion of the vast majority in
Iran — about 98% according to Georges Sabagh and Mehdi Bozorgmehr. (Sabagh et al. 448). However,
especially after the revolution, private practice and institutionalized religion have been drifting apart, as
the religious establishment ascended to political power. I will therefore refer to institutionalized Islam
also as ‘political Islam’ in opposition to Iranians’ private faith.
I will, however, also include Iranian Judaism and Zoroastrianism, minority religions, later in the
chapter. The reason for this is that Iranian Jews constitute a considerable part of the diaspora — a large
percentage of the Jewish population had to flee discrimination — and one should not drown out their
voices in the analysis of a diaspora that is more heterogeneous than its home country. Zoroastrianism
has a much smaller, very exclusive community of followers and, to date, no autobiography of a
professed Zoroastrianist has been published. I will talk about Zoroastrianism at length, however, due to
its huge importance to diaspora Iranians as an identification alternative to Islam.
93
victimization resulting from a lack in agency regarding a past decision.453 This will
lead on to an analysis of the different ways in which authors try to distance
themselves from (institutionalized) religion. Religious observance — if it is not
outright secularity that is claimed — is described to be only perfunctory or a public
performance. While most writers narrate a complete shunning of Islam, some try to
confine their faith to the private domain.
2.1.1 Constructing Islam as a Source of Gloom and Alienation
Remembering Iran, autobiographers time and again mention how they
perceived its extensive rituals of mourning as gloomy, frightening and alienating. This
mourning culture is seen to be grounded in the tale of the battle of Karbala, during
which Muhammad’s grandson Hussain and his small group of followers and relatives
were killed by the (much more numerous) forces of the Ummayid caliph Yazid in the
7th century AD. While Sunni Muslims believe the caliphate was legitimate, Shia
Muslims regard Muhammad’s son Ali and his grandson Hussain as the real successors
to Muhammad. It is for this reason that Hussain and his supporters are celebrated and
mourned by Shias as martyrs fighting for the cause of Islam and murdered in a most
cruel fashion by an evil and illegitimate tyrant. The first month of the Islamic
calendar, Muharram, is a month of remembrance for the martyrdom of Hussain.
Especially the tenth of the month, Ashura, is a day marked by processions and rituals
of extreme mourning, including chest-beating and self-flagellation. Passion plays are
performed that reenact the battle and eventual martyrdom.
Gloomy Memories
Many of the autobiographers set the stage for their memories of Shiism with
descriptions of a gloomy and depressing atmosphere, thus already hinting at their
rejection of these aspects of Islam. Abbas Milani, for instance, laments the “perpetual
mood of mourning.” He claims that “Shiism, in principle, denigrates joy. Laughter,
they used to tell us, is the work of the devil.”454 Azadeh Moaveni narrates how, as a
child, she thought the name of the city of Qom — a Shia Vatican so to say — meant
‘gham,’ Persian for ‘gloom’ 455 and how, growing up, she imagined Iran having been
turned into the Death Star “by a dark, evil force called the Revolution.”456
Especially the mourning month Moharram with its main festival Ashura is
shown as the epitome of gloom. Shahab Nahvi calls it “[a] somber occasion to be
sure,”457 Aria Minu-Sepehr notes how the main festival during that time “brought out
453 Bruner
41; also see in the introduction to chapter 1 “Explaining Departure.”
63
455 Moaveni, Azadeh. Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in
Iran. New York: Public Affairs, 2006. 97.
456 Moaveni Lipstick vii
457 Nahvi 42
454 Milani, Abbas
94
the zealots”458 and Gelareh Asayesh recounts, “I hated the gloom and zealotry. My
sister and I were endlessly chastised. (…) The veneer of our Western life would
crumble at such moments, revealing the religious roots that bound us all.”459 Shia
Islam here is portrayed as negating a right to happiness and demanding gravity, if not
grief. This cheerless atmosphere takes over everyone’s life, even those outside of
Shiism, as for example Jewish Farideh Goldin remembers that she avoided seeming
to be happy at all costs so as not to provoke anti-Jewish sentiments.460
In autobiographers’ memory, the gloom even takes over the color scheme, as
places and times of mourning only allow for clothes in somber colors. Therefore,
young Bahrampour, who remembers herself as sticking out “like a bright strawberry
in [a] street full of black clothes,”461 needs to first cover up with a black chador
before she can visit the burial place of Massumeh, a Shia Imam’s sister. During
Moharram, the color red is considered especially offensive and potentially dangerous,
as Asayesh narrates in her memoir. Upon seeing ritual mourners, her mother warns
her to go inside, as her wearing red might enrage the mourners. Scared and her sense
of guilt automatic, she ponders the possible consequences: “What would have
happened if they had seen me? Would their passions, already inflamed, turn into
violence?”462 The Jewish population acts even more fearful, Goldin recounts, who
carefully avoid colorful clothing for a good reason: “It was a month of mourning, of
wearing black. None of us wanted to provoke hostility by any implications of
happiness.”463 As both cheerful colors and happiness are rejected, and gloominess
invades every aspect of life during times of mourning, Shia Islam is constructed as a
depressing and even frightening presence in Iran by these autobiographers.
Nahid Rachlin even puts the mournful and bloody passion plays she attended
with her religious aunt into direct opposition with American movies: “[They] were so
entirely different from the passion plays.”464 These plays seem to represent to her an
instance of women’s oppression for which she, only an eight-year-old at the time, has
to wear a chador. They are described as dark and distressing affairs where battles and
murders of a distant past are reenacted. Where passion plays seem to represent
coercion and traditionalism, American movies stand for modernity, happy endings,
and their escape from traditionalism. Watching movies is the sisters’ favorite pastime
and it is Pari’s dream to become an actress. Likening her to an American actress,
Rachlin admires her “white dress with yellow and red flowers on it”465 and her “lively
and expressive face,”466 that seems to stand in stark contrast to the gloom and sadness
458 Minu-Sepehr,
location 1246
Gelareh. Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America. Boston: Beacon, 1999. 75.
460 Goldin 72
461 Bahrampour 35
462 Asayesh 74
463 Goldin 72
464 Rachlin 44f.
465 Rachlin 43
466 Rachlin 44
459 Asayesh,
95
of the passion plays. While American movies are described as colorful and human
stories, and come to stand for women’s freedom and fulfillment of their dreams, Shia
passion plays are narrated to be dark, violent and depressing. Religion and tradition in
Rachlin’s memoir are thus shown to be forces of women’s oppression.
Descriptions of Shia Islam’s gloominess climax when autobiographers picture
religious garments as shrouds. There are several instances of this, for example when
Goldin recounts her experience of an Ashura procession: “Some hundreds of men,
their faces invisible in the darkness and their battered bodies wrapped in white burial
shrouds, moved down the street. It was a march of the living dead.”467 Far from the
life-celebrating qualities that religion often takes on for Americans, religion to Goldin
seems to signify a departure from humanness and life. Death of female freedom is
described by both Rachlin and Hakakian, who compare religion-imposed veils to
shrouds. Hakakian narrates how the headscarf is weighing her down and stifles her
spirit: “I saw no sign of myself under the hardened shrouds.”468 Life in Iran no longer
seems livable to her family and they eventually leave for the United States with the
hope of a better, freer life. Rachlin thinks she has successfully left behind oppression
through religion when it unexpectedly catches up with her in America. Her teacher
there makes her wear the chador for an ethnic show and Rachlin remembers: “As
child, I chose not to wear the chador. Now cutting one felt almost like making a
shroud.”469 American fascination with the ‘exotic’ thus extends the veil’s oppressive
force for Rachlin, casting a gloomy, deadly shadow over her personal freedom even in
America.
Religion’s ties are hard to shake off for all of the autobiographers and are
presented as signifying gloom, sadness, mourning, colorlessness, depression,
oppression, and even death. The writers thus make clear to the reader that they reject
these aspects of Shia Islam — if not religion as a whole — and some even already
express their admiration of a secular American life style.
Alienating Rituals
Rejection is also expressed when writers detachedly describe mourning rituals
as alienating, over-emotional, violent, and even sexually charged. Thus, they
construct a personal distance to these religious practices and at times even voice a
certain level of disgust. Abbas Milani, for example, merges the whole complex of
revolution-time Shia Islam into a token of craziness when he writes: “Religion in
those days was synonymous with incomprehensible rituals, occasionally violent.”470
He presents these customs to be not only alienating, but even physically dangerous to
participants. Later, he launches into a more detailed description of mourning rituals,
467 Goldin
76
468 Hakakian
221
145
470 Milani, Abbas 58
469 Rachlin
96
but not without underlining the aspects he regards as incomprehensible and crazy:
“The frenzy of this cult of grieving reaches a zenith in the month of Moharam. (…)
Men flagellate their naked chests to a crimson color, or whip their bare backs with a
chain into a blue blistering bruise.”471 Explaining Ashura’s background with hardly so
much as a half-sentence, Milani speaks of “frenzy” and of a “cult” and narrates how
men mutilate themselves with whips and machetes, thus presenting Shia mourning
rituals as a “bizarre carnival:”472 over-emotional practices far removed from reason
and normalcy. He traces back his negative feelings to his childhood when he
happened to stumble upon a particularly bloody mourning ceremony: “The sight of
that zealotry frightened me as a child and continues to haunt me as an adult.”473
Milani sees his rejection of these practices as a result of what is to him their overemotional zealotry and violent fanatism — an appraisal that also colors his opinion of
Islam as a whole.
A similar mood is evoked by Jewish Farideh Goldin, who describes how she
used to watch Shia mourning rituals as a child with a certain fascination, but mainly
with fear.474 Although she gives her readers more background information about the
Ashura rituals, her depiction of the mourners remains crass and their religious
practices seem violent and painful, sure to estrange many ‘Western’ readers:
The bravest were in front. Shirtless, they displayed bold chests. (…) The scant clothing gave
them little protection from the brutal midday sun. (…) The marchers flung both hands
automatically over their left shoulders, clutching in both hands wooden rods attached to a bundle
of heavy chains. Bloodied metal rested on tender skin for a moment. (…) Their bare feet
contracted in agony as they touched the hot, paved road. They were the strongest believers. The
blood dripping from self-inflicted dagger wounds on their foreheads told of their unrelenting
commitment. (…) Women, watching tearfully, hit their chests with their fists or their heads with
the palm of both hands while moaning. 475
When Goldin observes these proceedings, her awe mingles with fear of the
mourners’ religious frenzy, as she says that in the past, pogroms had occurred during
Moharram: “Lost in their deep sorrows, highly emotional Moslem men recreated in
the Jewish ghettos the story of a war lost long ago. Wanting to avenge the dead, the
mourners carried on a jihad, a holy war, against the Jews, to imitate Imam Ali who
had shed blood for the advancement of Islam.”476 Again, Muslim mourning rituals are
presented as violent, feverish and dangerous. Yet Goldin presents herself not as quick
in judgment as Milani, as she tries to remain unprejudiced towards Muslims.477
However, when “open hostility [towards Jews] and religious bigotry”478 are on the
rise at the onset of the revolution, she narrates herself as one of the first to notice. She
471 Milani, Abbas
63
64
473 Milani, Abbas 65
474 Goldin 75
475 Goldin 74
476 Goldin 75
477 Goldin 75
478 Goldin 167
472 Milani, Abbas
97
constructs anti-Semitism and zealotry to be part and parcel with Shia Islam, to be
“deep within the Iranian psyche.”479 In the end, she expresses her fear and rejection
by retelling a feverish dream full of frightening images of Shia anti-Semitism.480
Thus, Goldin constructs Muslim Iranian mourning practices as the paramount
example of its — in her opinion — inherent irrationality and zealotry, leading
eventually to a hatred of Jews.
Azar Nafisi takes her depiction of public mourning one step further: not only
do people behave in frenzied and feverish way — in her opinion, there is also a
sexual quality to these events: “I experienced the desperate, orgiastic pleasure of this
form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched
bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, sexually
flavored frenzy in the air.”481 With this moral judgment and construction of Iranian
mourning ceremonies, Nafisi expresses her rejection of this aspect of Iranian postrevolutionary Shiism. She distances herself from it and at the same time from the
Islamic Republic which, she says, survives through these practices.482
One example of especially frenzied public mourning often mentioned in
Iranian-American autobiographies (outside of the ceremonies of Moharram) is the
funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini. Extreme in both numbers of mourners and emotional
significance, autobiographers find the internationally broadcast event difficult to
grapple with. Again, Nafisi has the impression that there is a sexual undertone to the
feverish mourning, intensified by the waters that is sprayed at the participants to cool
them down. She also stresses how bizarre she had found the procession, during which
the crowd had surged forward to rip pieces of the dead man’s shroud and later had to
be kept at bay with a whip.483 Clearly, Nafisi distances herself from the mourning that
she constructs as over-the-top and over-emotional. Significantly, she also notes how it
made her feel “like an alien in [her] homeland.”484
Autobiographers like Tara Bahrampour and Gelareh Asayesh, who grew up in
diaspora, approach such rituals with a greater distance to begin with — a distance that
can be kept or challenged, but one that is narrated to prevail by both. Bahrampour
describes her memory of Khomeini’s funeral — which she had watched on TV in the
USA. Her view of the event is distanced and purely observing, as if she felt no
emotional involvement: “We sit around the TV and watch the camera pan over a
black mass of people crying and beating their heads to a sorrowful rhythm. (…) We
see agitation, a struggle; the people around the coffin wrench it open and tear at
swatches of shroud — and then a white limb is hanging over the side.”485
479 Goldin
168
191
481 Nafisi Reading 90
482 Nafisi Reading 90
483 Nafisi Reading 245
484 Nafisi Reading 246
485 Bahrampour 199
480 Goldin
98
Bahrampour appears not to identify with the “frenzied crowd,”486 and while she does
not judge them like Nafisi does, she constructs herself to be distanced from the
feelings of the mourners and with that from these practices of Shia Islam.
Having spent most of her life in diaspora, Gelareh Asayesh can only talk to
her friend Elham, who had witnessed the funeral. As she comments about Elham, “[s]
he was among the masses who followed the coffin in a spectacle that seemed bizarre
to the Western world,”487 some of her own befuddlement at the event and its
extremeness can be felt. From this conversation, she tries to understand, and to
reconstruct. Her attitude towards the mourning ceremonies seems to be one of curious
bewilderment and she asks her friend “to decode for [her] her love for Khomeini”488
and the mourning practices at his funeral. Like Bahrampour, Asayesh’s narration is
non-judgmental, but every once in a while betrays emotional distance and
incomprehension. She is trying without success to feel like Elham does, to appreciate
the symbolism of walking barefoot in mourning, of a fountain of blood on a
graveyard (water dyed red), of owning “a sample of the earth from Khomeini’s
grave.”489 In the end, while she feels sympathy for her old friend who has turned so
religious, she does not feel like she has much in common with her. In spite of her
trying to reconnect with her Iranian Shia heritage, in this instance, the distance seems
to be too great to be bridged.
In summary, a considerable number of autobiographers construct Moharram
and its mourning practices as full of alienating rituals and religious frenzy, and
distance themselves from them. They regard the proceedings as incomprehensible and
fear-inducing, or even judge them as sexually flavored. Their rejection of mourning
rituals becomes indicative of their tendency to reject Islam as a whole, at least in the
public arena. While this might be partly a result of their negative experiences with
Islam — the revolution that forced them to leave was taken over by the clergy — it
can also be understood as part of a larger project of trying to fit in in America.
2.1.2 Keeping Political Religion at a Distance
As Iranians in diaspora largely tend to dissociate themselves from Islam both
because of the role it has played in forcing them abroad490 and because they fear
discrimination in the USA, 491 Iranian-American autobiographers develop a variety of
ways in which they distance themselves from religion and its traditionalism — or at
least Shia Islam in its institutionalized, politicized form, which is so closely
interlinked with the government that lies at the heart of the events that caused the
486 Bahrampour
199
148
488 Asayesh 149
489 Asayesh 151
490 Sabagh et al. 456
491 Sabagh et al. 453
487 Asayesh
99
diaspora to form. While there are some writers that claim to have led thoroughly
secular lives, for example Shahab Nahvi, Abbas Milani and Azadeh Moaveni, 492 most
autobiographers have to negotiate their past identity and their current attitudes. Hence
they claim that the religious acts they and their families used to perform were devoid
of meaning, as they constituted mere performance, but not actual religiosity.
Secondly, some autobiographers try to prove how not only they, but all ‘normal’
Iranians are shunning (politicized) religion. Last but not least, some autobiographers
confine religion to the private domain, thus distancing themselves from political
Islam while still allowing for private faith.
Pretended Piety
More often than not, piety is presented to be merely perfunctory or a
performance. Iranian-American autobiographers narrate themselves and their families
to not take religion seriously, to not ‘do it’ out of deep belief, but because of society’s
expectations or out of pure habit. Abbas Milani, for example, concedes that “the
landscape of [his] childhood was dominated by religion,”493 but makes a point of
describing his family as quite unreligious.494
Jewish Roya Hakakian shows the same tendency to downplay her family’s
religiousness — in spite of her father being a rabbi. Although she cannot blame
Judaism for her forced departure from Iran, Hakakian sees certain conservative
aspects of it as part and parcel with a larger traditionalism in Iran, which she
rejects.495 It is not surprising, therefore, that she presents her family, in a highly
significant scene, to only pretend to listen to Passover prayers. In ‘reality,’ they are
listening for the sound of her uncle’s BMW.496 This, in Hakakian’s tale, becomes
symbolic for how little importance religion holds for them, and yearn for success and
assimilation into ‘modern’ pre-revolution Iranian society that is unconcerned with
religion. Her uncle, having shed not only his Jewish accent, but also poking fun at the
Ha Lachma, is the family’s “most glorious reality.”497 Even the Muslim family of the
girl that this uncle falls in love with is portrayed not to be observant. Hakakian thus
constructs ordinary, progressively thinking Iranians of all religious backgrounds —
the future diaspora—to live thoroughly secular lives, in spite of indications of the
opposite.
Afschineh Latifi, too, makes a point of noting how “religion played a very
small role in our home and in the homes of most of the people we knew.”498 In her re-
492 Nahvi
41, Moaveni Lipstick 97, Milani, Abbas 60
59
494 Milani, Abbas 60
495 e.g. Hakakian 63
496 Hakakian 47
497 Hakakian 49
498 Latifi, Afschineh. Even After All This Time: A Story of Love, Revolution, and Leaving Iran. With
Pablo F. Fenjves. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 57.
493 Milani, Abbas
100
construction of events, religion is little more than pretend and play, a performance:
“Afsaneh and I loved putting on the chadors. It felt like Halloween. (…) For a few
hours I could be transformed and become someone else entirely.“ 499 Latifi stresses
that while she and her sister “would beg” to accompany their grandmother to the
mosque, “it was all (…) devoid of any meaning” and that the main reason they “loved
going” was not the religious rituals, “which [were] completely foreign” to them, but
merely the sweets. 500 Aria Minu-Sepehr also remembers how his female relatives
were only pretending to mourn while they were “hysterically laughing, pranking the
event with fake wails, mocking the most defining Shi’a ritual under the safety of their
chadors.”501
It is understandable that these autobiographers stress the perfunctoriness of
religion in their Iranian pasts, and that they construct institutionalized, politicized
religion to have been of comparatively little importance. With religion and its
traditionalism being the primary factors of their departures, it is not surprising that it
should have fallen from grace for many diaspora subjects. While the diaspora is to a
considerable extent made up of those who had shunned religion already before the
revolution,502 the diaspora’s forced departure from Iran has distanced the majority
further from Islam.503 Autobiographical representations have to bow to social
conventions like this, as Kenneth J. Gergen maintains in his discussion of the social
character of self-narratives: “The past (…) is molded from conversations, and to
‘remember oneself’ cannot then be extricated from the agreements reached within
relationships. To report one’s memories is not so much a matter of consulting mental
images as it is engaging in a sanctioned form of telling.”504 Endorsing religion is no
longer sanctioned in (large parts of) the diaspora. Indeed, some autobiographers even
narrate a shunning of religion, especially institutionalized Islam, as we will see below.
Confining Religion to the Private Domain
Having had to leave because of traditionalism and religion, most IranianAmerican autobiographers feel ambiguous about religion at best or reject it altogether.
The few that openly endorse Islam present themselves as privately pious and disavow
politicized Islam. They thus follow established rules: The only sanctioned
possibility 505 to explore Shia Islam in diasporic self-writings seems to be private faith,
that is, religiosity that distances itself from the Islamic Republic.
499 Latifi
57
57
501 Minu-Sepehr, location 1293
502 Sabagh et al. 452
503 Sabagh et al. 456
504 Gergen, Kenneth J. “Mind, Text, and Society: Self-Memory in Social Context.” In The Remembering
Self: Construction and Accuracy in the Self-Narrative. Ed. by Ulric Neisser and Robyn Fivush.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. 78-104. 90.
505 Gergen: “The past, then, is molded from conversations, and to ‘remember oneself’ cannot then be
extricated from the agreements reached within relationships. To report one’s memories is not so much a
matter of consulting mental images as it is engaging in a sanctioned form of telling.” (90)
500 Latifi
101
Especially Mahmoud Sarram exemplifies this disdain for politicized Islam, as
he portrays himself as a devout and earnest follower of his faith who has become
thoroughly disillusioned with the Islam embodied by the Islamic Republic. While he
remembers being optimistic and hopeful that the Islamic Revolution would lead to a
better Iran,506 he recalls how he was soon disappointed by the new rulers’ extremely
conservative approach. 507 Taken aback by how revolutionary Islam does not consider
life-long devotion good enough,508 he constructs himself as an unpolitical Muslim:
To this day, I believe it is crucial to separate the religious from the political in Islam. Radical,
militant interpretations of Islam are a political expression, not a religious mandate. (…) Sadly,
through its interpretations of Islam, the Islamic Republic may have distorted the face of the great
religion on which it was based. 509
In contrast to most other autobiographers, however, he continues to openly embrace
his religion in diaspora, where it contributes centrally to his identification as an
Iranian American: “I belonged to a minority within the minority who cherished the
Islamic identity (…). Our small group argued that if we could manage to hold onto
our religion in America, our national identity would also be preserved.”510
Also Reza Varjavand presents himself as religious when, on a return journey,
he wants to mourn at his father’s grave: “I wanted to clean it and touch it while
praying for my father by reciting the opening Surah of Koran, Fatehtol Ketab.”511 At
the same time, however, he clearly distances himself from and criticizes the Islamic
Republic and its version of Islam, pointing out its lack of respect for ordinary
people. 512
In a similar vein, Gelareh Asayesh regards Islam as central to her identity.
While her childhood feelings about her religion are ambiguous,513 as an adult she
misses her faith:
Living in America, with its lofty intellectualism, has robbed me of simple faith (…). I realize the
essential magic of belief, that its transformative power lies not in what you believe, but that you
believe. (…) I grieve for my loss. I want my capacity for faith restored. I want to believe in
miracles. But I feel deflowered, incapable of recapturing a lost innocence. 514
It is significant that Asayesh talks of “simple,” not institutionalized faith. It is not the
public display that she misses, but “ways so laden in meaning, so anchored in
tradition”515 — private religiosity. She tries to incorporate Islam into her daily
American life by praying in the privacy of her bedroom 516 and attempts to reconnect
with the religiosity of her childhood by going on repeated journeys back to Iran.
506 Sarram
136ff.
153
508 Sarram 154
509 Sarram 162
510 Sarram 177
511 Varjavand, Reza. From Misery Alley to Missouri Valley: My Life Stories and More. USA: Xlibris,
2009. 51.
512 Varjavand 51
513 Asayesh 75
514 Asayesh 31f.
515 Asayesh 130
516 Asayesh 121
507 Sarram
102
While she remembers being taken aback by certain aspects of institutionalized
religion, 517 she also celebrates the immediacy of faith during Moharram rituals: “I
accept, with a sense of inner yielding, that this passionate ritual, this pulsing vein of
religious zeal, is my birthright. It is part of who I am.”518 Iranian religiosity is
depicted as original and uncorrupted; institutions and politics have no place in it for
Asayesh: “I think of Iran as primitive (…) in the sense of being closer to God, man,
and nature. Here in Iran (…) [f]aith and myth are part of the fabric of daily living.”519
Back in America, it is the act of private devotion that allows her to feel at home in her
Iranianness: “It is only when I pray that I come close to feeling at peace, allowing
myself to believe, little by little, that I can trust the links that bind me to my country,
my family, and my past.”520 Asayesh thus constructs private, unpoliticized piety as
central to her Iranian identity. Even as she wholeheartedly embraces private faith, she
directly and indirectly criticizes certain aspects of religious institutions.
While more reluctantly and less overtly, other authors also embrace Islam in
the private domain. Azadeh Moaveni, for example, who, as shown above, largely
portrays Iranians to reject religion both in Iran and the diaspora, admits at another
point that there is religiosity — but that it is private and not political: “Iranians, by
and large, are subtle about their piety, and identify more closely with Persian tradition
than with Islam. Faith is a personal matter, commanding of respect, but it does not
infuse our culture in the totalizing way I have witnessed in certain Arab countries.”521
One can sense her wish to influence her American readers’ image of Iranians, a wish
that makes her portray Iranian religiosity as homogeneously subtle — implying that
the government’s overt and very public religiosity is alien to Iranian culture.
Disavowing the legitimacy of the theocracy also serves as the backdrop for allowing
private faith; a circumvention of the diaspora’s dislike of religion, so to speak: it is
acceptable to be pious, but only if it is not institutionalized religion.
In Afschineh Latifi’s memoir, one can almost sense a split personality, as she
narrates her religious observance as meaningless, but assures her readers a little later
that while “[e]verything was crumbling, (…) I never doubted. I never stopped
believing.”522 She distances herself from organized religion as promoted by the
Islamic Republic, or the “fanatics,”523 as she calls them, but stresses that she has
never lost her private faith.
While Ardalan describes her childhood as secular,524 she recounts herself
being spiritually lost and detached as an American teenager, and thus starts dabbling
517 Asayesh
160
135
519 Asayesh 171
520 Asayesh 181
521 Moaveni Lipstick 23
522 Latifi 59
523 Latifi 59
524 Ardalan, Iran Davar. My Name is Iran: A Memoir. New York: Henry Holt, 2007. 17, 130.
518 Asayesh
103
in religion.525 She longs to reconnect with her Islamic heritage, and constructs a
desirable, ‘real’ Iranian faith to be found in the private, apolitical sphere, on the
countryside: “I thought of the genuine Iranians I had met as a child in the villages.
Pious and down-to-earth (…)” [my emphasis].526 However, after her decision to go
back to Iran in order to learn more about Islam,527 she starts to live a life structured by
institutionalized religion and tradition, attending Friday prayers, 528
submitting to arranged
marriage529
and religious
fasting.530
voluntarily
Yet while she defends the
founders of the Islamic Republic to have had the best of intentions, 531 she describes
how a few years after the revolution she could no longer embrace politicized,
institutionalized religion:
While my mother and I both had sought out our Islamic heritage and were proud to have learned
so much of its rich history, I had to admit, as my mother had, that the lens through which it was
filtered and interpreted through the governance style of postrevolutionary Iran did not follow the
principles it had taught us. 532
In the meantime, she grows more and more disenchanted with both the restricting
public atmosphere and her own traditional marriage. Her decision to leave for the US
is accompanied by the revelation: “I realized that God was everywhere.”533 With this
significant assessment, Ardalan legitimizes her turning away from institutionalized
religion, specifically from the institution of the Islamic Republic towards a more Sufiinspired private spirituality marked especially by her shedding the veil.534
Autobiographers as diverse as Sarram, Asayesh, Moaveni, Latifi and Ardalan
all adhere to the unwritten rule of the diaspora: rejection of the government that
forced them to leave home results in rejection of institutionalized Islam and thus in a
confinement of faith to the private domain.
2.2 Looking for Alternative Identifications in Past and Present
As shown above, Muslim Iranian-American autobiographers tend to reject
Islam, or restrict it to private practice. They are left with an identificational void, as
Iranian identity — at least traditionally and even more as propagated in the IRI — is
defined to a large extent by Shia Islam.535 The Iranian-American diaspora is, however,
turning to alternatives in both past and present. Figuring most prominently is the
identification with pre-Islamic Iran and Zoroastrianism, which also exists in Iran itself
525 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 150
Iran Davar 150
527 Ardalan, Iran Davar 153
528 Ardalan, Iran Davar 155
529 Ardalan, Iran Davar 157
530 Ardalan, Iran Davar 186f.
531 Ardalan, Iran Davar 191
532 Ardalan, Iran Davar 193
533 Ardalan, Iran Davar 195
534 Ardalan, Iran Davar 212
535 As Georges Sabagh and Mehdi Bozorgmehr observe, this is not true for Iranian Jews, who (although
disidentifying with the oppressive traditionalism in Iran, as I have shown above) identify more with
their religious than with ethnic identity in diaspora (Sabagh et al. 453).
526 Ardalan,
104
and has existed, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi argues,536 as an alternative identification
narrative to ‘Biblico-Koranic mythistory’ since at least the 16th century. It finds
renewed and heightened interest in the diaspora, however, where it is changed to
accommodate diasporic politics.
As I will explain in depth in the subchapter “A Usable Past and a Persian
Identity,” Qajar and Pahlavi Iran had engaged in self-Orientalization, importing
European attitudes as well as ‘scientific’ discoveries and shaping Iran’s identity to fit
this new mold: Islam was constructed as foreign influence and blamed for Iranian
developmental shortcomings. Alleged Aryan roots, Zoroastrianism and pre-Islamic
Persian empires were glorified and identified with. Reason for this was the wish to
see oneself on a par with the great nations of the world, to be respected internationally
despite the state of affairs which was perceived as being backward by Europeans and,
in turn, also by Iranians themselves. What is more, Tavakoli-Targhi argues that while
“Iranian nationalists attributed their undesirable customs and conditions to Arabs and
Islam (…) desirable European manners and cultures were appropriated and depicted
as originally Iranian.”537 The disidentification with Islam and identification with preIslamic Persia thus can be seen as an essential part of Iranian nationalists’ obsession
with Europe — a veiled self-Westernization through claiming to be the cradle of
civilization tried to put Iran not only on a par with the West, but to portray it as its
predecessor. While this nationalist discourse still exists even in the Islamic Republic
— although, of course, mostly without the anti-Islam connotations — the diaspora
has brought the idea with them and has taken it to new heights.
Brought about by Arabs, Islam is thus often constructed as Other in the
diaspora, and in spite of almost 1.5 millennia of Islamic history, Zoroastrianism is
widely regarded as Iran’s original religion. The construction of a distinctly unIslamic, non-Arab Iranian identity is grounded on the Orientalist-inspired myth of
Aryan roots and is supported by identification with the golden era of the Persian
empires. Much pride derives from these representations of pre-Islamic time,
especially in the light of the perceived backwardness of today’s Iran.
A particularly important representation and source is the national epic,
Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, literally the Book of Kings. One of the most venerated texts
in contemporary Iran and the diaspora, stories of Persian kings and the myths about
early Iranian ‘history’ are kept alive through it. More than a millennium after its
inception, it is still widely known and identified with. Incidentally, Ferdowsi fits the
536 Tavakoli-Targhi,
Mohamad. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography.
New York: Palgrave, 2001. 77ff.
Tavakoli-Targhi argues that these ‘contested memories’ of pre-Islamic mythical Iran — either changed
to accommodate Islamic mythistory or defended to further Iranian nationalism — have “prompted the
emergence of a schizochronic view of history and the formation of schizophrenic social subjects who
were conscious of their belonging to two diverse and often antagonistic times and cultural heritages.
(…) The shift in the 1970s from a regime glorifying Iran’s ancient civilization to a revolutionary regime
extolling Islamic heritage is only the most recent example of the creative possibilities and insoluble
dilemmas engendered by the contested memories of pre-Islamic Iran” (95).
537 Tavakoli-Targhi 102
105
agenda of the construction of a non-Islamic Iranian identity not only by writing about
pre-Islamic times: The poet had purged his Persian writing of then-prevalent Arabic
vocabulary as much as possible, resulting in the beginnings of a codified national
language. This and his extensive treatment of Iran’s ancient myths and history
endeared Ferdowsi to the Pahlavis, the last dynasty before the Iranian revolution.
They wanted to portray Iran’s pre-Islamic past as the origin of Iranian identity and
thus supported the study and admiration of the Shahnameh. While the popularity of
the Shahnameh remains alive, since the revolution an Islamic identity is being
promoted. The diaspora, however, having been forced abroad, largely rejects this
religious identity and sticks to pre-Islamic Persia as their ‘usable past.’
The importance of the Shahnameh again ties in with the larger topic of Iran’s
poetry tradition, which is central to alternative constructions of Persian identity, too.
While admired, read and recited extensively also by Iranians that endorse the
contemporary theocracy, poetry turns into a focal point for diaspora Iranians, as it is
seen as exemplary of (national) Iranian artistry, sophistication and refinement. The
waters become murky here though, as Islam seeps back in: Poets like Jalal-ad-Din
Rumi and Hafez are Sufists, i.e. Muslim mysticists. However, since it constitutes
more private practice than institutionalized Iranian Islam, Sufism is acceptable to the
diasporic construction of Iranian identity, as I have mentioned earlier in this chapter
and as I will argue more in depth below.
All these aspects of identification, Aryan/Zoroastrian roots, the Shahnameh
and poetry, although existent in Iran as well, acquire special significance in diaspora.
Firstly, the rejection of Arab influence (as Islam is still widely perceived to be) is no
longer only nationalist-inspired, but fuses with the wish of immigrants to be
recognized the way they see themselves. In the case of the Iranian-American
community, largely discriminated against after the Gulf War and after terrorist attacks
thought to be executed by men of Arab origin (such as the Oklahoma City bombing,
the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and, most prominently, 9/11), this wish
is all too understandable. Staking out one’s own identity becomes a strategy for
‘survival’ and, eventually, integration into US society.
Secondly, the construction of noble Aryan roots, Zoroastrian heritage, the
history of one’s ancient civilization and a rich tradition of poetry become tools for
positioning oneself in US society: They are important sources of pride for a diaspora
that is comparably good in educational and economic standing, but in which many
have had to suffer a severe setback in societal status through exile and emigration. It
is, moreover, a way of claiming an identity regarded to be ‘closer’ to EuropeanAmerican identities and thus improving one’s perceived status: The construction of
Aryan ancestry establishes a common origin, and the rejection of Islam a common
106
ground. In the words of one autobiographer: “All the Iranians I knew seemed to
consider themselves Europeans with a tan.”538
Yet it is not only the past which offers alternative identifications to political
Islam. Those who cannot part with spirituality tend to turn towards Islamic
mysticism. Although the diaspora in general rejects Islam, Sufism seems to be an
exception. Possible reasons are its more private character and the fact that it is not
endorsed by the Islamic Republic. Rather, to many, Sufism constitutes a more ‘real’
Islam than the theocracy’s institutionalized version, as I have already mentioned in
the subchapter “Confining Religion to the Private Domain.”
2.2.1 A Usable Past and a Persian Identity
The idea of a ‘usable past’ goes back to Van Wyck Brooks,539 who in the
early 20th century called for a reconstruction of America’s history in order to define a
distinctly American experience and help balance the insecure present with a feeling of
belonging. It was explored further by Henry Steele Commager, who was interested in
the way the American people imagine, interpret and use their past.540 The creation of
a ‘usable past’ is central also to the self-constructions of diasporas. Their quest for a
common story to provide roots to an otherwise widely scattered community (the
etymology of the word ‘diaspora’541 speaks for itself) — and a community that is
internally divided along political lines — becomes paramount for the endeavor of
carving out an identity that holds up to the group’s positioning in time and space, and
to the politics it is inevitably framed by. As Zygmunt Baumann puts it, “It is only
after the border-posts [of communal identities] have been dug in that the myths of
their antiquity are spun and the fresh, cultural/political origins of identity are carefully
covered up by genesis stories.”542 For Iranian-American writers, this means rejecting
institutionalized Islam and historical Arab influence on the one hand, and on the
other, embracing pre-Islamic history and Zoroastrian heritage. As Amy Malek puts it,
“[t]he use of pre-Islamic history (…) works to create, maintain, and preserve common
beliefs and a community spirit among Iranian Americans themselves.”543 I want to
label this a Persian identity in order to underline its self-perceived distinctness from
official Iranian identifications as promoted by the theocracy. The term also points at
its retrospective character, glorifying and identifying with the golden era of the
Persian empires.
538 Moaveni
Lipstick 26
Van Wyck. “On Creating a Usable Past,” The Dial (April 11, 1918): 337-341.
540 Commager, Henry Steele. The Search for a Usable Past. New York: American Heritage, 1965.
541 From the Greek diaspora “dispersion,” from diaspeirein “to scatter about, disperse.” “Diaspora (n.)”
Online Etymology Dictionary <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=diaspora> (last retrieved
November 9, 2012)
542 Baumann, Zygmunt. “Identity in the Globalising World.” Social Anthropology 9:2 (2001): 121-29.
129.
543 Malek 2011:393
539 Brooks,
107
The lasting identification with pre-Islamic Iran has, surprisingly, mainly been
brought about by an adoption of Orientalist attitudes. Especially influential has been
the so-called ‘Aryan myth.’544 Late 18th century European linguist Sir William Jones
had found Greek, Latin, Persian and Sanskrit to be of one linguistic family. Widely
(mis)taken to be also a sign of genetic kinship, this discovery led to the belief that the
Aryan tribes that had immigrated into the Persian plateau in ancient times were
closely related to Germanic tribes in Europe. During the German Romantic era, this
kinship was glorified: Friedrich Schlegel even declared that the German word for
honor, Ehre, was etymologically related to Avestan ariya.545 In the years to follow,
Zia-Ebrahimi contends, “the meaning of Aryan was constantly shifting and by the
early 1940s it even came to approximately mean non-Jewish and German.” 546 Pahlavi
Iran, threatened by both the British Empire and Soviet Russia and thus naturally in
search of an ally, was enchanted with Germany not only politically, but also by its
message of age-old kinship. Moreover, the role of alleged Urheimat that Aryanists
wanted to place so desperately promised an immediate rise in ranks from third world
country to origin of one of the world’s then foremost powers. Iran, or so it was hoped,
would be a country renowned for its glorious past, whose perceivedly dismal present
was a result of foreign, i.e. Arab/Muslim, meddling547 and which would catch up with
what it ought to be in no time.
What shines through here is the European medieval classification of Mosaic
ethnography, according to which Europeans were associated with Noah’s son Japheth
and nobility, Asians to Shem and priesthood, and Africans to Ham and servantship.548
In German Romanticism, the idea of the noble primitive Aryan developed antiSemitic connotations (and both Jews and Arabs were categorized as Semitic),549
which were then further propagated during the Third Reich. When the discovery of
the Indo-European language family seemed to establish a ‘racial kinship,’ Iran was
suddenly “pulled out of the Orientalist discourse and instead landed in the IndoEuropean discourse” — it was transformed into a ‘European Orient.’550 Beginning
with the Qajar era, Iranian intellectuals had started not only to import these anti-Islam
attitudes of European orientalists but also their idealization of Iran’s pre-Islamic
544 Marashi, Afshin.
Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870-1940. Seattle: U of
Washington P, 2008. 73.; Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza. “Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and
Abuses of the ‘Aryan’ Discourse in Iran.” Iranian Studies 44:4 (2011): 446; Arvidsson, Stefan. Aryan
Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science. Trans. Sonia Wichmann. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 2006. 5.; Ansari, Ali M. “Persia in the Western Imagination.” In Anglo-Iranian Relations
Since 1800. Ed. by Vanessa Martin. New York: Routledge, 2006. 8-20.
Other than Zia-Ebrahimi, I think the term ‘self-orientalization’ is not a good choice here, as there is an
adoption of Orientalist discourse, but in this discourse, Iranians are seen exactly not as ‘Orientals’ any
more, but the Oriental’s Other: the Aryan, ‘brother’ of the European. It is, therefore, rather a selfWesternization.
545 Siegert, Hans. “Zur Geschichte der Begriffe ‘Arier’ und ‘arisch.’” Wörter und Sachen 4 (1941–42):
73-99. 88f.
546 Zia-Ebrahimi 449, also Arvidsson 21
547 Marashi 71f.
548 Arvidsson 15
549 Arvidsson 91
550 Arvidsson 102
108
past. 551 The anti-Semitism in the background of an alleged common Aryan ancestry
enabled Iranians to perceive themselves as the Other of ‘the Oriental,’ to express
racial arrogance towards Arabs, and to feel ‘European’ 552 — a self-Westernization, so
to say.553 Therefore, the Pahlavis tried to actively link their monarchy not only to
Aryan tribes, but also to the glorified empires of pre-Islamic Persia. In combination
with progressive reforms, they thus hoped to achieve a short cut to modernity. It was
Shah Mohammad Reza who popularized both the Aryan myth and the glorification of
pre-Islamic Persia.554 He wanted, as a part of his White Revolution, to associate his
rule with the Achaemenid dynasty in order to lend it not only legitimacy, but also an
aura of progressiveness and secularity. Therefore, he had, for example, interpreted the
cuneiform text on what has been named the ‘Cyrus Cylinder’ for his purposes,555
claiming the cylinder’s text to be the precursor of the very first Declaration of Human
Rights. Alas, such claims have little foundation, scholars contend.556
With the downfall of the National Socialist regime in Germany, the Aryan
discourse was finally abandoned there, but lost little of its popularity in Iran. (The
National Socialist background of the word ‘Aryan’ is not widely known in Iran. 557)
Indeed, not even the Islamic Republic was able to fully dethrone the idea of an Aryan
supremacy of the Iranian ‘nation’ — in spite of the myth’s preference of
Zoroastrianism over Islam and clear anti-Arab connotations. Much the same goes for
the identification with the pre-Islamic Achaemenid and Sassanid Empires; the
described nationalist implications are too advantageous for Iran, even to its present
Islamic government. Therefore, a tenuous, schizophrenic truce has been effected: a
tacit tolerance of references to Aryan roots and pre-Islamic Persian glory, but just so
long as Islam is still represented as the crowning of Iran’s historical trajectory.558
Diasporic writers hardly show such schizophrenia, but rather wholeheartedly
identify with and pride themselves on Iran’s non-Islamic ‘history.’ Aryan roots, the
heritage of the Persian empires, Zoroastrianism and mythical poetry describing pre551 Zia-Ebrahimi
464ff.
xi; 4
553 Zia-Ebrahimi 453ff.
554 Ram, Haggay. “The Immemorial Iranian Nation? School Textbooks and Historical Memory in PostRevolutionary Iran.” Nations and Nationalism 6:1 (2000): 67-90. 72.
555 Wiesehöfer, Josef. “Kyros, der Schah und 2500 Jahre Menschenrechte. Historische Mythenbildung
zur Zeit der Pahlavi-Dynastie.” In Mythen, Geschichte(n), Identitäten. Der Kampf um die
Vergangenheit. Ed. by Stephan Conermann. Hamburg: EB, 1999. 55-68. 63f.
556 Walker, C.B.F. “A recently identified fragment of the Cyrus Cylinder.” Iran: Journal of the British
Institute of Persian Studies 10 (1972): 158-9.; Kuhrt, Amélie. “The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid
Imperial Policy.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 8:25 (1983): 83-97.; Dandamaev,
Muhammad A. A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire. Trans. W. J. Vogelsang. New York: Brill,
1989. 52f.
Traditional interpretations do not take into account the text’s stereotypical nature. Moreover, there are
some fake translations and edited versions to be found on the internet, pointing towards the fact that this
historical artifact is being (ab)used for very specific intentions. Such fake translations, Dutch historian
Jona Lenderling notes, can be distinguished from the original for example by the fact that the
Babylonian god Marduk has been exchanged for Zoroastrian Ahuramazda and by additional, invented
text stressing Cyrus’ humaneness. Lenderling, Jona. “Cyrus Cylinder.” 2006. <http://www.livius.org/ctcz/cyrus_I/cyrus_cylinder.html> (last retrieved August 9, 2011).
557 Zia-Ebrahimi 471
558 Ram
552 Arvidsson
109
Islamic Persia are constructed as central to Iranian identity, while the overwhelming
majority of autobiographers refute Arab influence.
The Insistence on Aryan Roots
Iran Davar Ardalan, named after the homeland by her nostalgic parents,
explains on the first pages of her autobiography that “[t]he word Iran means ‘Land of
the Aryans,’ referring to the region Indo-European tribes from Central Asia invaded
sometime after the Ice Age”559
Aryans.”560
and Aria Minu-Sepehr mentions “Iran’s settlers, the
Through this identification, they construct a cherished ‘historical’ link to
Europeans. Europe has in popular discourse been regarded as the epitome of
civilization as early as the reign of the Qajars,561 and the perceived kinship is often
seen as proof of Iranians’ noble background and superiority in the region, especially
vis-à-vis Arabs. Generally, Aryan roots are widely referred to (and preferred), and
little attention is given to centuries of Arab, Mongol and a plethora of other (cultural
and genetic) influences. What is more, the nobility of Aryan background itself is
stressed; Iran Ardalan mentions, for example: “They spoke a language called Aryan, a
word meaning ‘aristocrat.’”562 These foundation myths, these constructions of
background offer an alternative ‘usable past’ to those who do not identify at all or,
like Ardalan, not wholly with Iran’s Muslim history.
In the diaspora, the identification with Aryan roots takes on renewed
importance, as Iranians want to distance themselves from their religious background,
seeing Islam as responsible for their exile. Moreover, claiming a difference of Aryan
to Semitic stock, they distance themselves from Arabs, whom they regard as
backward and whom they blame, in the tradition of nationalist discourse (as explained
above), for enforcing Islam in Iran and thus bringing it down from its former
greatness. Following the gaze of this logic back into history, Arabs 563 and their
religion are, by many in the diaspora, seen as ultimately responsible for all of Iran’s
ills: its continuing third world country status, its oppressive traditionalism, the Iranian
revolution — and thus for the exile of hundreds of thousands of diaspora Iranians.
Finally, there is also the ‘terrorist factor:’ especially post-9/11, Arabs are often
stereotypically linked to terrorism, something that Iranians understandably want to
distance themselves from in order to avoid being discriminated against. All of this
559 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 10
location 849
561 The admiration of Europe and the ‘Western’ world at large in Iran has not remained uncriticized:
Jalal Al-e Ahmad has attacked it harshly in his 1962 book. (Al-e Ahmad, Jalal. Plagued by the West
(Gharbzadegi). Trans. by Paul Sprachman. Delmor, NY: Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia
University, 1982.)
562 Ardalan, Iran Davar 11
563 The term ‘Arab’ constitutes, of course, an oversimplification. I use the term as found in the discourse
of the diaspora; it does not, however, reflect my own opinion.
560 Minu-Sepehr,
110
prompts autobiographers like Firuzeh Dumas to clarify: “Iranians are an IndoEuropean people; we are not Arabs.”564
Even, or maybe especially, young autobiographers find a source of
identification in this construction of ancient noble roots — a peaceful background that
allows them to feel proud of and connected to Iran. Gelareh Asayesh, for example,
feels her nostalgia, her yearning for re-connection, soothed by Iran’s landscape that in
her imagination has not changed since ancient times:
As the plane lifts off, I press my face against the window, (…) longing for a touchstone, an
anchor. This feeling is an inarticulate yearning and I do not expect it to be fulfilled. Yet as I take
in the barren landscape spreading beneath me, I find solace. (…) I imagine it looked this way
three thousand years ago, when Aryan tribes first migrated from central Asia to found the
country that would be called Iran, Land of the Aryans. 565
Asayesh narrates herself as anchored in an Iran founded by the Aryans; to imagine
that certain aspects of it — and be it only the landscape — have not changed since
then, helps her feel rooted, helps her identify with her home country. This implicitly
points towards aspects that have changed since ancient times, and that do not lend
themselves to identification, or at least not as easily — like the revolution.
Ardalan, whose autobiography’s opening sentences introduced this
subchapter, identifies with Aryan roots as well. By explaining that the beginnings of
Iranian/Aryan civilization are described in the famous Shahnameh and pointing out
that the epos is based on oral history that had been passed on from generation to
generation, she claims a certain credibility and historical accuracy of both the epos
and the described Aryan roots. Ardalan’s reading of this work is thus as a narrative of
Iran’s “birth and infancy,”566 as an Aryan founding myth. Aryan roots become a
usable, if mythical, past: noble, refined and ‘documented’ in the Shahnameh.
Iranian vs. Persian Identity
Presenting the Persian empires as Iran’s golden era, the autobiographers
engage in a construction of a glorious, progressive pre-Islamic past with which to
counterbalance the, as they perceive it, less glorious Islamic present of Iran. Through
that, they can distance themselves from Arabs, Islam and the Islamic Republic all at
once — three aspects that they find themselves often associated with by American
society. What is more, this ‘Persian identity’ provides the diaspora with an impressive
ancient history and enables them to be proud of their civilized and progressive
ancestry.
Aria Minu-Sepehr, for instance, reminds his readers that “the Persian Empire
reigned over a great territory spanning across North Africa all the way to China’s
564 Dumas,
Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. New York: Random
House, 2004. 33.
565 Asayesh 15f.
566 Ardalan, Iran Davar 11
111
edge.”567 Afshin Molavi has his partner state that “[i]t all began with [Cyrus the
Great]”568 and Firuzeh Dumas notes that “Persia was once one of the greatest empires
in the world.”569 This long-lost glory and the pride autobiographers derive from it is
implicitly contrasted with Iran’s dismal contemporary reputation, especially to
Americans. Writers remember how they tried to avoid the term ‘Iranian’ when they
first came to the U.S., for example young Donia Bijan: “Persian quickly replaced
Iranian. Where Iran was dark and threatening, Persia recalled glory, carpets, and
cats.”570 And as Azadeh Moaveni recalls, “[g]rowing up, I had no doubt I was Persian.
Persian like a fluffy cat, a silky carpet — a vaguely Oriental notion belonging to
history, untraceable on a map.”571 Even if nostalgic identification is not as outspoken,
it can still be felt unmistakably in references to pre-Islamic Persia. Jewish Roya
Hakakian’s uncle, for instance, clearly representing to Hakakian her family’s
progressiveness and integration into Iranian society, tellingly has a distinctly Persian
name: “Everything about him was Iranian, even his name: Ardi, short for Ardeshir,
the king of an ancient Persian empire.”572 To the now diasporic writer Hakakian, this
is a point of pride and identification. Much the same goes for Iran Ardalan, who
stresses that she is named after the original name of the Persian empire,573 a choice
that expresses her parents’ nostalgia for the home country but that also becomes of
central importance to her own quest for identity. Another reference to pre-Islamic
Persia is made at the very beginning of her autobiography, which is significantly titled
My Name is Iran: “I took my first steps amid (…) ancient ruins (…) in Iran.”574 The
remains of Iran’s glorious past thus become the diasporic writer’s origin. Later in
Ardalan’s life, Shirin Ebadi is a source of inspiration, especially her Nobel Peace
Prize acceptance speech, in which she identifies with the pre-Islamic king Kourosh
and his alleged humanism by referring to the text of the Cyrus Cylinder: “‘I am an
Iranian — a descendant of Cyrus the Great — the emperor who at the height of his
power said he would not rule over the people if they did not want him to.’”575 Ardalan
clearly subscribes to this idealization of pre-Islamic Persia, and identifies with
Ebadi’s rejection of the theocracy’s version of Islam. However, all autobiographers
usually refer to their home country as ‘Iran,’ an important reason for which might be
their desire not to confuse their (American) readers.
567 Minu-Sepehr,
location 1069
Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. 11.
569 Dumas Funny 75
570 Bijan 90
571 Moaveni Lipstick vii
572 Hakakian 51
573 ‘Persia’ is the term first used by the Greek for the province of Fars and later in extension to the whole
empire. Thus, ‘Persia’ became its international name although Iran natively has been referred to as
‘Iran’ since the Sassanid dynasty. Iran became known as ‘Iran’ internationally in 1935 as part of
Mohammed Reza Shah’s program of associating his monarchy with the Achaemenids. Cf. Mackenzie,
D. N. “Ērān, Ērānšahr.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. <http://iranicaonline.org> December 15, 1998 (last
retrieved August 16, 2011).
574 Ardalan, Iran Davar 1
575 Ardalan, Iran Davar 280
568 Molavi, Afshin.
112
Furthermore, through the reference to Persia, Islam becomes a scapegoat for
the diaspora. Azadeh Moaveni asks in desperation, “How had we been reduced to
this?” and points out how Iran had already had a civilization in ancient times. 576 It is a
rhetorical question and remains unanswered, but it is clear she blames the Islamic
Republic. Likewise, Dumas comments on the disastrous results of the hostage crisis
for Iranians’ reputation in the U.S. and laments that this has blocked Persia’s
achievements from the world’s memory:
By the time the hostages were finally released, the impression of Iranians as terrorists was firmly
embedded in everybody’s mind. Forget the Persian king Cyrus, the first ruler ever to issue a
declaration of human rights, back in the sixth century B.C., more than a thousand years before
the Magna Carta. Forget that King Cyrus is mentioned many times in the Old Testament for
freeing the captive Jews from the Babylonians. Forget the contribution of Iranians to literature,
music, gardens, and food. 577
As we can see, a number of autobiographers construct Iranian identity to be Persian
identity, to go back to the pre-Islamic Persian empires. This construction allows for a
disidentification with Islamic Iran and for pride in the (purported) progressiveness
and glory of this era.
The only slight exception to this rule is Mahmoud Sarram, an outspokenly
devout Iranian-American autobiographer, who allows for a positive conception of
Arab influence on the Persian empires: “Arabs conquered the Sassanid Empire in the
East and were exposed to the teachings of Zoroaster and the court system of the
Persian Kings. Dynamic societies flourished in the territories that the Muslims
conquered.”578 While Sarram tries to negotiate Islamic-Iranian and Persian-Iranian
identities, he too concurs with the rest of autobiographers in casting Zoroastrianism
and the Persian empires as the basis of Iranian identity.
Zoroastrianism: Iran’s ‘Original’ Religion
Inextricably bound up with the identification with the Persian empires is the
construction of Zoroastrianism as Iran’s ‘original’ religion. 579 It is often claimed that
Iranians only outwardly converted to Islam following the Arab conquest almost 1,500
years ago, but that they actually, by virtue of a flexible and yet resistant identity,
transformed their occupiers and instilled them with Persian culture and values. Thus,
Iranian national (and with it, Zoroastrian) identity is supposed to have survived
virtually unscathed.580 Of course, this idea is particularly alive in diaspora. Azar
Nafisi, although often at odds with her mother’s opinions, for once seems to agree
with her when she regards Zoroastrianism as Iran’s true religion: “‘These people are
576 Moaveni
Lipstick 175
Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and
Abroad. New York: Random House, 2008. 215.
578 Sarram 204
579 Marashi 63
580 Ram 74, Marashi 64
577 Dumas,
113
not true Iranians.’ She would remind us, interrupting anyone who tried to get a word
in, that for almost two thousand years we had been Zoroastrians.”581 The diaspora
identifies so deeply with its alleged Zoroastrian roots that autobiographers like
Shahab Nahvi interpret their visions in a Zoroastrian framework.582
What is more, the diaspora’s enthusiastic celebration of Zoroastrian festivals
such as Noruz stands in the tradition of the Aryan myth insofar as Aryan religious
festivities had been constructed as celebrating life and nature — in opposition to
Semitic religions’ alleged stress on suffering. 583 Iranian-American autobiographers
often refer nostalgically to Zoroastrian festivities; they explain them and celebrate
them in diaspora as well. Mostly, there is a distinct sense of identification, much more
so than with Islam. Noruz, the Zoroastrian New Year’s celebration, is by far the most
central festivity. It is surrounded by Chaharshanbe-soori (Red or Burnt Wednesday),
the last Wednesday of the year, which is celebrated with bonfires, and Sizdah-bedar
(Getting Rid of Thirteen), the thirteenth day after New Year, which has to be
celebrated outdoors.
Virtually all Iranian-American autobiographers mention Noruz — many also
mention Chaharshanbeh-soori and Sizdah-bedar, the surrounding festivals — and the
overwhelming majority describe at least Noruz in detail. Most also trace these New
Year festivals back to their Zoroastrian roots, clearly identifying with the construction
of a Persian past instead of with Islam: “Zoroastrians (…) is what Iranians were
before they became Moslems,”584 writes Bahrampour, for example.
The conscious distancing from Islam becomes especially obvious in Azadeh
Moaveni’s explanation:
Norouz originates from ancient Zoroastrian rites (…). Persians practiced Zoroastrianism before
Islam’s conquest in the seventh century, and it irked the ayatollahs that people held Persian
festivities, with their pagan origins, closer to their hearts than Islamic holidays. In origin and
ritual, the holiday is delightful. 585
Not only does Moaveni construct Zoroastrianism as Iran’s original religion, she also
claims that it is more popular than Islam, even in today’s Islamic Republic, thus
reinforcing the diaspora’s identification with Zoroastrianism. Furthermore, the
Persian festivity is regarded as “delightful” not only in its pre-Islamic origin, but also
in its contemporary ritual — in direct opposition to Islamic holidays which are mostly
described to be full of gloom and mourning, as I have shown earlier in this chapter.
Similarly, Nahvi refers to Noruz as “a true Persian holiday.”586
581 Nafisi
Things 237
181
583 Arvidsson 149
584 Bahrampour 62
585 Moaveni Lipstick 60
586 Nahvi 44
582 Nahvi
114
The same distancing from Islam in favor of Zoroastrian festivities often goes
hand in hand with a claim to secularism. An ancient religion587 thus is constructed as
a rather secular and folkloristic identification alternative to present-day Islam.
Autobiographers note that “Iranians from all religious faiths celebrate Noruz”588 or
that Noruz, “originating in Zoroastrian times, is the biggest secular holiday in
Iran.”589 Dumas and Minu-Sepehr try to make Noruz especially accessible to an
American audience, comparing it to secular Thanksgiving590
and calling the
traditional Noruz character a “Santa clone.”591 And while Ardalan admits that the
family used to place the Koran on the traditional Noruz table, she stresses that this
was not “a religious gesture, as [her] parents were secular, but to follow the tradition
of their Muslim ancestors.”592
The most important tradition on New Year’s day is the haft seen (Seven S’s)
table, spread with seven items whose names start with S, and other symbolic things.
While the table is mentioned by most of the writers,593 the interpretations regarding
the meanings of the objects vary. It seems to be of importance to the autobiographers,
however, to name these meanings in order to convey the positive character that they
attribute to Zoroastrianism. Iranians’ original religion is thus constructed to be very
much unlike autobiographers’ constructions of Islam: not gloomy, but festive; not
mournful, but life-affirming. Moreover, the objects on the haft seen table are seen to
not only represent general positive values like “health, renewal, prosperity,
fertility”594 or “rebirth, health, happiness, prosperity, joy, patience, and beauty,”595 but
also “the usual universal hopes shared by people at any New Year’s celebration.”596
What occurs is an alignment of Zoroastrianism with universal human values, a
whitewashing of any lingering negative connotations that the idea of Iranian religious
traditions might have — to the Iranian-American diaspora, but especially to the
general American public.
Something similar is attempted by Gelareh Asayesh, when she regards the
haft seen table as a metaphor for life and compares it to the Christmas tree and the
menorah.597 Not only does she construct Noruz as profoundly positive and peaceful,
she also establishes a close connection to Christian and Jewish festivals, again easing
access for an American audience and paving the way for inter-religious
understanding. She even establishes Zoroastrianism as the probable origin of
587 Zoroastrianism
is, of course, still alive and practiced. However, the Iranian-American
autobiographical construction of Zoroastrianism as Iran’s ‘original religion’ is almost exclusively
looking back to ancient times, and not to present-day Zoroastrianism.
588 Ardalan, Iran Davar 17
589 Rachlin 92
590 Dumas Funny 105
591 Minu-Sepehr, location 2440
592 Ardalan, Iran Davar 17
593 e.g. Dumas Funny 106, Rachlin 93, Bahrampour 62, Ardalan, Iran Davar 16, Asayesh 204, Bijan 79f.
594 Dumas Funny 106
595 Rachlin 92
596 Dumas Funny 106
597 Asayesh 204
115
Christian practices such as the Easter egg, placing the two in the same tradition — not
without pride in the seniority of Zoroastrianism. Much the same goes for Ardalan,
who, at the end of her autobiography, gives us a description of the holidays her new
Catholic-Muslim patchwork family happily celebrates together: Fourth of July, Noruz
and visits to Sunday Mass, peacefully coexisting.598 Zoroastrian ritual — we find no
visits to the local mosque here — is constructed to ‘naturally’ find its place amongst
established American religious traditions, as well as civil religion.
Iranian-American identity is not that clear-cut, however, as we also find an
author who courageously lets her Muslim beliefs seep into her celebration of Noruz:
Unlike other writers, Asayesh includes the Koran on her haft seen spread, to
symbolize religion, as she openly says.599 She does not comment on this, but the mere
mention of the Koran without disavowing its religious importance for her is enough
to indicate that Asayesh is swimming against the current of diasporic distancing from
Islam and adopting re-constructed Zoroastrianism as an alternative secular
identification.
Also at other times, Asayesh’s writing partly questions recreated Zoroastrian
festivals as a source of diasporic identification. The Noruz party of a diaspora
organization, for example, seems hollow and unreal to her and leaves her
unsatisfied,600 and at home, things are not much better. Nostalgically comparing the
event with her childhood memories, she cannot identify with their flawed
reconstruction, as they seem to her like a show for an audience of one:
My delight at these occasions is largely forced. It is hard enough to celebrate a holiday in
isolation — holidays are a communal event, their symbolism gaining potency through the shared
acknowledgement of a community. It is harder still in my household, where I am the only
Iranian born and bred. 601
However, she wants to pass on these traditions and clearly, she regards the New Year
festivals as central to an Iranian identity, which she wants to instill in her daughter.602
Eventually, when her sister and her family join them for the celebrations, she can, at
least to some extent, identify with them. 603
Celebrating Noruz thus becomes the principal way in which Iranian-American
diasporic writers both re-connect with their memories of Pahlavi Iran and, in
extension, uphold the idea of Zoroastrianism as Iran’s ‘original’ religion, an idea that
has been promoted by the Pahlavi monarchy, and that serves many in the diaspora
well who want to distance themselves from Islam.
598 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 290
204
600 Asayesh 207f.
601 Asayesh 203
602 Asayesh 203
603 Asayesh 206
599 Asayesh
116
The Politics of Poetry
Poetry has been, without a doubt, central to Iranian cultures for centuries.
Also in the diaspora, poetry in Persian is widely read, recited and admired — and
through it, autobiographers contribute to their constructions of a ‘usable past’ and to
their identification with Aryan-Zoroastrian pre-Islamic Persia. Yet Persian poetry has
also come to be intricately bound up with Islam, as some of the most well-known
poets were Muslim mysticists, i.e. Sufists. However, mysticism with its very personal
approach to religion seems to be removed enough from institutionalized Islam (and is,
indeed, not well-liked by the theocracy) to be acceptable to the diasporic construction
of Iranian identity.
One poet’s magnum opus, though, is not only acceptable, but has achieved
universal admiration in both Iran and the Iranian diaspora:604 Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.
The 10th century work has become — as a result of efforts of fashioning a national
identity during the reign of Reza Shah 605 — Iran’s national epos, telling of Iran’s
ancient days in myth and ‘history.’606
With some 60,000 couplets, 607
it is
approximately twenty times the length of the Nibelungenlied or Beowulf, and four
times Homer’s Iliad. Following the path of the Aryan myth, the Shahnameh has been
received in Europe — even after WWII — as an indication of an Indo-European
people’s talent for epic, a ‘characteristic’ that had been used in Aryanist ideology to
distinguish Indo-Europeans from Semitic peoples.608
Furthermore, Ferdowsi allegedly avoided Arabic loan words as a political
statement 609 — thus not only laying the base for today’s Persian, but also,
incidentally, fitting very well into nationalist politics of Iranian(-American)
disidentification with Arabs, the Islamic conquest and Islam in general. Diaspora
writer Azar Nafisi invokes this idea of a Persian identity based in Persian-language
literature when she says: “Our great epic poet Ferdowsi had rewritten the confiscated
myths of Persian kings and heroes in a pure and sacred language,”610 stressing what
she regards as a victimization of Iranians through the Arab conquest and Ferdowsi’s
604
Boyle, John Andrew. “Ferdowsi.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. (Last retrieved August 24,
2011).
In the year 2010/11 diaspora groups around the world celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of the
Shahnameh. Cf. e.g. “Celebration of the Millennium of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.” <http://
www.iranheritage.org/newsflash/ETPK.html> (last retrieved August 23, 2011); “1000th Anniversary of
the epic tale ‘The Shahnameh.’” <http://portlandbahai.org/2011/02/1000th-anniversary-of-the-epic-talethe-shahnameh/> (last retrieved August 23, 2011); “Farhang Foundation Co-Sponsors UCLA’s
‘Shahnameh’ Conference.” <http://www.farhang.org/page/farhang-foundation-cosponsors> (last
retrieved August 23, 2011).
The diaspora’s admiration of the text is also mirrored in internet sites that discuss and comment on
Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh, or that offer some of its text in calligraphy or as audio file: <http://
www.ferdowsi1000.com/?page_id=36> (last retrieved August 23, 2011).
605 Marashi 60, 124; Tavakoli-Targhi 99ff.
606 Davis, Dick. “Firdawsi.” Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. New York: Penguin, 2006.
607 “Ferdowsi.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online (last retrieved August 24, 2011)
608 Arvidsson 110
609 “Ferdowsi's ‘Shahnameh’: The Book of Kings: A New Exhibition Shows Persian Miniatures at Their
Finest.” The Economist. <http://www.economist.com/node/17036475> (last retrieved August 22, 2011);
Davis, Dick xx
610 Nafisi Reading 172
117
achievement for Persian language — and identity. Firuzeh Dumas, too, underlines
that “Ferdowsi is credited with not only creating a masterpiece, but helping preserve
the Persian language by not using any words with Arabic roots.”611 Additionally, Aria
Minu-Sepehr expounds at length:
Iran had been scarred by the ravages of many invasions throughout its history, but none was
as disfiguring as the Arab/Islamic conquest. Under Arab conquerors, the indigenous
language was outlawed. In turn, Islamic cosmology supplanted native stories. Ferdowsi’s
collected tales offered a glimpse into who we were, or at least who he had been, before
Islam.612
These autobiographers make it clear that they disidentify with Arab/Islamic influence
and construct pre-Islamic Persia as represented in the poetry of, for instance,
Ferdowsi as ‘original’ Iranian identity.
The myths Ferdowsi recorded and included in his epos have entered Iranian
popular culture613 and continue to be of importance in the diaspora. Their extreme
popularity, in turn, signifies the diaspora’s identification with the ancient and preIslamic times during which they take place. Azar Nafisi constructs the epos as
Iranians’ fundamental source of identity:
For Persians, Shahnameh is like their identity papers, their conclusive evidence that they have
lived. Against the brutality of time and politics, against the threat of constant invasions and
destructions imposed on them by enemies alien and domestic, against a reality they had little or
no control over, they created magnificent monuments in words, they reasserted both their own
worth and the best achievements of mankind through a work like Shahnameh, the golden thread
that links one Persian to the other, connecting the past to the present.614
Azar Nafisi’s statement, when looked at closely, reveals not only her identification
with the poetic work, but also a political stance: Not only are Iranians here called
‘Persians’ in order to stress the continuity from ancient Persia to present-day Iranians,
she also claims that Iranians have been able to assert their identity throughout history
and against all enemies through the Shahnameh. These “enemies alien and domestic”
can be interpreted to mean to the diaspora the Arabs that conquered Iran,615 and
today’s theocratic regime. Iran’s national epos thus is seen by Nafisi as a source of
collective memory and identification, as it “links one Persian to the other, connecting
the past to the present.”
Similarly, Tara Bahrampour identifies with the way Iranian friends of hers
incorporate traditional Iranian art into their lives, by, for example, attending a
Shahnameh-recital: “In Kambiz and Fereshteh, (…) I feel as if I’ve discovered a new
611 Dumas
Laughing 46
location 851
613 The latest example might be the Iranian-engineered Shahnameh-inspired video game Garshasp,
named after a hero mentioned in the Zoroastrian Avesta, the Shahnameh and the Garshaspnameh;
“Persian mythology hits video games market.” BBC News Technology, August 26, 2011 <http://
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14678537> (last retrieved August 30, 2011).
614 Nafisi, Azar. “Foreword.” In Dick Davis. Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. New York:
Penguin, 2006. ix-xi. xi.
615 Also, of course, the Mongol conquest in the 13th century AD, and the British/Soviet hold on Iran in
the late 19th, early 20th century.
612 Minu-Sepehr,
118
side of Iran. They are what I would want to be like if I lived here.”616 And MinuSepehr significantly calls the Shahnameh “the most authoritative voice of our lost
past.”617
While references to the Shahnameh can be found often in the art and writings
of the Iranian-American diaspora,618 I want to focus here on Iran Davar Ardalan, for
whom the national epos becomes central in constructing her identity as an Iranian
American. First of all, Ardalan not only mentions how “[t]he birth and infancy of the
region are described in the mythical part of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh,” 619 but also
relates how the mythical king Jamshid founded the Zoroastrian festival Noruz.620
Ardalan thus firmly establishes the link between (Aryan) founding myth, construction
of a Zoroastrian past and the Shahnameh, thereby illustrating how these interlinked
aspects figure in her conception of a ‘usable’ Iranian past.
Likewise, Ardalan finds a source of identification in her grandfather’s, her
father’s and her own analysis of the Shahnameh. Comparing her grandfather (who
frequently recites from the epos and even shares the first name Abol Ghassem with
Ferdowsi) to the mythic Shahnameh warrior Rostam,621 Ardalan explains his reinterpretation of the epic poem: the appropriation of the concept of farr — the divine
mandate of the Shahs to rule over the Iranian people — and redefinition as ”the
divine mandate of giving human beings the right to rule over themselves, to make
their own decisions, to exercise their own free will.”622 He had arrived at this
conviction after studying in America — just like Ardalan concludes, after returning to
America from Iran, that she can take control of her own life. This control is, in turn,
described with Shahnameh metaphorism: “I realized that I had an inner Rostam to
whom I could turn if there were no real, outer man.”623 Both reach this conclusion of
“self-responsibility, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance”624 only once they have been to
the U.S., making the American experience, albeit communicated through the language
of the epos, a key part of their identities.
Furthermore, Ardalan remembers her mother reading stories from the
Shahnameh to her and her sister, focusing on stories of women. Her favorite stories
revolve around women who claim independence, and Ardalan apparently identifies
616 Bahrampour
292
location 850
618 In autobiographies e.g. Moaveni Lipstick 14, Nafisi Reading 172, Bahrampour 31
619 Ardalan, Iran Davar 11
620 Ardalan, Iran Davar 15
Historically, Noruz seems to have been an ancient pan-Iranian festival, only later consecrated by
Zoroaster, but, as Ehsan Yarshater in The Cambridge History of Iran explains, “it came to be associated
with [Jamshid], who ruled the world in the golden age which will eventually be restored, and of which
[Noruz] is a remembrance and a promise.” (Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol.
3, part 2: The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods. 798. <http://histories.cambridge.org> (last
retrieved August 30, 2011)). The New Year festival thus becomes a reminder to the diaspora that the
present will eventually be overcome and that pre-Islamic values will prevail.
621 Ardalan, Iran Davar 106f.
622 Ardalan, Iran Davar 107
623 Ardalan, Iran Davar 211
624 Ardalan, Iran Davar 107
617 Minu-Sepehr,
119
with the heroine that “had been inspired by fate to be fearless and bring wholeness to
herself.”625 As she time and again expresses her admiration for the female warriors of
the Shahnameh,626 it becomes obvious that she is casting her self as a contemporary
version of such a warrior, by way of narrating her journey of finding her ‘real’ self
and taking control of her life. As she says at the end of her book,
It was as if I had become a woman warrior ready to do battle with my inner self, my false me. I
was reminded of the great woman warrior of the Shahnameh, Gordafarid (female warrior). She
was able to move out of the role culture had cast for her, take the divine mandate (farr)—the
right to rule over herself—and rise to a level equal to men, on their own turf and on her own
terms. 627
Similarly, Ardalan recounts in detail her father’s Shahnameh-inspired approach to
life, which had helped her in her quest of finding her ‘true’ self: Comparing the
struggle of good and evil to the mythical warrior Rostam fighting against demons, he
tells her to endure and persevere. This would enable her to crack the shells and masks
“‘behind which the real Iran has yet to be revealed.’”628 Through her own and her
parents’ interpretation of the Shahnameh, Ardalan thus arrives at a conception of
distinctly bicultural identity.629
Her identification with the myths of the Shahnameh also plays out in her
construction of Iranian-American womanhood. According to her, Iranian culture
requires “a woman to be childlike, helpless, and passive, (…) obedient, submissive,
someone who does not step out of her role,”630 and she declares that she would never
be accepted as ‘pure’ Iranian. However, she finds a way to conceptualize herself
through the Shahnameh:
[In the Shahnameh], a distinction is made between ‘foreign’ wives and ‘Iranian’ wives —
Iranian wives have been persuaded to believe that they exist only to serve men. I had just
enough ‘foreign’ blood in me; my independence and ‘fieriness’ would not let me fit the cultural
mold. 631
Ardalan, then, not only identifies with the female warriors of the Shahnameh, she also
casts herself as a ‘foreign wife’ — too American to submit herself, too American not
to take control of her own life, yet Iranian ‘enough’ to identify with Iran’s myths, to
try and define her being through the framework of ideas provided by its national epic.
She regards the foreign influence in her to be anchored in her family’s history, as
already her grandfather had married an American woman. This again mirrors the
myths: “By marrying a foreigner, grandfather Abol Ghassem had lived out the mythic
story of Persian heroes, my grandmother Helen stepping into the role of Rudabeh.”
The non-Iranian influence is seen as distinctively positive: “Heroes in the mythic part
625 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 9
Iran Davar 127
627 Ardalan, Iran Davar 283
628 Ardalan, Iran Davar 283
629 Ardalan, Iran Davar 282
630 Ardalan, Iran Davar 193
631 Ardalan, Iran Davar 193
626 Ardalan,
120
of the Shahnameh are all born from foreign mothers.”632 Ardalan thus not only
identifies with the characters of the epos, but also attempts to construct her IranianAmerican identity through its myths, and thus to explain the trajectory of her life
through the language and concepts of the Shahnameh.
The Iranian diaspora’s identification with the Shahnameh should be seen as
integral to Iran’s long-standing tradition and admiration of poetry — but also echoing
Reza Shah’s attempts to secularize Iran. He had shrines built for ‘national poets’ such
as Ferdowsi, Hafez, Rumi and Saadi in order to “construct a counterdiscourse to
prevailing forms of the sacred (…) [and] to create an alternative and parallel
spirituality tied to national tradition.”633 These new sites of memory are now so
beloved that hundreds of thousands of Iranians visit their tombs every year: a
veritable pilgrimage to the poets, which is comparable to religious pilgrimages to
shrines of Imams. Indeed, autobiographer Afshin Molavi regards his journeys to
Ferdowsi’s, Khayyam’s and Hafez’s tombs to be pilgrimages. 634 Veneration borders
on the religious, as tomb visitors tap the gravestone in order to communicate with the
buried, and millions of Iranians use Hafez’s Diwan as a source of divination — a
practice that is described e.g. by Rachlin and Dumas.635
What endears important Iranian poets such as Rumi and Hafez to the diaspora
as well is the fact that they have been adherents of Sufism. Since the 1979 revolution,
Sufis have been discriminated against in the Islamic Republic, leading to an increased
identification in the diaspora, especially among those who reject the political Islam of
the theocracy. This adds to poetry’s overall construction as another alternative
identification, next to and inextricably interlinked with the Aryan myth,
Zoroastrification of the past, pride of the Persian empires and identification with the
myths of the Shahnameh.
Nafisi, for example, constructs poetry as identification in opposition to the
Islamic government, uniting people who, like her, were not satisfied with the Islamic
Republic:
Even when our personal and political differences alienated us from one another, the magical
texts held us together. Like a group of conspirators, we would gather around the dining room
table and read poetry and prose from Rumi, Hafez, Saadi, Khayyam, Nezami, Ferdowsi, Attar,
Beyhaghi.636
Poetry is shown to have a unifying, identificatory quality to ‘normal’ Iranians not
only here, but also when Hakakian goes hiking with her friends. 637 Poetry is thus
portrayed as a democratic medium speaking “to all strata of the population in Iran,”638
632 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 108
113
634 Molavi 69ff., 115ff., 145ff.
635 Cf. e.g. Rachlin 71; Dumas Laughing 47; Varzi, Roxanne. Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and
Martyrdom in Post-Revolutionary Iran. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. 17.
636 Nafisi Reading 172
637 Hakakian 185
638 Rachlin 71
633 Marashi
121
as Nahid Rachlin puts it, thereby implicitly criticizing regimes like the Islamic
Republic, who fail to do so. The same goes for Firuzeh Dumas, who explains that “[o]
ne of Saadi’s most famous poems, about shared humanity, is carved in the entrance of
the Hall of Nations in the United Nations building in New York.”639
These
autobiographers make it clear that they identify with a different heritage of Iran, with
poetry that they construct to symbolize quite the opposite of the IRI: democracy,
sophistication and shared humanity.
Unlike the revolution and the IRI, poetry to the diaspora (and many in Iran)
then is a cause of pride in the achievements of Iranian civilization. Rachlin
remembers her favorite bookstore, where volumes of Persian poetry would lie next to
Western novels, thus constructing them as their equal640 — a depiction that comforts
the bruised diasporic-Iranian psyche that regards the Islamic Revolution to have
ruined Iran’s chances to rank among the ‘first’ of the world’s nations as Shah
Mohammad Reza envisioned it. It is therefore not surprising that Nafisi claims that
the first-rate quality and magic emanating from Iranian poetry has been lost through
the influence of the ruling clergy:
There was such a teasing, playful quality to their words, such joy in the power of language to
delight and astonish. I kept wondering: when did we lose that quality, that ability to tease and
make light of life through our poetry? At what precise moment was this lost? What we had now,
this saccharine rhetoric, putrid and deceptive hyperbole, reeked of too much cheap rosewater.641
Azar Nafisi even situates the very home of ‘true’ Iranian identity in poetry: “My
father, who all through my childhood would read me Ferdowsi and Rumi, sometimes
used to say that our true home, our true history, was in our poetry.”642 This
localization of ‘home’ in Persian poetry is similarly expressed by Azadeh Moaveni,
who compares the diaspora to the mythical bird Simorgh (literally ‘thirty birds’) who
is mentioned in both the Shahnameh and in 12th century Sufi poet Farid ud-Din
Attar’s Conference of the Birds. The story tells of a group of birds setting off on a
journey to look for the Simorgh until only thirty of them are left, who, in the end,
realize that they are the Simorgh, or si (thirty) morgh (bird). Moaveni, at the very end
of her autobiography, comments on her journey to Iran that it “was meant to be a
search for homeland” and that she “had eventually found that Iran, like the Simorgh,
was elusive, that it defied being known.”643 However, like the Simorgh, who is made
up of a community, home for Moaveni is found in the members of the diaspora: “Iran
had been disfigured, and we carried its scraps in our pockets, and when we
assembled, we laid them out, and we were home.”644 Something very similar is
evoked by Bahrampour, when she looks to the poet Saadi for a legitimation of the
639 Dumas
Laughing 46
71
641 Nafisi Reading 172
642 Nafisi Reading 172
643 Moaveni Lipstick 245
644 Moaveni Lipstick 246
640 Rachlin
122
diaspora’s existence: “The love of the motherland is very dear. But you cannot die in
hardship just because you were born here.”645 Nafisi, Moaveni and Bahrampour thus
all stress that home for Iranians, whether in Iran or abroad, is to be found in and
through Iran’s poetry.
Constructing their identity through the importance they place on poetry, and
its connotations of pre-Islamic Iran, Sufism, democracy, sophistication and humanity,
these autobiographers distance themselves from the theocracy while still presenting
themselves as Iranian. Moreover, poetry is used to give the diasporic condition a
foundation in the revered Iranian artistic tradition.
2.2.2 An Alternative Islam: Sufi Mysticism
Sufism, i.e. Islamic mysticism, has historically been a challenge to orthodox
Islam as propagated by religious scholars (ulama), to the extent that it became “the
symbol of anti-authoritarian and anti-orthodox public struggle,” as Jamal Malik
contends in his introduction to Sufism in the West. 646 With the establishment of orders
in the 12th century, Sufism gradually became a political force, which, for example,
called for religious and social reforms in the 19th century 647 and voiced anti-colonial,
national and nationalistic sentiments in the 20th century — but was eventually
silenced by orthodox Muslim intellectuals. Khomeini, for instance, although counting
Sufi spirituality among his chief influences, had suppressed Sufi leaders. 648
Nevertheless, Sufism has had an immense influence on diverse aspects of
Iranian life. Especially art has been receptive to Sufi ideas of unity with the divine, as
I will show with regards to traditional gardening and paradise metaphors in chapter 7
“Imagining ‘Home:’ Between Persian Paradise and American Arcadia,” and which
can also be seen in Iranian poetry. With some of the most important Iranian poets,
namely Rumi and Hafez, having been Sufis, this style of lyrical expression has
become central to Iranian cultures: “Most Iranians read or have heard the ideas and
poetry of Hafiz, Rumi, Attar, and Nizami. Their popularity and integration into
Iranian society is testament to the degree to which Islamic mystical culture and its
poetry has permeated Iranian culture”649 and has resulted in a sort of popular Sufism.
Even high figures of the clergy — such as Khomeini himself — have published their
own collections of poetry, clearly reminiscent of the love-drunken lines of Sufi
645 Bahrampour
322
Jamal. “Introduction.” Sufism in the West. Ed. by Jamal Malik and John R. Hinnells. London:
Routledge, 2006. 1-27. 5.
647 Malik 9
648 Malik 10
649 Varzi 17
646 Malik,
123
poets.650 It is, however, often claimed that the un-Islamic aspects of this style of
poetry — sensual eroticism and frequent inebriation — are merely metaphors for love
of God: the beloved is, according to this interpretation, god; the drunkenness, unity
with the divine.651
Sufism thus is precariously balanced between what the theocracy approves of
and what it censors, and has been under attack ever since the Islamic Revolution, as it
does not conform to orthodox Islam as formulated by the theocracy. Recently, the IRI
has stepped up its discrimination of Sufis and has considered an outright ban on
Sufism in Iran.652
The diaspora has brought this Sufi heritage with it, and it has, as I have briefly
pointed out before, become a way for diasporic Iranians not only to find consolation
in exile,653 but also to distance themselves from the Islamic Republic and its ideology,
while allowing for a private, individualistic religiosity.654 It has become an alternative
way of identifying as an Iranian Muslim while disidentifying with the IRI. This is
certainly helped by the Euro-American public’s perception of Sufism as quietist,
apolitical, tolerant and non-violent. 655 Sufism in North America, however, should not
be regarded as restricted to the traditional Sufi order system, but more as a broader
Islamic mysticism, as David W. Damrel argues, as a “New World Islamic
mysticism.”656
The profound identification with dervishes — serious practitioners of Sufism
— and their scorn for the material world becomes more than obvious when even
Jewish Roya Hakakian explains her family’s spirit of modesty through reference to
650 Cf.
e.g. Kalder, Daniel. “Dictator-lit: The Poetry of Ayatollah Khomeini.” <http://
www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/29/dictator-lit-ayatollah-khomeini> (last retrieved
August 24, 2011); Fischer, Michael and Mehdi Abedi. Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in
Postmodernity and Tradition. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2002. 452.
Indeed, Khomeini considered Sufi thought as central to his Islamic system, a fact that did not prevent
him from suppressing Iranian Sufis (Malik 10).
651 Cf. e.g. Schroeder, Eric. “The Wild Deer Mathnawi.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,
Special Issue on Oriental Art and Aesthetics 11:2 (1952): 118-134. 118.
652 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Annual Report of the United States
Commission on International Religious Freedom: Iran.” May 2009, page 33. <http://www.uscirf.gov/
images/AR2009/iran.pdf> (last retrieved August 26, 2011).
653 Malik argues this for the Nimatollahi order which has been established by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh.
Nurbakhsh emigrated to the USA during the revolution and set up several khaneqahs, order houses, in
the USA and in Britain. The total number of khaneqahs worldwide now exceeds 3,600 (Malik 12f.).
654 While Sufism has, since approximately the 12th century, been organized in orders (Malik 6), yet still
remains a mystical individualism that requires every member to make his own spiritual journey (Malik
9).
655 Geaves, Ron. “Who Defines Moderate Islam ‘post’-September 11?” In Islam and the West Post 9/11.
Ed. by Ron Geaves, Theodore Gabriel, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith. Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2004. 67.;
Malik 25
656 “American Islamic mysticism is the product and project of two complementary forces in
contemporary North American society and culture. One of these generative forces is the diverse vitality
of the substantial multi-ethnic and multi-generational US and Canadian Muslim communities. A second
powerful factor is a more general modern American interest in a broadly conceived ‘spirituality’ that
investigates and sometimes incorporates religious beliefs, symbols and rituals from a dizzying host of
sources, including Islam and Islamic mysticism. For many individuals pursuing this brand of integrative
spirituality, Islamic mysticism, conveniently describe by the term ‘Sufism,’ does not require a Muslim
identity.” (Damrel, David W. “Aspects of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order in North America.” In Sufism
in the West. Ed. by Jamal Malik and John Hinnells. New York: Routledge, 2006. 115-126. 115.)..
124
these Sufi beggar monks.657 Tara Bahrampour’s description of dervishes, too, is
reverent, and like in Hakakian’s memoir, the connection to Islam is never
mentioned. 658 The family’s identification with Islamic mysticism becomes apparent
when the second daughter is called ‘Sufi.’659 Most importantly, Bahrampour seems to
be proud that her father, who in her memory combines hippie charm with a certain
‘Sufi cool,’ 660 is called a dervish in her family. She seems to equate her father’s
secular ‘dervishness’ to American-style tolerance.661
Likewise, Iran Davar Ardalan is heavily influenced by her parents’ Sufism
from earliest childhood on. Not only does her father research and write a book on the
Sufi tradition in Iranian architecture to reconnect with his roots, but also her Catholic
mother turns towards Sufi Islam, which she considers to be the ‘real’ religion of her
Iranian heritage, and a religion with whose feminine principles she can identify.662 As
she constructs her own identity very much through her mother, it is significant how
she narrates her mother’s quest for spiritual identity. While the mother combines her
love for Sufism with admiration for the revolutionary political writings of Ali
Shariati, an Islamic sociologist and intellectual, Ardalan takes care to distance her
mother from politics.663 She portrays her mother — whom she regards as a role
model664 — as a woman deeply influenced by Sufism and, at the same time,
completely removed from political Islam.
Ardalan’s own journey mirrors her mother’s: Feeling spiritually lost, she
decides to return to Iran. At the same time, she becomes interested in her Islamic
heritage,665 accepts Islamic womanhood and tradition, and even agrees to an arranged
marriage. During her search for her spiritual identity, she is inspired by her mother’s
Sufism. 666 Yet while she is fascinated by Ayatollah Khomeini, 667 she too becomes
disillusioned with Islam in revolutionary Iran:
While my mother and I both had sought out our Iranian heritage and were proud to have learnt
so much of its rich history, I had to admit, as my mother had, that the lens through which it was
filtered and interpreted through the governance style of postrevolutionary Iran did not follow the
principles it had taught us. 668
Like her mother, who had left the tense political climate of postrevolutionary Iran for
London, Ardalan goes abroad to America. She justifies this with the mysticist
657 Hakakian
22
658 Bahrampour
659 Bahrampour
660 Varzi
47
61
10
661 Bahrampour
196
Iran Davar 116f.
663 Ardalan, Iran Davar 138
664 Ardalan, Iran Davar 183
665 Ardalan, Iran Davar 153
666 Ardalan, Iran Davar 183
667 Ardalan, Iran Davar 190f.
668 Ardalan, Iran Davar 193
662 Ardalan,
125
realization that “God is everywhere”669 — Sufi thought thus allows her to distance
herself from political Islam.
In the USA, Ardalan continues to identify with Sufism; she supports her
narrative with a Sufi parable, 670 and she is “in ecstasy”671 when she hears the rhythms
of Iran on the radio, like a dervish dancing in trance to rhythmical music. At the end
of her book, she concludes that she has found unity: “I was a soul in touch with its
spirit, whole, unified, one.” 672 Whereas the ultimate goal in Sufism is unity with the
divine, Ardalan, using this framework for her own needs, finds unity within herself.
2.2.3 Making an U.S.-Iranian Identity Work: Stressing a Shared Humanity
Iranian Americans have to live with the American public’s — by tendency —
negative opinion of Iranians. They try to evade it by living in the ethnic enclave that
is Tehrangeles,673 or by shedding their past and passing for ‘only’ American; and they
(increasingly) try to change the public’s perception, for example by explaining
themselves and their background. Autobiographical writing lends itself to this end.
Consequently, the public disavowal of Islam that we find in many works is not
surprising.
However, another (more proactive) trend is to stress that Iranians’ and
Americans’ values and attitudes tend to be very similar, and that Iranians’ religiousspiritual background and Christianity are compatible; in short: a shared humanity is
established which links Iranians and Americans. Autobiographers underline their
identification with Christian values and the common provenance of Christianity and
Islam, but also emphasize that they like to see themselves just as a part of humankind
in a secular way. The writers try to positively influence their readers’ opinion of
themselves as individuals and Iranian Americans as a group through these
identification strategies, hoping to smooth over the rifts of Americans’ mistrust, build
acceptance and thus to eventually carve out a home for the Iranian diaspora in
American society.
Mahmoud Sarram, for instance, while a devout Muslim, depicts himself as
deeply moved by, among others, the following quote by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold
these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.”674 He not only constructs himself to subscribe to these ideas,
but maintains that Islam expresses much the same:
At the heart of Islam is the human search for oneness with God, a spiritual journey on Earth that
takes place in the context of our life among fellow travelers. The Qur’an teaches us that this
669 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 195
Iran Davar 231
671 Ardalan, Iran Davar 245
672 Ardalan, Iran Davar 295
673 Westwood and Beverly Hills in Los Angeles have a high percentage of Iranian-American residents.
674 Sarram 96
670 Ardalan,
126
common human journey requires certain attitudes and behaviors that enable us to live together in
dignity and mutual respect. 675
While he regards the search for oneness with God as the primary ‘pursuit of
happiness,’ the religions resemble each other in their teachings and lay the ground for
a shared humanity.
Ardalan likewise sees parallels between the religions. She professes a deep
interest in Christianity, which she regards as part of her spiritual heritage, handed
down to her by matrilineal inheritance and by its relatedness to Islam. As she longs to
reconnect with the women of her family, she identifies with her maternal
grandmother’s and mother’s Christian values.676 Later, she explores the faith of the
Catholic Penitente communities in New Mexico. She realizes “that the Penitente
ceremonies were very similar to those of the Shia”677 and recalls reading the chapter
on the Virgin Mary in the Koran, thus accentuating how related and compatible she
finds Islam and Christianity to be. Her third husband being Christian, she makes a
point of noting the two religions’ common origins “going back to the Prophet
Abraham”678 and joins him for mass, wanting to learn more about the religion of her
American ancestors.679
While embracing Christianity, Ardalan also stresses a shared humanity and
links between Iranians and American cultures throughout her memoir. Her heritage
helps her in this endeavor: By reciting from poems by the Sufi poet Hafiz, she
disavows all religions and both East and West at the same time, implying that religion
and origin cannot change the basic fact that all people are essentially human: “I am
neither Christian nor Jew nor Zoroastrian nor Muslim. / I am not of the East nor of the
West nor of the land nor of the sea.”680 She also finds the tradition of reciting the
Shahnameh to be very similar to Native American story telling, as both help her think
of herself “as a living link in a chain of humankind.”681 As Ardalan narrates her
struggle to find an identity incorporating both Iranian and American culture,682 she
communicates her hope for a free American society in which Muslims will be
accepted.683 And like the thirty birds looking for the Simorgh, Ardalan eventually
finds herself while looking for her self — in artifacts that reflect both her American
and Iranian heritage: “Whether it was my Eastern grandfather’s Sufi cloak, which he
had inherited from his father, or my Western grandmother’s American flag, which she
had inherited from her father, I found my answer in the splendor of the quest.”684
675 Sarram
206
Iran Davar 150
677 Ardalan, Iran Davar 220
678 Ardalan, Iran Davar 286
679 Ardalan, Iran Davar 291
680 Ardalan, Iran Davar 151
681 Ardalan, Iran Davar 207
682 Ardalan, Iran Davar 284
683 Ardalan, Iran Davar 224
684 Ardalan, Iran Davar 298
676 Ardalan,
127
We see a very similar approach in Firuzeh Dumas’ memoir, who describes her
visit to Kathryn Koob, one of the former hostages at the American embassy in Tehran.
While Dumas points out how outraged her father was at the events of the hostage
crisis, she stresses that Koob does not nurture any hatred against Iranians.685 Dumas
presents Koob as a ‘model American,’ whose “Lutheran faith (…) allowed her to
walk away from the hostage experience without hatred or resentment,”686 as she
knows that media reportage does not represent the vast majority of Iranians. Invoking
faith as a bridge builder, Dumas appeals to her American readers to realize the
“shared humanity”687 between Iranians and Americans. She concludes with the
observation that Iranians share the Christian values of U.S. society:
The Bible is foreign to me, but its concepts are not. My father always said that hatred is a waste
and never an option. He learned this growing up in Ahwaz, Iran, in a Muslim household. I have
tried my best to pass the same message to my children, born and raised in the United States.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where we learn that lesson. It’s just important that we do.”688
While we have earlier seen that autobiographers distance themselves from politicized
Islam, here I have shown that they cautiously venture to rehabilitate their Islamic
heritage somewhat. They do this by constantly pointing out the similarity to and
compatibility with Christianity, the shared (religious) values and humanity between
Iranians and Americans. Writers like Sarram, Ardalan and Dumas, among others, thus
actively try to influence their American readers’ perception of themselves and the
Iranian-American community. By constructing Iranian-American identity as
supportive of a shared humanity in its religious and spiritual heritage, they endeavor
to create acceptance and a better place for Iranian Americans in the multicultural
society that is the USA.
2.3 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have traced the alternatives that Iranian-American
autobiographers develop to an Islamic Iranian identity that is not/no longer available
to them. The diaspora, having been forced to leave the home country by the Islamic
Revolution and by religious traditionalism, rejects institutionalized, political Islam or
even traditional religion entirely — whether Islam or Iranian Judaism. Islam’s
miserable reputation in the USA adds to this disidentifying and distancing in IranianAmerican self-narratives, which are, after all, a very public medium and consequently
a way to present oneself to American society at large.
As I have argued in my theory chapter, memory tends to change as identity
changes, and consequently, new aspects of memory are invoked by diasporic writers.
These aspects are by no means invented — all of them have some foundation in
685 Dumas
Laughing 213ff.
Laughing 219
687 Dumas Laughing 219
688 Dumas Laughing 223
686 Dumas
128
history and also figure in what Iranians in Iran identify with — but their importance
in diaspora is, it seems, heightened, fraught with, if not more, then at least different
meaning, and more central to individuals’ identities. Examples of this are the Aryan
myth, the identification with the Persian empires (and thus the establishment of a
distinctly Persian identity), the Zoroastrification of Iranian past and the veneration of
and identification with Persian-language lyric tradition, in particular with Ferdowsi’s
Shahnameh, in which ancient Persian myths and kings are celebrated and Muslim/
Arab influence is rejected.
Ethnic collective identity is always subject to negotiation, and also wholesale
disidentification with Islam has not remained uncontested. Yet aside from a writer like
Mahmoud Sarram, who is frank about his Muslim identity, there is only a very
cautious and tenuous exploration of the possibility of Islam playing a role in the
(public) construction of Iranian-American identities. This overwhelmingly happens
via a disidentification with political Islam and endorsing — if anything at all —
private religiosity. For some writers, the vehicle for this is Sufism, a very personal
and private form of Islamic practice. Stressing a shared humanity between the faiths
enables some writers to rehabilitate Islam to a certain extent.
The Iranian-American diaspora’s complex web of identifications and
disidentifications thus is always informed by its collective and individual identity
politics: rejecting the Islamic Republic by endorsing pre-Islamic Persia; rejecting
political Islam while embracing secularity and Sufism; rejecting the American
public’s opinion by invoking a noble past and a shared humanity. These identity
negotiations are the result of Iranian Americans trying to navigate the waters of the
contact zone, their attempt of adapting to their situation as diaspora in the USA while
trying to hold on to some sort of a historically and spiritually Iranian identity. All the
while, Iranian-American autobiographers’ identification of institutionalized Islam
(and its representatives that are governing postrevolutionary Iran) as the ‘other’ can
also be seen as a part of the process of constructing a new diasporic collective
identity.
129
130
PART TWO: LANGUAGE, BODY, AND THE
IRANIAN-AMERICAN SELF
131
In this part, I will shift my focus from the authors’ reconstructions of their
historical-spiritual background to those factors that are often perceived as somewhat
given or essential: the influence of language and the body on their identity
constructions. However, inspired in a way by Judith Butler, who regards sex as a
practice that (re-)produces the gender ‘identities’ it governs, 689 I build on the thought
that language and body are ‘practices’ that have decisive influence on subjects’
cultural self-perceptions — which in turn have their effect on speech and appearance.
The ‘time lag’ or resistance with which both these culturally shaped
expressions of selves adapt to new or multiple linguistic-cultural surroundings
produces difficulties for subjects’ self-construction. After all, for example, how can I
perceive myself as American if I have dark skin and do not dress ‘American’? Or,
how can I be Iranian if I never really learnt Persian or have a distinctly American
accent? The central question then is how autobiographers deal with not fitting in
visually and aurally, how this impacts their self-constructions. This is a problematic
process by no means specific to any group of migrants, and yet there are some aspects
in the case of Iranian Americans which I want to highlight: first regarding the alwaysshifting ground of language, then regarding the equally fraught business of having a
body.
689
Butler 1993:1
132
3. The Interplay of Language and Identity Construction
If we accept with scholars like Mary Besemeres 690 and Sidonie Smith that
individuals are partly constituted by their natural language and that, therefore,
“identities can shift with shifts in language usage,”691 we gain a useful view on the
effect that language has on Iranian-American authors’ identities. In contrast to
Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the individual constantly choosing from different
available discourses,692
Tzvetan Todorov in his essay
“Dialogism and
Schizophrenia”693 argues about migrants’ linguistic experiences that two (or more)
natural languages of one speaker cannot be considered mere discourses from which
he can chose. Both only express half of the self, but at the same time lay claim to the
whole, resulting in an inner linguistic conflict. Discourses — internal stratification of
one language — can co-exist, says Besemeres, but “a natural language expresses and
reflects a whole culture (…) an undeniable reality in the lived experience of language
migrants”694 [my emphasis]. Besemeres maintains that a native language seems to be
‘continuous’ with the self and that “a person is partly shaped by (…) shared values
and assumptions embodied by the natural language he or she lives in.” 695 Individuals
living with, or rather between, two languages then have to negotiate the influences of
two cultures, two rivaling systems of conceptualizing the world. The relations
between these systems, the areas of usage change with the linguistic environment of
the subject — and the subject experiences these shifts as changes within itself.
But what role exactly does natural language — and language ability — play in
Iranian-American subjects’ self-perception, and even more importantly here, selfconstruction? Do they attempt to narrate themselves as American in spite of accent,
missing English vocabulary and difficulties in translating cultural concepts? How do
bilinguals deal with their two worlds? What about the second generation with its
endangered connection to the ‘mother’ tongue — do they still identify as Iranian? Or,
if they rather see themselves as Iranian-American, how do they construct this new
identity? These are the questions that inform my analysis of the impact of language
on Iranian-American self-writing. All the while, I want to stress that ‘identities’ are
complicated and that all writers, all subjects, find their individual ways of selfconstruction. I can only highlight some of the most prominent tendencies of how, in
the autobiographical works at hand, language influences identification and vice versa.
690 Besemeres,
Mary. Translating One’s Self. Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography.
New York: Lang, 2002. 13ff.
691 Smith, Sidonie. Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body. Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the
Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.119.
692 Bakhtin Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Trans. Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist. Austin, Texas: U of Texas P, 1981.
693 Todorov, Tzvetan. “Dialogism and Schizophrenia.” Trans. Michael B. Smith. In An Other Tongue:
Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands. Ed. by Alfred Arteaga. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.
203-214.
694 Besemeres 2002:15
695 Besemeres 2002:18f.
133
However, I will have to address one more issue: While autobiographers
mostly do self-consciously reflect on their respective language (in)abilities, at other
times, they blend out these matters and perform self-confidence. Some never question
their fluency in either language and implicitly claim proficiency in both languages
and thus reliability as translator between not only languages, but also cultures. I
propose that this glossing-over of language problems serves principally the
establishment of authority — authority as a bridge builder across cultures, a culture
guide or a cultural-political critic giving the reader the purported ‘inside scoop’ — but
can also be a means of disidentifying with and distancing oneself from Iran, as
English comes to signify agency for some authors who narrate living in Iran as a
traumatic experience.
3.1 The Self-Conscious Speaker
To begin with, I want to concentrate on the self-conscious speaker, the author
that reflects on and grapples with language — and thus identity.
First, I will trace here how first-generation Iranian Americans deal with the
embarrassment and estrangement resulting from their initial language problems.
There is a tendency to present themselves as culturally predetermined to succeed in
America: Attributing Iranians with endurance and a disposition for educating
themselves, some autobiographers narrate their eventual linguistic success as
inevitable. They do this, I argue, in order to maintain status and construct themselves
as primarily Iranian in the process.
Next, I will look at those Iranian Americans who grew up in the USA with
immigrant parents. Their own sense of American self still fragile, they remember
being profoundly embarrassed by their parents whose English remains accented and
for whom they have to translate. As this constantly reminds them of their own
difference, these authors narrate temporary alienation from their Iranian background.
In the end, however, maybe as their own sense of identity has become more stable,
they construct themselves to be at peace with their parents’ lack of English and their
own cultural provenance.
Lastly, I will focus on the in-between-ness of bilingual Iranian Americans and
the linguistic-cultural schizophrenia they describe. For many of the authors, their two
languages, Persian and English, also signify a rift in their experience of the world;
they perceive themselves as split identities. It is important to note that their two
languages are never equal, and that there is a dynamic of desiring one language and
forgetting the other, a process that goes both ways and affects their self-construction.
Moreover, the languages have differing connotations to the autobiographers: The
younger generations, for instance, still find Persian to be the language of their
emotional lives, but feel, on the other hand, restricted to the private domain in this
language.
134
While for the purpose of manageability, it was necessary to make an artificial
delineation of different categories (the first generation, the bilingual author, etc.), it is
important to note that these ‘generations’ or groupings have very fuzzy borders. One
author can, at different times in his remembered life, be considered part of different
groups, experiencing the pains of first-generation immigration, but later also the
dividedness of the bilingual, bicultural subject and the second generation’s alienation
from homeland Iranian culture.
3.1.1 Language of Success, Language of Identity? — The First Generation
Hierarchical thinking is often described as central to Iranian cultures;696 a
tendency that is very much complicated by the events of the Iranian revolution, exile
and/or migration, and Iranians’ standing within their new society. In this context,
speaking the new language — which is, in most cases, English — becomes a
measurement of how well Iranians’ assimilation has progressed and thus an indication
for status not only within American society, but also among (at least first-generation)
Iranian-Americans.697 In a sort of double encoding, the idea of the ‘American Dream’
also may have influenced Iranian-American authors’ valuing of quick acquisition of
English and general academic success. However, they all retain a distinctly Iranian
identification.
At least three factors are contributing to this valuation of English as a
prestigious language: Firstly, Iranians have a long history of gharbzadegi, or
‘Westoxication:’ the conviction that the ‘West,’ and especially the USA, are superior
to Iran in civilization and technology. To speak, or at least learn, English therefore can
be likened to becoming part of this admired society. Secondly, as I have already
described in chapter 2 “A Usable Past,” Iranians like to regard themselves as
“Europeans with a tan”698 — and to fulfill this Westernized self-imagination, learning
a European language is paramount. Last but not least, and this factor is linked with
the former two, learning English is considered a prestigious endeavor in Iran.
Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, French had been the language of
Iran’s court and elites, but by the time of the revolution English (and German) had
come to be regarded as equally reputable: languages of countries that were admired
for their technological innovation and sophistication. In the case of the USA, the fact
that it was a major player in international politics and that Hollywood movies were
consumed in Iran was not unimportant. Abbas Milani remarks helpfully on the
696
Cf. e.g. Beeman, William. “Status, Style and Strategy in Iranian Interaction.” Anthropological
Linguistics 18:7 (1976): 305-22.; Beeman, William. Language, Status, and Power in Iran.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986.
697 Bozorgmehr considers the comparably high class status of Iranian immigrants a factor that furthers
their language ability. At the same time, however, the first generation mostly retains an Iranian
identification. Indeed, Bozorgmehr cites an unpublished study which found Iranians of the second
generation to be more successful academically if they had retained their ethnic identification.
(Bozorgmehr, Mehdi. “From Iranian Studies to Studies of Iranians in the United States.” Iranian Studies
31 (1998): 5-30. 24f.)
698 Moaveni 26
135
importance of language on social standing in Iran: “By the sixties and seventies,
knowledge of a foreign language had become more and more an irreplaceable
element of social status and mobility, while intimacy with Persian was disregarded, at
times even disparaged.”699 According to him, the hierarchy of foreign languages in
Iran had changed in favor of English: “Before the Second World War, French was the
language of eminence and culture; in the post-war years, English became the
language of power, technology, and social mobility.”700
Some of the authors, like Abbas Milani and Azar Nafisi, narrate that they had
already learnt English in Iran and during boarding school or university stays in
England and America. This should be considered a statement that at least subliminally
communicates status in both Iran (where sending offspring abroad for education has
been and continues to be an expensive and therefore regarded undertaking) and, as a
result, also in diaspora. Subsequently, both have become professors at American
universities, and neither makes language problems much of an issue in his or her
memoir. I will delve deeper into their silences in ‘The Self-Confident Ethnic
Autobiographer;’ suffice it to add here that whether or not this is a conscious decision
on their part, being able to afford to not reflect on language deficiencies is a status
symbol: the privilege of the well-off and highly educated immigrant who experiences
hardly any difficulties in adapting to the new culture — or chooses to present himself
so. Their stories remind us of memoirs like those of Mohammed Mehdevi, Najmeh
Najafi, Sattareh Farman-Farmaian and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, children of
wealthy families, who came to study in the USA well before the revolution. These
accounts of ‘adventures abroad’ are invested with a comparably secure sense of
Iranian identity, an identification that they hardly question. 701
Most authors of the first generation, though, do reflect on the problematics of
acquiring English. In their works, they perceive the link between language ability and
status to be very strong. Consequently, their inability to speak English becomes an
important factor in their self-perception as un-American, as outsiders. Low selfesteem and estrangement 702 are a result. However, a recurring narrative underlines
how a subject can free itself through education and learning English perfectly —
resembling a similar topos in older immigration literature, such as Mary Antin’s The
Promised Land703 and in other immigrant writers’ works who, during the Great
699
Milani, Abbas 27
Milani, Abbas 28
701 Mehdevi, Mohamed. Something Human. London: The Bodley Head, 1961.; Najafi, Najmeh. Persia
is My Heart. With Helen Hinckley. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953.; Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
2007; Farman Farmaian, Sattareh. Daughter of Persia: A Woman's Journey from Her Father's Harem
Through the Islamic Revolution. With Dona Munker. London: Corgi, 1998 (1992).
702 Rumbaut, Rubén G. “The Crucible Within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented
Assimilation among Children of Immigrants.” The New Second Generation. Ed. by Alejandro Portes.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996. 119-170. 162f.
703 Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.
700
136
Migration, “were singing praises to the joy of assimilation.”704 Here, too, some
authors present themselves as predetermined to succeed, due to their endurance and
knack for educating themselves. At times, this is even explained as a specifically
Iranian trait. Angella Nazarian, for instance, has learnt a bit of English before coming
to the US, but reflects more in depth: “I felt like I was in speech-delay mode,
constantly translating from Farsi to English when I wanted to say something. (…)
Still, I was one of the luckier Iranian students; many came to school without speaking
a word of English.”705 Her family’s high social standing and financial resources had
provided her with the language skills necessary for swift assimilation. Consequently,
she narrates speaking only English at home with her siblings, unlike many other
immigrants: “This helped me, and I learned to speak English with only the slightest
accent. I became a straight-A student.”706 Being able to speak that highly regarded
language English thus results in quick assimilation, which again directly translates
into status in the USA — Iranians’ ‘weststruckness’ meets the American Dream of
‘making it.’ Nazarian makes sure to depict herself as exceptionally successful: “By
the end of seventh grade, teachers and administrators had coined me as a model
foreign student who had successfully integrated into school and social life.”707 While
her mostly English-speaking environment helps her settle in, in the end, she chalks up
her eventual success to an Iranian predisposition for educating and advancing oneself:
“By any standard, we are one of the most highly educated and successful immigrant
groups in the States.”708 While to Nazarian, learning English and thus assimilating
into American society quickly is important as a sign of status, this does not mean
giving up her Iranian identity: on the contrary, she constructs this knack for education
as an expressly Iranian trait.
This becomes even clearer in Afschineh Latifi’s memoir. From the beginning,
Latifi stresses the importance of education in her family: her father is “always
reading, advancing, bettering himself,” 709 and telling her to get a PhD. Her mother
feels the same way, trying to get her daughters into the best schools.710 Perhaps not
surprisingly, Latifi remembers “loving school.”711 When Latifi and her sister have to
leave for the USA, their mother makes the idea more attractive to them by
underlining the quality of education there: “And now she began telling us how
wonderful America was. Everyone went to those big, beautiful schools, with the best
teachers in the world.”712 Unfortunately, Latifi’s second language is German, not
704
Besemeres, Mary. “Language and Emotional Experience: The Voice of Translingual Memoir.” In:
Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation. Ed. by Aneta Pavlenko.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006.
705 Nazarian, Angella M. Life as a Visitor. New York: Assouline, 2009. 86.
706 Nazarian 86
707 Nazarian 87
708 Nazarian 103
709 Latifi 21
710 Latifi 32
711 Latifi 32
712 Latifi 125
137
English, and so it is hard for her to adapt. However, she narrates how it is her family’s
love for education that helps her endure, when her mother insists: “‘Remember what
your father said. You have to study hard. I promised him I’d make sure all of you
would get a good education. I told him all four of you would become doctors.’ I
redoubled my efforts at learning English.”713 Before long, she writes, things are
getting better, prompting her to study even harder. Latifi, like Nazarian and Mary
Antin, constructs herself as the exceptionally successful immigrant, when she
remembers her and her sister’s academic achievements, and depicts them both as
enamored with education.714 Even while she describes her English at that time as still
“pretty basic,”715 and she cannot get rid of her accent,716 she professes to deeply
admire the American education system: “[T]here was something wonderful and
miraculous about it. If you wanted an education in America, all you had to do was
ask.”717
All the while, Latifi attempts to show herself and her sister as not corrupted by
American society, as having remained essentially Iranian.718 She very carefully points
out how her Persian language use still conforms to Iranian standards: “We were
proper young ladies. (…) We always addressed our elders formally (…). This was
very old-school, but we couldn’t shake it, nor did we want to.”719 So when she notes,
“For many immigrants, English is the language of success, and they push their
children to learn it at the expense of their mother tongue. Often, these children
become lost between two cultures,”720 Latifi effectively refuses any notion of
identifying as an American. While she seems to subscribe to the idea of the American
Dream to some extent, it is, to her, expressly her Iranian propensity for learning that
helps her become proficient in English, settle in and become successful eventually.
Also, her notion of success seems deeply conditioned by Iranian ideas of status: She
stresses her studiousness, and how important it is for her to be successful so she can
contribute to the family’s income.721 Her choice of career does not conform to Iranian
ideas of a profession high in status, but she remembers how her mother’s
requirements of a respectable career adapt to the new American environment.722 Even
at the end of her memoir, Latifi focuses on showcasing the family’s success and
resulting social standing: “We came to this country with nothing, and now there are
two doctors and two lawyers in the family.”723 She credits her parents for instilling
713
Latifi 146
Latifi 151, 165
715 Latifi 181
716 Latifi 183
717 Latifi 181
718 Latifi 225
719 Latifi 241
720 Latifi 230
721 Latifi 268
722 Latifi 231
723 Latifi 318
714
138
the wish for education in them,724 and it becomes clear that ‘even after all this time’
— the title of her memoir — even after having been to the US since being a teenager
and speaking English for many years, she wants to see herself as Iranian most of all.
Whether having learnt English prior to coming to America or not, those firstgeneration autobiographers who do reflect on their language ability tend to link it
closely to status. However, their eventual success is, to them, a sign of their Iranian
propensity for learning and education and, as such, is incorporated into their selfconstruction as Iranian.
3.1.2 Embarrassment and Alienation… and Yet! — The 1.5th Generation
Matters are different for the 1.5th generation: those autobiographers who came
to the USA early in their childhoods and for whom settling in more or less coincided
with growing up and thus becoming independent from their parents. Their own sense
of (American) identity still shaky, this often results in embarrassment at their parents’
inability to speak English ‘properly,’ and in a distancing from both parents and
Iranian identifications — at least temporarily.
Jasmin Darznik, for instance, remembers how, already as a small child, she
understood that her mother’s accent was “rough and ugly” to Americans’ ears and
confesses: “Whenever my mother spoke English, even a word of it, I cringed.”725
Also Firoozeh Dumas narrates how the relationship with her mother is complicated
when she, with her lack of English grammar and heavy accent (which the author
mocks mercilessly),726 is relying on 7-year-old Dumas for translation.727 Though
Dumas hardly ever lowers her comical mask and describes her mother “as a mere
source of entertainment,” 728 we get an inkling of the grave effects on her sense of
identity and belonging, when she remembers her embarrassment at her mother’s
English and her desperation of being thus marked a foreigner over and over again.729
Similarly, Azadeh Moaveni recounts how translation becomes a burden to her when
Iranian and American linguistic-cultural worlds collide, as she has to compensate for
her parents’ lack of understanding English in the context of American culture:
And so they agreed to meet American boyfriends over strained dinners that bored everyone.
On these occasions, I would preside tensely as simultaneous translator, making sure
observations made it across the cultural divide, hovering with an invisible butterfly net,
poised to catch potential gaffes. (…) I was scared to go to the bathroom, afraid they might
offend each other in my absence.730
724
Latifi 317
Darznik 277f.
726 Dumas Laughing 55, 102, 104, 136, 196
727 Dumas Funny 11
728 Dumas Funny 143
729 Dumas Funny 37
730 Moaveni Lipstick195
725
139
Also her grandparents’ lack of English has to be dealt with during these encounters,
leaving her less than relaxed. 731 Moaveni recalls translating for the older generations
as alienating and distancing her emotionally from her Iranian background. And also
Tara Bahrampour remembers the fragility of her American self, resulting in her
distancing herself from anyone Iranian. Not only does she avoid the new Iranian girl
at school,732
but also her Iranian father and relatives become sources of
embarrassment. They either don’t speak English properly 733 or misuse the language in
an un-American way, for example bargaining in a supermarket.734 Bahrampour
describes how her father’s poor English becomes a burden to her, as she has the
feeling that she has to protect him, to translate for him.735 Indeed, she likens language
ability to power — the power to defend oneself in America, the power of a “perfect
American accent”736
that her father does not have, but she does. These
autobiographers then reconstruct their alienation, their desire to distance themselves
from their Iranian background, as they find their parents embarrassing, translation is
cumbersome and, maybe most importantly, Persian becomes a perpetual reminder of
their own difference.
And yet, in the end, the authors recount how they made peace with Persian
and with their Iranian background. Bahrampour, for instance, describes how as an
adolescent she was already aware of how her father’s accent was able to touch her
deepest emotions: “I cry even harder when I hear the Farsi way he speaks English. No
American father talks like that. (...) I don’t want another father.”737 For Moaveni it is
only when she grows older and explores her Iranianness on her own by living in Iran
for some time that she finally reaches a truce with both her parents and her ethnic
heritage. However, as an adult, she narrates Persian to be a vehicle of deep
emotionality for her, something that she cannot and does not want to translate into
English, and that she is ashamed for not using.738 Despite knowing that her parents
will never assimilate entirely, Dumas also constructs herself to have made her peace
with the situation. Not only does the growing Iranian-American community provide a
haven for elderly immigrants like her parents, thus relieving her from the burden of
translation, her parents are portrayed as a dear presence in her life.
To conclude, autobiographers remember experiencing embarrassment and
alienation when dealing with their older family who are not as proficient in English
(and the cultural concepts that English communicates). This produces distance
between the generations, and the authors construct themselves as alienated from their
cultural background. Yet autobiographers describe themselves to have reached —
731
Moaveni Lipstick 195f.
Bahrampour 140f.
733 Bahrampour 146
734 Bahrampour 128
735 Bahrampour 156
736 Bahrampour 154f.
737 Bahrampour 145
738 Moaveni Lipstick 241
732
140
either by acknowledging the profound emotional implications of Persian, or as adults
with a less fragile sense of American identity — some sort of truce with the situation
and thus with their Iranian background.
3.1.3 The Schizophrenia of Bilingualism — The Second Generation
Linguistics scholars like Mary Besemeres and Aneta Pavlenko argue that,
judging from how interlinked language and identity are, from how the logos
structures our world, bilingualism can result in a sort of split personality.739 And also
literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov explores his, as he calls it, linguistic
‘schizophrenia’ between his Bulgarian and French ‘personalities.’740
I argue that a number of Iranian-American authors of the bilingual 1.5th and
2nd generations represent themselves as split or double selves. These autobiographers
remember feeling as if they were living in different worlds, inhabiting them with
different selves. They try to record their attempts of dealing with this inner schism, of
overcoming their cultural and linguistic fissure. Their memories of their split
identities are not only expressed as such, but center, for example, on their attempts at
making up for being not quite as proficient in the other tongue by faking or
performing English or Persian, on the special qualities of their languages in
expressing emotion, and, for those of them who have ventured on ‘home’ journeys to
Iran, on their painful discovery of not being able to speak all registers of Persian and
of feeling like a ‘deficient’ Iranian.
Linguistically In-Between: “The gulf between my two worlds”
Iranian-American autobiographers construct themselves as split between two
clearly divided worlds — Iranian and American — separated first and foremost by
language. Azadeh Moaveni remembers: “Sometimes the intricacies and exoticness of
this inner Iranian world made me feel lucky, as though I’d been granted an extra life.
There was Azadeh at school (...); and there was Azadeh at home, who lived in a
separate world, with its own special language and rituals.” These two worlds can be
enriching, Moaveni writes, but more often makes her “long for refuge in one.”741 She
recalls how she attempted to dispense with the idea of being a hyphenated American,
regarding herself as Iranian, but notes how her Californian accent constantly gives
away her second, American self. 742 Convinced of being thoroughly Iranian —
although born and raised in Palo Alto — she decides to move to Iran, assuming she
739
Besemeres, Mary. “Cultural Translation and the Translingual Self in the Memoirs of Edward Said
and André Aciman.” In Exile, Language and Identity. Ed. by Magda Stroinska and Vittorina Cecchetto.
New York: Peter Lang, 2003. 19-33. 20.; Pavlenko, Aneta. “Bilingual Selves.” In Bilingual Minds:
Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation. Ed. by Aneta Pavlenko. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters, 2006. 1-33. 2ff.
740 Todorov 1994
741 Moaveni Lipstick 19
742 Moaveni Lipstick 28
141
would feel at home. It is in Iran that her linguistic schizophrenia becomes even more
pronounced: she starts using the collective pronoun ‘we’ to refer to both Iranians and
Americans in different circumstances. Her cultural environment conditions her
language: “[I] realized that my word choice was fickle. (...) Depending on what I did
on a given evening, the company I kept and what I ate for dinner, I could spend the
night dreaming in either language.” This, in turn, influences her self-perception, as
the language she uses at any one moment “direct[s] [her] reference points, invoking a
set of experiences and accompanying beliefs particular to an American or an Iranian
context.”743 Moaveni describes desperately trying to fuse these two worlds by
translating, because she feels not completely at home in either language.744
Eventually, though, she concludes that both English and Persian are part of her
identity and that “displacement was an inescapable reality of a life between two
worlds.”745 She thus constructs herself as split, inevitably situated between two
cultural-linguistic worlds.
Gelareh Asayesh, too, describes the back and forth between English and
Persian in detail. She remembers her childhood as divided by a “gulf between [her]
two worlds,”746 her two languages. Both languages are familiar sometimes; at other
times, they leave her with an alienated feeling. She says, for example, that “Farsi
words taste strange in [her] mouth,”747 but also, after speaking Persian, that “English
words feel like foreign objects on my tongue, metallic and cold, like the loose filling
of a tooth.”748 As a result, Asayesh becomes anxious to fuse her worlds, or to at least
not let them drift further apart. For instance, she persuades her husband to learn her
first language, to bridge the “fault line”749 in their marriage. Language thus is
considered a carrier of culturally conditioned content, and she can only communicate
both parts of her ‘identity’ if she can use both languages. Similarly, she is very aware
of her little daughter’s language usage, especially when English gets mixed into her
Persian:
Anxiety seizes me, for I know that language is the lifeblood of culture. Language is the self,
reflected and clothed in nouns and verbs and adjectives. Without Farsi, the Iranian in Mina will
shrivel up and die. (…) In guarding Mina’s heritage, I guard my own, for they are linked.750
Asayesh sees her daughter, like herself, split between English and Persian speaking
selves. It becomes clear that while she is protecting the Iranian in her child, she is also
still not sure how to deal with her own double identity, how to protect the Iranian in
herself. Existing with this inner schism gets easier with time, Asayesh writes,751 but
743
Moaveni Lipstick 52
Moaveni Lipstick 243
745 Moaveni Lipstick 243
746 Asayesh 125
747 Asayesh 123
748 Asayesh 174
749 Asayesh 167
750 Asayesh 212f.
751 Asayesh 198
744
142
she concludes that she and her daughter will have to live with their two languages and
two selves. While this is not easy, she says, it also provides bilinguals with a certain
freedom to color in the void between the worlds, reminding of Homi Bhabha’s idea of
the Third Space: “There is emptiness, yes, and it echoes. But there is also space, and
sometimes we are able to fill it with our own music.”752 Both Moaveni and Asayesh
thus construct themselves as conditioned by their two languages and cultures:
separate worlds that result in a split identity. They accept this in-between-ness as part
of their existence, something that is both displacing and liberating.
Identity and the Duality of Desiring and Forgetting Language
The division of bilinguals’ identities is grounded in the distance between their
languages, both spatial and chronological. Out of this distance arises another aspect of
duality that influences identifications of hyphenated Americans, of bilinguals: the
duality of desiring and forgetting language.
On the one side stands ‘desiring language,’ and its ultimate expression is the
faking of the other language. The language desires (and thus identity desires) of
migrants and migrants-to-be are mirrored in their pretending to be what they are not
— not yet, or not any more. This process goes both ways: On the one hand, English is
exotic and fascinating for ‘weststruck’ Iranians, their gaze already directed to the
USA. On the other hand, there is the American-raised or American-born generation,
in search of their heritage, wanting to be ‘authentically’ Iranian. Desiring and faking
the other, however, already foreshadows losing the own: In their endeavors to learn
the new language upon immigration, some of the first language is inevitably
forgotten.
Therefore, on the other side stands ‘forgetting language:’ Persian becomes
elusive or even foreign to the second generation, and English, too, is forgotten when
especially young subjects move to Iran. Forgetting is often experienced as regretful
loss. Yet language is too fluid to hold on to, and so forgetting is unavoidable. It again
triggers desire for former ability and thus the faking of language ability.
For autobiographers, remembering and narrating early attempts at the other
language means that they construct their fascination with the other language and
culture as part of their identity. They are performing the other through ‘faking’ the
original — and thereby claiming it to some extent.753 The faking, however, also
reinforces the language barrier, and it becomes clear what the faker is not: a
(proficient) speaker of the other language. The fundamental fear of the bilingual
752 Asayesh
215
My approach to ‘faking language’ is informed by Babak Elahi’s article “Fake Farsi: Formulaic
Flexibility in Iranian-American Women Writers’ Memoirs.” However, there is a fundamental difference
between his and my take: Elahi argues the memoirists know the formulae and rules of the other
language and so can riff on them (39) — a view that I do not want to dispute — yet I aim to stress that
they lack sufficient vocabulary to understand and communicate in the other language (both English and
Persian) and so have to fake understanding.
753
143
autobiographer can be seen here in a half-silvered mirror: the fear of being not
proficient enough, or of forgetting and regressing to that state of making up and
guessing.
Gelareh Asayesh, for example, remembers that in her childhood in Iran,
before her parents started moving between Iran and America, she pretended to speak
English, deeply enamored with its connotations:
As a child, I was fascinated with the English language. It seemed to me inconceivable that
anyone could speak it. English was exotic, evoking unimaginable delights in a faraway land. I
remember running along a Caspian beach once when I was about seven, pretending I spoke it
fluently. I summoned my entire vocabulary, learned in first-grade English classes, as I ran, my
legs pumping as if they could muster the fluency my tongue lacked. ‘Stop!’ I cried. ‘Go!’
‘Surprise!’ 754
Running at that Iranian beach, Asayesh wishes for nothing more than to know
English. She tries to make up her lacking mastery in volume and speed of motion, as
if she could fast-forward her life. Yet this dearest wish of hers, “unimaginable” as it
seems to her then, would become true after a few years of living in the US: the
language becomes hers. So much so, indeed, that it is not the not-knowing, but the
knowing-too-well that becomes problematic, as with it comes forgetting: “I have
stopped fighting forgetfulness. It seeps into my life, insulating me from the reality of
an unbridgeable chasm. I have reconstructed my façade.”755 In a way, then, forgetting
is necessary, making existence between cultures bearable. Yet it is only a “façade,”
and ever so often, her slumping language ability reminds her of the growing distance
to her native Persian: “[T]he Farsi words taste strange in my mouth,” writes Asayesh,
“I am standing on the other side of the great gulf.”756 This ‘Persian-American Gulf’ is
the distance between her two languages, cultures, selves, and it is the memory of a
former life that slowly vanishes.757 Not only does she fear that, through this growing
distance, she will forget the Persian language, but also that her “identity is wisping
away” from her. 758 In the same way, she is seized by anxiety when her daughter
forgets some of her Persian, yet eventually reaches the conclusion: “Language (…) is
fluid. What is lost can be regained. (…) Bilingualism, like biculturalism, is a
seesaw.”759 Asayesh thus evokes her own journey, from speaking Persian and desiring
English (so much that she pretends to speak it) to speaking English and desiring
Persian (as she is slowly forgetting it). This duality of desiring and forgetting can, in
Asayesh’s construction, never be broken — however, it is also never a lost cause:
what has been forgotten can always be re-conquered. Language, and with it, identity
is never fixed, is following one’s actions: Asayesh narrates having agency to form her
own split identity, at least to some extent.
754 Asayesh
66
59
756 Asayesh 123
757 Asayesh 105
758 Asayesh 122
759 Asayesh 212
755 Asayesh
144
Tara Bahrampour’s language desires are, along with her bicultural, bilingual
upbringing, complicated and entangled, and I will only trace the most prominent
tendencies here. Born in the USA, she moves with her Iranian father and American
mother to Iran at an early age, comes back to the States for shorter and longer stays
during all her childhood, until the family moves to America for good during the
revolution, in her early teens. Bahrampour then is proficient in both languages — and
yet, she too traces the duality of desiring and forgetting in her coming-of-age as an
Iranian American. Early on during their time in Iran, wanting to fit in better, she
‘performs’ Persian by chanting without understanding, 760 or by using certain words
“like lyrics,”761 not knowing their meaning. More importantly, while not speaking the
language very well yet, she engages in a conscious faking of formal Persian, which
differs from the informal register she is used to from her social environment in
intonation, suffixation and general word choice:
But I am even better at fake Farsi. Ali and I can make ourselves sound just like the Iranian
TV broadcasters who string together unending chains of complicated words to announce
the news. Deciphering them is impossible; instead, we make up Farsi-sounding sentences,
keeping all the same pauses and inflections. Ali hums the opening music of the news. I
frown, clear my throat, and round out my lips to produce the formal pronunciation I’ve only
heard from newscasters and from Iranians reciting poetry.762
After the introductory sentences of the news, which she understands and is able to
copy, she makes up the Persian. Desiring to master the language like the anchorman,
she produces fake words, mimicking formal language — that version of Persian that
eludes her:
It means nothing, but Ali starts to giggle and my voice breaks as I try to make my sentence as
long as the ones on TV. On the real news, the second hand goes an entire minute and more
before the final flourish of the sentence, but I always have to stop after about fifteen seconds. 763
The longer her family lives in Iran, the better Bahrampour’s Persian becomes and the
more she feels at home in the language — she even scoffs at the American radio DJ
who “pretends to speak Farsi,”764 implying that she could do a better job. However,
her desire to be considered an authentic Iranian, to fit in, still makes her try to speak
her ”best Farsi.”765 Bahrampour thus seems to wholeheartedly identify with the
culture, with an Iranian identity. Yet it is the effort she has to put into it, the fact that
she has to desire this linguistic identity that underlines that she has not yet reached
her goal of unreflectingly fitting in — and maybe never will: Her memory and
reconstruction of her efforts are vivid and likely reflect the writer’s self-perception, a
suspicion that is supported by her description of never feeling completely at home
when she goes on a return journey to Iran, as I will show below.
760
Bahrampour 105
Bahrampour 51
762 Bahrampour 57
763 Bahrampour 57
764 Bahrampour 74
765 Bahrampour 65
761
145
Yet Bahrampour is also imitating American English. She remembers doing so
in order to make fun of American classmates at her school in Iran — and as such, the
mimicking might signify that she has settled into the Persian language, into
identifying as Iranian: “We secretly follow [the Burt brothers] around the school
courtyard to find out what they say, and at home we go into hysterics mimicking their
deep-voiced American drawl.”766 On the other hand, she also seems to secretly admire
the Americanness of her classmates, an identity she does not partake in, a vocabulary
she had no thorough knowledge of.767 Her fascination with her American classmates
indicates her hidden desire to be ‘in the know,’ to feel at home in American culture,
too. Like with Asayesh, Bahrampour’s wish comes true — all too true, as it is her
English that takes the front seat, and she loses some of her Persian when the family
moves to the USA. Then, she has to put effort again into pronouncing Persian and
realizes that she again lacks mastery: “I made my Farsi as smooth and clear as I
could. (...) I said, ‘My heart has become tight for you,’ two or three times, like a
parrot, simply because I knew how to say it.”768 Returning to Iran, she experiences
even more how much she has forgotten. 769 Bahrampour narrates how the duality of
desiring and forgetting language influences her life in a back-and-forth motion, never
ceasing, leaving the subject floating in the space in between. It makes sense then that
Bahrampour, at the end of her memoir, remembers a specific game she used to play in
her childhood:
It calls for four people to stand beside four trees in a wide-open square of grass. The fifth one
stands in the center, and at a signal we run, trying to switch trees without the middle person
getting there before us. The pattern is circular and endless. After each run, someone is always
left floating in the middle of the lawn. The floater cries out and the rest of us pick a direction and
run blindly until we hit a tree and whip our arms around it. We stop with a jerk, breathless,
relieved to be holding on to the solid trunk. And then we look around to see where we are. 770
The game mirrors the duality of desiring and forgetting, as the players always desire
to be at a different tree, to speak a different language, be part of a different culture.
To reach their goal, they have to let go and leave behind where they come from.
Bahrampour stresses that “[t]he pattern is circular and endless,” that this process is
never over. In a way, her construction and evaluation thus is similar to Asayesh’s,
who describes bilingualism as a seesaw. Yet for Asayesh, the subject seems to have
some agency in influencing her loyalties, for Bahrampour, the process is “blind” and
inevitable.
Language(s) of Love — Split Linguistic-Emotional Identities
766
Bahrampour 72
Bahrampour 73
768 Bahrampour 174
769 Bahrampour 211
770 Bahrampour 357
767
146
Linguistic research indicates that memories are reconstructed together with
their linguistic and sociocultural environment. The emotional tone and specifically
remembered words are encoded as well, and in the moment of recalling, these pieces
of information are reintegrated into the narrative of the memory.771 Parental love, the
blueprint for our affections, is expressed most often in one’s first language. And
Babak Elahi argues that for Iranians living away from Iran the Persian language
becomes a home and is comparable to the darooni quarters of a traditional Persian
house.772 This is the inner, private part of the house, where the members of the closest
family can socialize and show all their emotions, which is not possible in public
(birooni). Therefore, according to Elahi, Persian becomes the language for emotional
life and family topics, even if Iranian-Americans’ everyday life is lived in English.
Maybe because of these reasons, Iranian-American autobiographers often feel that
they have a more emotional connection to the Persian language. However, the
separate realms of English and Persian are not closed off hermetically: Bilinguals like
Azadeh Moaveni and Tara Bahrampour observe how also English can come to
express deep feeling for them and narrate finding a linguistic-emotional identity that
incorporates both their languages.
Expression of great attachment to Persian has been the norm in IranianAmerican life writing since its early days: In one of the first Iranian-American
autobiographies to be published, Mohamed Mehdevi’s account of his life in the USA
of the 1930s, the author hardly ever reflects on his background, yet longingly
comments on the effect Persian has on him: “[T]he soft, melodic flow of the language
struck such an intimate chord in me that, in contrast, all the contacts I had had in
America seemed but pathetic imitations.”773 Similar statements can be found in
virtually all other autobiographies, be they of the first or later generations. Authors
consistently use Persian endearments and emotion-laden expressions in their writing,
in the original for example Afschineh Latifi, “mommie joon’e azizam ghorbanat,”774
translated, like Azar Nafisi, “Your place will be so empty, Yassi said, using a Persian
expression,”775 or with an explanation of the term like Gelareh Asayesh: “joon or jan
is an endearment, literally meaning ‘life.’”776
While this emotional identification with Persian is almost always present,
some authors of the bilingual generation describe how English also slowly becomes
important to them. Azadeh Moaveni, for example, at first stresses how Persian is
closely interlinked with memories of childhood and love, and makes her feel
protected and relaxed immediately:
771
Schrauf, Robert W. and Ramon Durazo-Arvizu. “Bilingual Autobiographical Memory and Emotion:
Theory and Methods.” In Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation. Ed.
by Aneta Pavlenko. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006.
772 Elahi 2006:461
773 Mehdevi 154
774 Latifi 5 (loosely translated: ‘Mommy dear, I love you and I would give my life for you.’)
775 Nafisi Reading 316
776 Asayesh 2
147
That one word, aziz [dear, darling], caught my fear off guard, conjuring so many primordial
sensations of comfort that I felt a warmth spread through my limbs, felt myself lean
forward effortlessly and push off. [W]hen I heard the word aziz, that endearment woven
into the fabric of my childhood, which I had heard thousands of times, in the voices of
those who loved me first and best, I melted like a cat picked up by the scruff of its neck. 777
Later, although she has already accepted herself to be both American and Iranian,
when she is looking for the perfect partner, she regards Persian as the one and only
way to express love and affection: “Mr. Perfect Hyphen and I would grow old
together, (…) fluent in the old, emotion-laced language of our culture.” [my
emphasis] However, the two languages (and loyalties) are hard to keep apart at times,
and so her American self shines through when she narrates her fantasy relationship
further: “He would call me aziz, and I would call him honey jaan.”778 Persian also
seems to be Moaveni’s language of choice when it comes to her love for family, as
she says, for example, that it is the language in which she loved her grandfather and
that she abhors the idea of talking about him to “American strangers in English”779 in
his funeral speech. For this speech, she tries to translate Persian poetry, yet neither the
poem nor her emotions can be transferred into English.780 However, Moaveni thinks
that the impossibility of translating also brought a sort of enlightenment to her:
Maybe the fixed lines I had drawn around worlds, around countries, around languages, were
distorted, like a flat map of the earth. The urge to translate, this preoccupation with language I
had dragged around with me, had been a resistance to the sense of foreignness I felt everywhere
(…). If I could only have conquered words, purged from my Farsi any trace of accent, imported
the imagery of Persian verse into English prose, I had thought, then the feeling of displacement
would go away. (…) I didn’t want to accept that displacement was an inescapable reality of a
life between two worlds. The yearning, which I must embrace and stop assaulting, was a
perpetual reminder of the truth, that I was whole, but composed of both. 781
The insight that she feels that both English and Persian are integral parts of her
identity, and that she does not need to translate between these two realms, is freeing to
her. The languages and the emotions they convey are different spheres, yet the
boundary between them loses importance and becomes fuzzy. Just as she can feel
relaxed about her American accent in Persian, her Persian emotions are allowed to
have an American ‘accent:’ Best proof for that is again the funeral, where her
American-born cousin charms and moves the Iranian audience with his broken
Persian. More important still, he makes them laugh with his disarming and frank
eulogy — a taboo at a traditional Iranian funeral, yet acceptable at an American one.
Moaveni then constructs the emotional vocabulary of the Iranian-American diaspora
(and with it, her own) to be expanding, or rather slowly changing into a specifically
Iranian-American mode and range of emotional expression.
777
Moaveni Lipstick 194
Moaveni Lipstick 197
779 Moaveni Lipstick 241
780 Moaveni Lipstick 241
781 Moaveni Lipstick 243
778
148
For Tara Bahrampour, English can have emotional connotations, particularly
when they are influenced by the affection she has for her American mother. 782 A
mixture of both languages seems to move her deeply, for example when she hears her
father’s Persian-English way of addressing her: “Baba strokes my hair. ‘Tara-e
sweet.’ (…) I cry even harder when I hear the Farsi way he speaks English. No
American father talks like this. (…) I don’t want another father.”783 But also Persian
has its unique emotionality as the “slightly bawdy banter among women in [her]
family” is always connected to touching — unacceptable in an American context,
Bahrampour contends. This reminds her of having been told off as a child in the USA
for holding hands with a friend: “Once in America, I forgot the pleasure of casually
entwined fingers, of arms linked together in friendship.”784 To Bahrampour then both
languages express emotions, but in different ways. Only both languages together
make up the author’s identity. Bahrampour distinctly remembers her relatives
acknowledging this when they suggest marriage to another Iranian American, as with
similarly mixed cultural and linguistic background, they “could understand each
other.”785
While most autobiographers construct themselves as having closer
emotional links to Persian, Bahrampour, like Moaveni, presents bilingualism as an
integral part of her personality — a split identity that needs two language systems to
express the whole of her emotional world, that feels at home in the USA, but also
needs to connect to Iran to feel grounded.786
Kitchen Farsi, Diasporic Persian
While bilinguals like Bahrampour and Asayesh cherish the idea that language
is fluid and that the lost can be regained, as I have argued above in The Duality of
Desiring and Forgetting, return journeys to Iran also prompt autobiographers to
realize how their knowledge of Persian is fundamentally shaped by their diasporic
background. They describe themselves as speaking ‘kitchen Farsi’ — informal
Persian that is not fit to get by in the Iranian public sphere. As a result, they feel
estranged from Iran, a place which many of them have not seen for a long time, and
especially not during their formative years, but which they had thought of as ‘home.’
These autobiographers then perceive their informal Persian as a painful sign of a
deficient Iranianness, something that is often pointed out to them by the Iranians they
encounter on their return journeys. While they thus depict themselves as ‘inauthentic’
Iranians, it can, I argue, also be seen at times as a construction of and acceptance of a
specifically Iranian-American linguistic identity, of speaking a Persian different from
the Persian in Iran.
782
Bahrampour 45
Bahrampour 145
784 Bahrampour 342
785 Bahrampour 323
786 Bahrampour 342
783
149
While Reza Varjavand of the first generation merely laments being
overcharged by Iranian merchants whenever they hear his diasporic language
habits,787 lacking language abilities have profound emotional influence on Azadeh
Moaveni. She has lived in the USA all her life, having only visited Iran once in her
childhood. Moaveni describes herself as limited to speaking Persian in the family
sphere before she goes to live in Iran. Considering herself ‘purely’ Iranian, she
supposes she will naturally feel at home in Iran — and confesses to be terrified when
she feels out of place in the Iranian public:
I reeled, not because the chaos of Iran was shocking, but because it was, of all things, terribly
foreign. (...) In private places, inside homes, I felt perfectly at home as an Iranian. At dinners, I
knew the ideal texture and color of fesenjoon sauce (...); I could predict the tribal origin of a
kilim; I could sing tarof, the flowery, elaborate expressions of courtesy native to Persian
conversation. In California, these Persian sensibilities had distinguished me as Iranian. But in
Iran, in the bosom of homeland, they were tangential, and reached not even a fraction of the
savvy required to live in the Islamic Republic. 788
Her Persian is too basic for sophisticated conversation and abstract thought, 789 for
expressing complicated romantic emotions 790 — as a result of which she remembers a
friend describing her Persian as “kitchen Farsi.”791 Moaveni’s story of linguistic
estrangement is mirrored in the writings of fellow journalist Afshin Molavi, an
Iranian American who also portrays himself as uncomfortable with formal Persian
when he is expected to act as a translator: “The Farsi language has a conversational
and a formal aspect. News and speeches are conducted in the more formal Farsi, a
skill that I woefully lacked. It would be a pitiful display.”792 Unlike Moaveni, though,
he does not further reflect on the topic. Moaveni, meanwhile, reaches the conclusion
that she cannot communicate her self fully in this language she had always assumed
to be hers: “Farsi denied me the nuance I needed. Without those shades of gray, my
descriptions and ideas came out as partial, crude sketches. (…) I realized that some of
my most integral parts resisted translation.”793 Although she had always thought of
herself as Iranian, it is in English that she has learned how to express her innermost
being. She concludes that she and others like her are “Iranians of the imagination.”794
While they feel they are Iranian, these identities are shaped only by a memories (or
their parents’ narratives) and the Persian they know, not by today’s Iran, nor by the
registers of Persian that elude them. Indeed, with her poor Persian, she even feels like
a “sham,”795 only pretending to be Iranian. However, with time, she stresses that it is
both Persian and English that she needs, that both languages contribute to her
787 Varjavand
52
Moaveni Lipstick 50
789 Moaveni Lipstick 51f.
790 Moaveni Lipstick 68
791 Moaveni Lipstick 89
792 Molavi 236
793 Moaveni Lipstick 68
794 Moaveni Lipstick 85f.
795 Moaveni Lipstick 89
788
150
identity.796 Indeed, she longs to express herself in English — a feeling that can also be
observed when autobiographer Azar Nafisi discovers to her surprise that she feels
lonely in Iran, missing the English language to communicate also that other side of
her identity.797 In the end, Moaveni concludes that she and others who have grown up
in diaspora speak a different language than those who have stayed in Iran:
We spoke Farsi in different accents, or not at all. Some of us had extensive memories of Iran,
others fewer. Our individual blends sparkled distinctively. In Hafez’s voice, I heard the steely
assurance of the fearless new generation; in Pouria’s, the melancholy nostalgia of our family; in
Maryam’s laughter, the fusion of Iranian femininity and sharp New York attitude. All our lives
were formed against the backdrop of this history, fated to be at home nowhere — not completely
in America, not completely in Iran. 798
Their voices then express precisely what they are, Americans from Iran, influenced by
both their heritage and their new environment. Moaveni thus constructs herself as
specifically Iranian-American, and her language to reflect this identity.
Like Moaveni, Tara Bahrampour has lived through her formative years in
diaspora. She constructs her Persian skills, acquired as a child in the private family
sphere in Iran, as deficient, especially after years in diaspora. 799 Her father’s
assessment is particularly important to her: In his eyes, she is not Iranian enough
because of her lack of Persian.800 Also with her portrayal of her return journey does
she contribute to this construction: Bahrampour remembers being unable to deal with
Iranian officials; her Persian is not sufficient for interaction in the public sphere.801
Her standards of what is acceptable and permissible in communication outside the
private sphere do not fit her new Iranian environment, and so it is up to her uncle to
give her her first lesson in Persian, homeland style: “‘Why the hell did you show
them your American passport?’ ‘They asked if I had one. What was I supposed to
do?’ ‘Lie! (...) In Iran, you must learn one thing. Never tell the truth!’”802 It is only
slowly, Bahrampour explains, that she acquires some of the linguistic savvy necessary
for navigating Iran’s public spaces. 803 She starts to dissociate from being Iranian
when she later makes a similar mistake,804 writes how she dislikes herself in
Persian,805 thinking of herself as a ghost or a child in a language that used be her
own.806 Bahrampour then does not see herself as an Iranian from Iran — she sees her
‘kitchen Farsi’ to stand in the way; it is in English that she can communicate her self
best. Therefore, it is not surprising that she expresses fascination with the possibility
of fusing Persian with English — a practice that she has encountered in diaspora. She
796
Moaveni Lipstick 89
Nafisi Reading 106f.
798 Moaveni Lipstick 245f.
799 Bahrampour 148
800 Bahrampour 173, 196
801 Bahrampour 215f.
802 Bahrampour 218
803 Bahrampour 235, 237
804 Bahrampour 302
805 Bahrampour 228
806 Bahrampour 255, 278
797
151
remembers “the seamlessness of the Farsi running into English” and comments: “It is
fun to speak like this, to lazily pick the best words from each side and form a fused
language you’d have to be one of us to understand.”807 She is ‘one of them,’ an
Iranian American, and presents this linguistic amalgam to speak to her. In a similar
vein, when she spends some time with Iranian-American teenagers living in Iran,
hoping to capture some of what her own teenage years might have looked like, she
identifies with the flexible way they communicate with each other, “joking around in
English and German and broken Farsi, so there is always a sheen of confusion, never
a moment when everyone understands.”808 While her Persian has its limits, not
allowing her to perceive herself as an Iranian from Iran, she finds it much more
natural to also express herself in English — ideally, to fuse the two languages.
Both Moaveni and Bahrampour then reach the conclusion that their ability to
express themselves in Persian might be limited to a ‘kitchen Farsi,’ but that their
hybrid English voices, unmistakably defined by their Iranian background and
influenced by Persian, are their preferred way of speaking and communicating best
what they feel they are — or construct themselves to be: Iranian Americans.
3.2 Not Lost in Translation? — The Self-Confident Ethnic Autobiographer
Some Iranian-American autobiographers gloss over problems with learning
and forgetting languages, — including a few of those analyzed in 3.1, who are partly
self-reflective and partly self-confident about their linguistic ability. They do not, or
at least not for the most part, question their fluency in either language and implicitly
claim proficiency in both. This can be a strategy for various aims, I propose:
Foremost is the establishment of authority — authority as a guide lifting the veil of an
‘exotic’ culture, or a cultural-political critic giving the reader a purported inside
scoop. Yet a seemingly smooth, swift and complete acquisition of English can also be
a means of disidentifying with Iran and assuming an identity that is ‘American’ from
the beginning.
This is surely also a question of the target audience: While the bridge builder
Firoozeh Dumas is writing primarily to entertain a popular audience with little
background knowledge, specifically American children and teenagers, the culture
guide Azadeh Moaveni writes partly as an individual, partly as a journalist to cater to
a more critical readership. Azar Nafisi, outspoken in both political and feminist terms,
speaks to fellow-minded critics of the IRI and, it has been argued, 809 to conservative
forces in US-American politics. And then there are writers like Roya Hakakian,
Farideh Goldin and Nahid Rachlin, who are consciously distancing themselves from
807
Bahrampour 191
Bahrampour 272
809 Mottahedeh; Bahramitash; Dabashi 2006a; Keshavarz, Fatemeh. “Reading More Than Lolita in
Tehran: An Interview with Fatemeh Keshavarz.” March 12, 2007, <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/
2007/keshavarz120307.html> (last retrieved December 12, 2011); Rowe; DePaul; Kulbaga;
808
152
their Iranian background, disidentifying with the Islamic revolution and traditionalism
in Iran. By glossing over the problematics of acquiring English, especially Goldin and
Rachlin contribute to a self-presentation as misfits in Iran, always having been rather
‘American.’ Their breaking out of Iranian society thus becomes inevitable in their
narratives, as does their finding a home in the USA.
3.2.1 Claiming Authority By Speaking Persian
The Bridge Builder Campaigning for a Better Reputation
As Cynthia Sau-Ling Wong argues, ethnic autobiography is considered
successful when it is considered trustworthy. 810 Both readers and publishers, as I have
pointed out in 0.4 “Theory and Methodology,” cherish authority and authenticity in
such works. It does not come as a surprise then that many authors do not want to
shake their readers’ confidence in them, especially those who seem to write for a
mostly American audience.811 They never question their ability to speak and
understand Persian fully — and the English to explain Iranian mores to their readers.
Firoozeh Dumas, for instance, hardly reflects on the difficulty of learning English,
and never admits forgetting any of her Persian. Her self-representation is one of a
person with a good hold on both her languages and cultures, with no doubts about
identification, functioning in both English and Persian. She does this, I argue, to
assume authority over Iranian lifestyles and opinions — which is needed so that she
can communicate her message of a shared humanity and her plea for tolerance to her
largely American audience.
Dumas describes herself as having had to explain Iranian culture practically
ever since her childhood: “As soon as I spoke enough English to communicate, I
found myself being interviewed nonstop by children and adults alike.”812 She soon
has to explain both ways, to Americans about Iran, and to her Iranian parents about
America — and she presents herself confident at both, claiming, “I am the interpreter,
the cultural bridge.”813 Yet even when translation is hard or impossible, she shows no
self-doubt like so many other autobiographers: If she cannot translate, it is the
language that does not provide the vocabulary, not her lacking ability. 814
Dumas, the cultural bridge builder, tries to make communication between
English and Iranian worlds more likely. For instance, she is carefully describing
Iranian culture in terms that will make it more understandable, familiar and less
alienating to her American readers, who are likely to have a negative view of Iranians.
The description of her mother’s upbringing touches on the question of women’s
810
Wong 1999:30ff
Or they want to shake their readers’ confidence at least not too much: some autobiographers reflect
on forgetting Persian at certain, limited times, but gloss over the problem completely at other times and
assume authority on language and culture.
812 Dumas Funny 31
813 Dumas Laughing 184
814 Dumas Laughing 195
811
153
education; Dumas here stresses that her mother’s family was progressive and let her
pursue an education, and that it was only the death of the teacher that put a stop to it.
It is harder to explain arranged marriage and Dumas admits,
Marriage, in my culture, has nothing to do with romance. It’s a matter of logic. If Mr. and Mrs.
Ahmadi like Mr. and Mrs. Nejati, then their children should get married. On the other hand, if
the parents don’t like each other, but the children do, well, this is where sad poetry comes from.
As odd as these logical unions may appear to the Western world, their success rate is probably
no worse than that of marriages based on eyes meeting across a crowded room and the heart
going va-va-va-boom. 815
Dumas does a number of things here: First, she makes light of a fraught topic with a
very humorous approach; second, she finds cultures to be equally successful in
match-making; and third, while favorably explaining arranged marriage, she
nevertheless relativizes its importance and later showcases her uncle who rebels
against this tradition. She also depicts Iran to be a much safer place than the USA
seems to be, 816 compares Iranian food to gourmet American food and stresses that it is
eaten with the whole family,817 and praises the Iranian education system.818 What is
more, she is poking fun at American behaviorisms and ignorance about Iran. 819 All in
all, with the authority of an Iranian who has never doubted her identity — while only
having spent approximately ten years of her life there — Dumas makes the point that
a life in Iran is perfectly livable, maybe even better than living in America.
Questioning her being at home in the Persian language has no place in her selfconstruction as an authority on Iranian culture.
Even in the face of post-revolution American discrimination of Iranians,
Dumas is trying to ‘bridge the gap’ between the two cultures and show their
similarities, which, again, she can do more easily without casting doubt on her inside
knowledge. While she is criticizing discrimination of Iranians in the USA, she
sugarcoats this pill by applauding Americans’ general hospitality and friendliness,
remembering fondly the “avalanche of kindness”820 that she encountered during her
first stay in the US. However, it is exactly her own ‘perfect’ assimilation that allows
her to pass for an American and witness hatred of Iranians firsthand.821 Her selfnarration thus provides her with insight into both American society and the Iranian
diasporic community.
In her second memoir, Dumas dedicates an entire chapter to the difficult topic
of the hostage crisis, trying to make her readers realize the fact that Iranians are
normal people like them. Stressing again that she considers herself “a bridge
builder,”822 she arranges to meet with one of the former hostages. She carefully
815
Dumas Funny 24
Dumas Funny 19
817 Dumas Funny 25f.
818 Dumas Funny 32
819 Dumas e.g. Funny 26, 28, 32
820 Dumas Funny 35
821 Dumas Funny 65
822 Dumas Laughing 215
816
154
portrays Kathryn Koob as a typical American, for example by describing her family’s
all-American house. At the same time, she finds many similarities to her own Iranian
family:
The crowded mantel, the hostess offering me more homemade dessert, their welcoming a
total stranger to their house — all reminded me of my relatives’ houses. Of course at my
relatives’ houses, there are jars of homemade pickled lemons, the people in the mantel
photos all look like me, and there’s no dog in the house. 823
Dumas underlines how it is Koob’s American “Lutheran faith that allowed her to
walk away from the hostage experience without hatred or resentment,”824 implicitly
admonishing other Americans to do the same. Also, she again compares cultures,
foregrounding their shared humanity:
The Bible is foreign to me, but its concepts are not. My father always said that hatred is a waste
and never an option. He learned this growing up in Ahwaz, Iran, in a Muslim household. I have
tried to pass the same message to my children, born and raised in the United States. Ultimately,
it doesn’t matter where we learn that lesson. It’s just important that we do.825
Dumas then is constantly trying to build bridges between Iranian and American
cultures, attempting to ease communication, translating and interpreting. This, I have
tried to show, would have been a less successful endeavor had she expressed doubt
about either of her linguistic-cultural allegiances. Understandably then, Dumas
constructs herself at home in both cultures, never questioning her ability to speak
Persian.
The Cultural Broker Giving a Guided Tour
As one of the blurbs on Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad (first paperback
edition) would have it: “A ‘compelling … guided tour.’” Such ‘tour guiding’ is
widespread among ethnic autobiographers, not least as it piques an American
audience’s interest. Yet American-born Moaveni is not the ‘typical’ cultural expert, as
she takes the reader through her stages of acquiring language and cultural knowledge,
and reflects on this process of learning, its difficulties and limits. In contrast, many
first-generation autobiographers rely on their Iranian background to claim complete
authority on all things Iranian, such as Abbas Milani, who published his memoir in
1996, at the beginning of the past 15 years’ veritable surge of Iranian-American
autobiographies. The American public’s hunger for reliable information from a
cultural insider still fresh, Iranian-American writers were expected to guide their
audience with authority through this culture that seemed so alien and hostile. “[T]he
personal authority of an autobiographer is not easy to challenge,”826 says Wong, but
for ethnic memoirists to admit to not being completely at home in their culture by
823
Dumas Laughing 217
Dumas Laughing 219
825 Dumas Laughing 223
826 Wong 1999:34
824
155
dissecting language problems would mean giving up this authority to a considerable
extent.
Having left the country aged fifteen for eleven years to study, 827 Milani had
returned to Iran in 1975 for ten years, only to leave it for good in 1986. This means
that, at the time of publication, he has lived in Iran for 26 years and outside of Iran for
at least 21 years. However, never doubting his knowledge of both languages and
cultures, Milani offers authoritative information on Iran — which I will explore in
depth in chapter 5 “Between Fiction and Fact.” Such narratives easily (and often
consciously) cater to Western audiences’ orientalist preconceptions. Suffice it to say
here that the narrative of the tour guide — who has to be bilingual and bicultural, a
shaky notion as we have seen in “The Self-Conscious Speaker” — only remains
trustworthy if he refrains from questioning his own linguistic-cultural authority. It fits
well then that Milani performs expertise in Persian. Referring to his ‘typically’ Iranian
love for metaphoric ambiguity, he presents himself to be as at home in the language
as any Iranian who has never left the country.828 Indeed, describing the subtleties of
Persian, he again acts as a cultural broker, as he says, “If cultures can be said to have
geists, then language may be the window to that spirit.”829 In this vein, he describes
how Persian mirrors standards of hierarchical thinking and how the intricacy of
Persian reflects the culture’s standard of concealment — as opposed to American
familiar and “naked style:”830
Persian language shares something with Persian domestic architecture where houses are as much
places of concealment as comfort. Their public facades are heavily ornamented, while their
private amenities are invariably inadequate. In my parent’s home the most beautiful rug, the
most exquisite antiques, and even the most efficient wall heater (…) all furnished the room set
aside for and only rarely visited by guests. In contrast, when Barbara remodeled her house, she
put the most elaborated care into the design of her bath. 831
Milani’s readers are thus offered an insight into what the ‘tour guide’ considers an
essential difference between both languages and cultures. In a similar fashion, Milani
contrasts the two cultures’ approach to love, explaining to his audience that
[h]ere, lovers are lonely monads, guarding turfs, who quickly ‘get on with a new life’ when
the old love proves impractical. In English, we ‘fall’ in love, whereas in Persian we
‘become’ in love. One is dangerous and accidental, even serendipitous; the other is
transformational and purposeful.832
The cultural broker Milani translates fluently and confidently, without ever pausing to
reflect on his language ability. And yet we can detect how America may have changed
this self-confident author that presents himself so much at home in his native Persian:
“My years in America had taught me the values of self-assertion as a cardinal element
827
Milani, Abbas 22, 44
Milani, Abbas 201
829 Milani, Abbas 253
830 Milani, Abbas 254
831 Milani, Abbas 254
832 Milani, Abbas 258f.
828
156
of individuality and engraved in me a respect for the sanctity of individual corporeal
existence and pleasure.”833 He even describes his writing a memoir as an ‘American’
endeavor, remarking: “The word ‘memoir’ makes me feel uncomfortable. With
American friends, my discomfort dissipates.”834
Milani may have become more American than he wants to admit; however,
the issue here is not to try to pinpoint ‘essential’ identities, but rather to highlight how
an Iranian-American autobiographer of the first generation constructs and presents
himself as fluent in both his first language and culture. This purported fluency, this
glossing over of any language problems, lends the writer the authority needed to act
as a culture guide or broker to his American audience.
The Native Critic Providing the Inside Scoop
A very similar dynamic, yet with a more political bent is at work when the
ethnic autobiographer is not so much ‘tour guide,’ but a ‘native critic’ catering to a
politically interested audience more inclined to be indignant about aspects like human
rights violations, women’s rights and the suppression of free thought and speech, than
interested in the life story of an individual in between cultures. There are also aspects
of authenticity involved, which I will discuss in subchapter 5.3.1 “Ethnic Journalism
and Personal Experience: The Authority of Factuality.”
Abbas Milani, for example, also acts as a ‘native critic,’ when he writes as an
expert on Iranian religiosity in his chapter “Temptations of the Soul”835 and on the
revolution: In his chapter “El Dorado,” Milani narrates his time as an undercover
dissident activist during the Shah’s regime; in “A Season in Hell” and “Village
Prison,” he remembers how he was arrested and imprisoned by the Shah’s secret
service; and in “Shadows on the Moon,” he offers his analysis of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Presenting himself to be a cultural insider, he is purportedly not only able to give his
reader a guided tour of this alien culture, but also the inside scoop on the Islamic
revolution that made it America’s enemy.
Yet Azar Nafisi is an even better example here. She constructs herself to be a
self-confident insider, although she had been sent abroad at age thirteen for education
and had lived outside Iran for 17 years before returning in 1979. I argue that she
refrains from reflecting on any language problems, as her objective is to provide her
readers with the desired inside scoop, to give them the feeling of getting ‘factual’
information about Iranians’ everyday lives when reading her ‘autobiographical’
narrative. Repeatedly telling her readers to imagine, she does her writerly best to take
them on a journey, to paint a vivid inner picture for them: “How can I create this other
world outside the room? I have no choice but to appeal to your imagination. Let’s
833
Milani, Abbas 221f.
Milani, Abbas 225
835 Milani, Abbas 57-78
834
157
imagine (…).”836 In this way, Nafisi too might be called a tour guide. However, her
focus is not self-orientalization in a quaint and picturesque way, as is the case with
many of Milani’s descriptions. In her book, she gives what could be considered her
subjective view on the Islamic regime, but what has widely been received as catering
to neo-orientalism. The Orient is portrayed as backward, uncivilized and hostile to
women, and Oriental women are generally regarded as victims.837 The experience of
Iranian women is falsely homogenized, ignoring the circumstance that hejab, for
instance, freed many women of the working classes and allowed them to enter the
public sphere from which they had been excluded before the revolution.838 With this,
Nafisi caters (be it intentionally or not) to her Anglo-American, often feminist
readers’ negative preconceptions of Iran, giving little room, if any, to representations
of female agency. Roksana Bahramitash regards Nafisi’s approach as linked to neoconservative American politics at the height of the ‘war on terror’ and, as such, as a
reinforcement of what Americans want to believe about the oppression of women in
Iran. 839 However, we also have to remember, as I have mentioned earlier, that this is
part and parcel of the dynamics of the book market, of audiences’ desires and
publishers’ anticipation of these desires.
Nafisi, for instance, assumes authority on the situation of Iranian women,
when she is constantly speaking not only for herself and about her own feelings of
alienation and disgust about hejab 840 or when her private sphere is violated while
being inspected by a female guard, 841 but also for ‘her’ girls and, by extension, for
Iranian women in general: “I was thinking about life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, about the fact that my girls are not happy. What I mean is that they feel
doomed to be unhappy.”842 While the state of women’s rights in Iran undoubtedly
leaves much to be desired, it has to be pointed out that Nafisi is not an everyday
Iranian woman — after all, she is a member of the moneyed elite, has enjoyed the
great privilege of an extensive education and, not least, has been away from Iran for
17 years — and yet she assumes the role of spokesperson for Iranian women.
Also in her readings of Western literature, like Lolita, Nafisi often comments
on the situation of ‘the woman’ in Iranian society. For instance, she compares it to
Lolita’s captivity: “what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and
jailer,”843 and claims another time: “please remember, ladies and gentlemen of the
jury, (…) this child, had she lived in the Islamic Republic, would have been long ripe
for marriage to men older than Humbert”844 — referring to the official minimum age
836
Nafisi Reading 26
Bahramitash 224
838 Bahramitash 234
839 Bahramitash 232
840 Nafisi Reading 167f.
841 Nafisi Reading 168
842 Nafisi Reading 281
843 Nafisi Reading 37
844 Nafisi Reading 43
837
158
of nine regarding marriage for girls, which is mostly frowned upon in Iranian society.
Talking to the ‘jury,’ Nafisi only at first glance addresses the same fictitious group as
Humbert Humbert does: her racy remarks rather seem directly aimed at a readership
with existing prejudices towards Iran’s society.
Azar Nafisi has made it her mission to provide her readers, the ‘Western jury,’
with the inside scoop about Iran and women’s lives there; yet her information seems
biased and eager to fulfill expectations. Yet even when she discovers, to her surprise,
that she misses speaking English,845 she does not let the thought influence her selfconstruction as ‘essentially’ Iranian — after all, this would compromise her authority
of speaking for the collective experience of millions of Iranian women.
3.2.2 Affective Distancing and Agency Through English
Last but not least, some first-generation autobiographers gloss over the
difficulty of learning a new language or even perform self-confidence regarding their
mastery of English, as the language seems to provide them with a means of affective
distancing846 to a time of which they have traumatic memories — and, more
importantly, with a new-found sense of agency that living in Iran and speaking
Persian had denied them. Among these autobiographers are, I argue, Farideh Goldin,
who sees herself as having barely escaped Iran’s oppressive traditionalism, and Roya
Hakakian, who intensely describes the worsening situation for women and Jews
during and after the revolution.
Farideh Goldin wants to flee from her situation in Iran, where she is about to
be married against her will and where she feels oppressed and discriminated against
as both a Jew and woman. Her disidentification with her life in Iran results in an
alternative identification with America, even when she has never been there before: “I
knew that I was going to leave and find a new home, my very own place in the world.
I knew that there was hope in my future. For the first time, I started to dream of
America.”847 As a consequence, she also very much identifies with English: although
talking about the need to improve her English and admitting to an initial culture shock
when first coming to America,848 she says little more about her linguistic learning
process — as if she had always spoken the language. Also, after only a year in the
States and having been forced to return to Iran, her disidentification is even more
prominent: “I didn’t belong to my country of birth.”849 She feels different and
remembers other people to perceive the transformation as well, even taking her for an
American.850
845
Nafisi Reading 106f.
Cf. e.g. Javier, Rafael Art. The Bilingual Mind: Thinking, Feeling and Speaking in Two Languages.
New York: Springer, 2007. 34 and 37.
847 Goldin 144
848 Goldin 162f.
849 Goldin 165
850 Goldin 166f.
846
159
English has, for Goldin, become a language that stands for freedom,
independence and agency, and she refuses to translate it into Persian, wanting to keep
the English for herself and distant from her native language.851 She narrates that
Persian has come to suffocate her individuality, rendering her mute: “I lost my voice,
my language. Sounds wouldn’t leave my mouth. Sometimes I forced the words out,
but I found the language to be unfamiliar, not communicating my ideas. Or, worst yet,
sometimes I didn’t understand my own words as I said them.”852
Goldin’s
disidentification with Persian is tangible, and she admits that leaving Iran, she
“wanted to distance [herself] from [her] culture, [her] society, and even [her]
extended family.” This distancing is also expressed in Goldin’s wholeheartedly
embracing English as her own, and not reflecting on problems of acquisition or selfexpression. In her construction, English has become her ‘true’ language — or has, in a
way, always been. Her choice of telling her story in English only underlines how she
needs the affective distance from her traumatic experiences in the other language,
how English provides her with a voice and a possibility to reinvent herself as a
subject with agency.
For Hakakian, too, English provides much-needed distance. While her
memoir focuses solely on her and her family’s time in Iran, she narrates the
revolution to be a watershed that transforms society. The situation, especially for
women — and slowly also for Jews — becomes unbearable, the experience of the
time after the revolution traumatic. Writing about it in English, a language that she
had not even liked as a child, 853 is the only form in which she feels she can approach
her memories, memories that would be too vivid in her native Persian: “Persian could
summon the teenager at sea. English sheltered the adult survivor, safely inside a
lighthouse.”854 Furthermore, similarly as for Goldin, Persian has come to signify
censorship to her, and she seems to need English to speak out against them, both
because she feels restricted in Persian, and probably also because with English, she
can reach a much larger, international audience: “I did not know how to use the
language of the censors to speak against them; to use the very language by which I
had been denied so much as a Jew, a woman, a secular citizen, and a young poet.”855
So while she professes to still love Iran, English has freed her, has become a means of
agency: “[W]hat I had painstakingly arrived at, greater than even the new land, was a
new language, the vessel of my flight to vast possibilities.”856
I argue that it is not Goldin and Hakakian’s Jewishness that is the decisive
factor here. While this is a circumstance that might have contributed to the distance
they feel to their country of birth, as anti-Semitism was on the rise around the time of
851
Goldin 171
Goldin 180, 182
853 Hakakian 92
854 Hakakian 15
855 Hakakian 15
856 Hakakian 15
852
160
the revolution, we find similar tendencies in the autobiographies of non-Jewish
authors, such as Nahid Rachlin’s Persian Girls, in which Rachlin describes her and
her sister’s struggle with traditionalism and infatuation with all things American:
Rachlin eventually manages to leave for America and only rarely reflects on the
difficulty of learning English, having identified with it and with the freedom it stands
for in her mind for a long time.
Both Goldin and Hakakian have embraced English, as it is a way of
distancing themselves from their traumatic past, and a way of acquiring agency. They
gloss over the inevitable difficulty of learning a new language, and do not reflect on
remaining insecurities, as doubting their own being at home in English would
question the success of their (autobiographical) journey, would endanger their selfpresentation of women who have left their home country to achieve agency. By
narrating the process of learning English as a smooth transition, almost as if they had
already known it, they construct themselves as having always belonged to the USA,
the ‘Land of the Free.’
3.3 Conclusion
To summarize, the relationship between language and identity construction is
a major factor in ethnic autobiography, a factor that plays out in some surprising ways
in the life writing of Iranian Americans, regardless of whether they do or do not
reflect on the process of language learning.
While one cannot draw definite borders to delineate distinct generations, as
one autobiographer can be part of multiple groups at different times in his narrated
life, characteristics that one can connect to fuzzy ‘generational’ groupings make it
easier to analyze the influence of language. For example, the first generation, i.e.
those autobiographers who have experienced immigration to the US, tend to link their
eventual success in learning English to a more general, characteristically Iranian
propensity for education. Speaking English is thus incorporated into a selfconstruction as Iranian. It thus becomes evident how important external factors are
for the self-construction of the diasporic subject: This early on in the emergence of
the Iranian diaspora, hope for an eventual return to the homeland was still prevailing,
thus prompting autobiographers to see and present themselves as Iranian at core.
The 1.5th generation writers, however, remember feeling alienated from their
Iranian background already by their parents’ initial problems with the new language
and culture, and have a hard time making peace with this. In terms of their own
languages and language abilities, many authors of the bilingual 1.5th and second
generations are faced with what they see as a split world of linguistic-cultural
experience. As a result, they construct themselves as split or doubled selves and
narrate their journey of trying to overcome this inner schism, of dealing with their
cultural and linguistic fissure — a journey that is an end in itself. Along the way, the
161
writers have to accept that their bilingualism is never completely in balance, that their
languages are not equal. For instance, they are determined by the duality of desiring
and forgetting: As language ability is fluid and unstable, the desire of speaking
another language inevitably results in forgetting some of the first. What is more,
many come to the conclusion that, on the one hand, Persian will always be their
language of expressing deep emotion — something that makes them feel
authentically Iranian — but that their Persian is, on the other hand, restricted to the
private sphere — which makes them feel ‘deficient’ as Iranians. Negotiating these
conflicting linguistic identifications, some arrive at identifying as specifically IranianAmerican. Nevertheless, these findings show that, as I have pointed out in 0.4
“Theory and Methodology,” conceptions of hybridity such as Bhabha’s Third Space
are seldom meaningful to diasporic subjects, who continue to grapple with their status
of neither-here-nor-there.
Yet there are also those first-generation autobiographers who never or hardly
reflect on the influence of language on their identity. This can be, I have argued, a
strategy to establish authority as an ethnic autobiographer (as a bridge builder, a
cultural broker or a native critic), as the implicit claim is proficiency in both
languages. What is more, it responds to the dynamics of book marketing: Authority
and authenticity sells. Other authors seem to engage in affective distancing from
Persian and their traumatic memories in that language, and, in order to fully embrace
an American identity with its promise of agency, gloss over any problems of
acquiring English.
There is one thing, however, on which all Iranian-American autobiographers
seem to agree: Both languages remain important, in different ways and with different
(and changing) connotations. Abbas Milani has expressed this sentiment regarding his
own life at the end of his autobiography: “I write both in English and Persian. Persian
connects me to my past, English is the language of my future.”857 In this, IranianAmerican life writing once more underlines the increasing fluidity and
fragmentariness of identity in a globalized world.
857
Milani, Abbas 259
162
163
4. The Iranian-American Body In Between
Possessing a body or, rather, a body image, profoundly influences our sense of
identity — maybe even more so than speaking language(s). The way we think of our
bodies might indeed be considered the very basis of how we think of ourselves —
and, what is more, how we think of ourselves in turn influences our bodies. This
acknowledgement of the interrelatedness of mind and body involves a radical
departure from Descartes’ dualism; a departure convincingly argued for by the
feminist Elizabeth Grosz. 858 She rejects the Cartesian assumption of two distinct,
mutually exclusive substances, i.e. mind and body, as she sees a manifest connection
between the two. Cartesianism, as well as the reductionism of both rationalism and
idealism on the one hand and empiricism and materialism on the other, she explains,
leave the interaction of body and mind “unexplained, explained away, impossible.”859
Spinoza’s monism offers a way out of the dilemma, as his notion of an absolute and
infinite substance declares mind and body to be, effectively, one: “Substance has
potentially infinite attributes to express its nature. (…) Extension and thought —
body and mind — are two such attributes. (…) There is not question of interaction,
for they are like two sides of a coin.” 860 Contemporary life writing scholarship —
long influenced by Foucauldian thinking — widely agrees that the autobiographical
subject is by no means a Cartesian subject: it is no bodiless thinking substance, but
determined by the body and its materiality throughout.861 Conversely, the body is also
seen as constructed through social and cultural practices that are reflected in life
writing. However, Grosz is not content with the static image of the coin, but employs
the metaphor of the Möbius strip to describe the profound dynamism in the
interrelation of psychical interior and corporeal exterior.862 In this constant loop of
mutual influence, both the mind and the body are inscribed by the other, are
inextricable from each other. As such, Grosz argues, “all the effects of subjectivity, all
the significant facets and complexities of subjects, can be as adequately explained
using the subject’s corporeality as a framework as it would be using consciousness or
the unconscious.”863 This cements the legitimacy of approaching life writing with a
focus on the authors’ relation to their bodies: Not only is the body a determining
factor for self-construction, but it is just as important as the mind.
858
Grosz, E. A. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.
Grosz 7
860 Grosz 10f.
861 Cf. e.g. Eakin 1999:8ff.; Radway, Janice A., Kevin K. Gaines, Barry Shank and Penny Von Eschen,
eds. American Studies: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009. 327.; Stuart, Christopher.
“Introduction: Gender, Race, and Disability: The Death and Resurrection of the Body in Life Writing.”
New Essays on Life Writing and the Body. Ed. by Christopher Stuart and Stephanie Todd. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. 1-21. 13.
862 Grosz 11
863 Grosz vii
859
164
Specifically, a Cultural Studies interest in autobiographical writing can only
profit from such a change of perspective. After all, the body must not be seen as ‘pure
nature’ in opposition to culture, but, following social constructionism, as a product of
various forms of cultural inscription. As Judith Butler puts it, “materiality [has to be]
rethought as the effect of power, as power’s most productive effect.” 864 However, one
should be careful not to mistake this approach for social determinism — the body is
never fixed, is ever changing. Bodies therefore can “always extend the frameworks
which attempt to contain them, to seep beyond their domains of control.”865
The body is always becoming; yet it might not always ‘become’ as quickly as
the self wants it to. In chapter 3, I have already mentioned the time lag that kicks in
when subjects migrate: The subject might desire to change its external appearance
along with its internal self-construction in order to fit in in a new socio-cultural
environment, but, like language, the body (including body language) needs time to
change, to become ‘other.’ Some aspects of the body, like skin and hair color, resist
even more, or completely. This resistance of the body interacts — in the Möbius strip
of identity, so to say — with the mind; it influences the subject’s self-construction.
Thus, the Möbius strip winds around and around, ‘working’ towards a feeling of
congruence of body image and the mind’s self-construction.
Yet how can one approach autobiographical writing about the body? Paul de
Man has decried autobiography as mere prosopopeia, rendering the material world
(and thus bodies) irretrievable behind a veil of self-referring linguistic signs.866 While
this seems at first devastating to autobiography studies, it has enabled the discipline to
expand the white male canon and shift its focus to the bodies of other races and
genders, or otherwise straying from the ‘norm’ — the bodies on whose marginality
the centrality of the disembodied white self had always depended. As Judith Butler
puts it for the marginality of women, and vicariously for all ‘others:’
By defining women as ‘Other’ men are able through the shortcut of definition to dispose of their
bodies, to make themselves other than their bodies (…). From this belief that the body is Other,
it is not a far leap to the conclusion that others are their bodies.867
For these marginals, “for women, people of color, for the disfigured and disabled, the
linguistically constructed self may be [the] only recourse for restoring a sense of self
and agency otherwise systematically and institutionally denied,”868 Christopher Stuart
reminds us. This certainly applies to ethnicities such as African Americans, Asian
Americans, Native Americans,869 and also Iranian Americans; in their visible beingdifferent, their bodies take center stage in autobiographical writing. Yet while Sidonie
864
Butler 1993:3
Grosz xi
866 Stuart 7.; De Man, Paul. “Autobiography as De-Facement.” MNL 94 (1979): 919-930.
867 Butler, Judith. “Variations on Sex and Gender: Beauvoir, Wittig, and Foucault.” In Feminism as
Critique: On the Politics of Gender. Ed. by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1987. 133.
868 Stuart 8
869 Stuart 10
865
165
Smith and Julia Watson have aptly noted that “the body is a site of autobiographical
knowledge, as well as a textual surface upon which a person’s life is inscribed,”870 we
should not read life writing as mirroring the corporeality of the autobiographer, but
have to be aware of how self-perception and “technologies of self-fashioning”871
impact life writing as autobiographers engage in constructing and representing their
body images as facets of their identifications. In turn, what autobiographers write
about themselves also influences how they perceive their bodies, and thus also their
bodies’ posture and gestures, how they are dressed and moved in space. As Paul John
Eakin has observed, “it is our narrative identities that define us.”872
The aforementioned time lag of the body can be agonizing to those who
migrate and want to change in order to fit in. As one Iranian-American author asks in
desperation, yearning for more agency in this process: “What percentage of identity
[is] exterior, what percentage self-defined?”873 Iranians migrating to the USA and
Iranian Americans experience the impact of their bodies on their identities in
everyday life, and their autobiographies attempt to reconcile their long-term sense of
self with their changed bodies.874 Again, as for language, the same can be observed
for other immigrant and ethnic groups; yet I want to explore here what makes IranianAmerican bodily existence between cultures unique. For this, I want to proceed ‘from
the inside out:’ I will first address the ‘race question’ and how it relates to its specific
socio-cultural context here, then go on to the surface of the body, how it is adorned
and thus changed, and finally look at the spaces Iranian Americans place their bodies
in, i.e. public and private spheres, and how attitudes towards these spaces influence
their self-constructions. Some of the questions I will pose are: How are Iranians in
America affected by their bodies’ perceived race, and how do ‘homegrown’ Iranian
racial hierarchies still influence diasporic subjects and their self-construction? How
do Iranian Americans try to alter their bodies through dress in order to fit an
American idea of bodily normalcy, and what impact do the ‘politics of hejab’ have on
them? Last but not least, an important question is how Iranian Americans negotiate
the strict delineation of public and private in Iran and the USA: What needs to be
hidden, what can be shown openly? This applies specifically to the female body, as it
is relegated to the private sphere and hidden in public the most, but also to personal
and familial privacy in general, to romantic and sexual relationships.
870
Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, eds. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life
Narratives. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001. 37.
871 Radway 327
872 Eakin 2008:30
873 Moaveni 115; I am not subscribing to essentialist notions of biological race, yet I acknowledge that
‘race,’ especially in the USA, continues to be a category for describing ethnic-cultural communities —
sometimes, but not always, grounded on quasi-biological assumptions, almost always with ascriptions
of specific bodily appearances, such as skin color, and often met with certain stereotypes.
874 Adams, Timothy Dow. “Foreword.” New Essays on Life Writing and the Body. Ed. by Christopher
Stuart and Stephanie Todd. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. ix-xxiii. x.
166
4.1 “Was I brown?”875 — The Race Question and the Iranian-American Body
How does the Iranian-American body relate to American bodies and their
perceived racial relations? How do Iranian-American autobiographers position
themselves in an assumed American race system? In order to answer these questions,
we have to look at how they remember their Iranian past. As I have described in
chapter 2 “A Usable Past,” Iranians, already in the Qajar era and up until today, have
been fascinated with Europe and have considered themselves to be inferior. This
‘Weststruckness’ has resulted in a valuing of light skin, hair and eye colors — the
more ‘European,’ the better. The diaspora have brought a homegrown color hierarchy
with them and are negotiating this cultural baggage in their writings with the complex
system of perceived races that they are confronted with in the United States. Dark
color thus often becomes doubly undesirable: firstly due to Iranians’ own background
and secondly due to American racial stereotypes. Many autobiographers recount of
their lives in Iran how acutely aware they were of color differences and how much
they wanted to look European. In addition to this, Jewish-Iranian autobiographers
remember Muslim stereotypes of the Jewish body as unclean. The writers later
endeavor to place their foreign-looking bodies in the American ‘system,’ negotiating
the comparative newness — and unpopularity — of Middle Easterners.
It is important to note in this context the inextricability with which the
constructions of race and ethnicity bleed into each other. Both being historically
derived and institutionalized dynamic sets of ideas, 876 it is at times hard to determine
where the allegedly more ‘physical’ characteristics of the contended concept ‘race’
end and where those of — more culturally determined — ethnicity starts. 877 Indeed,
whether the category of biological race can still hold up to current debates is
questionable and scholarship now widely agrees that race has to be seen as a social
construct.878 This does not, however, mean that it is an illusion: the concept’s power
and use in primarily political contexts cannot be denied.879
875
Moaveni Lipstick 26
Moya, Paula M.L. and Hazel Rose Markus. “Doing Race.” In Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st
Century. Ed. by Hazel Rose Markus and Paula M.L. Moya. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 22.
877 Junn, Jane and Elizabeth Matto. “New Race Politics: The Changing Face of the American Electoral
Landscape.” In New Race Politics in America: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Politics. Ed. by
Jane Junn and Kerry L. Haynie. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. 4.
Race, according to Moya and Markus, “sorts people into ethnic groups according to perceived physical
and behavioral human characteristics” (21) but also ethnicity “allows people to identify with groupings
of people on the basis of presumed (and often claimed) commonalities including language, history,
nation or region of origin, customs, religion, names, physical appearance and/or genealogy or
ancestry” (22).
878 Cf. e.g. Appiah, Anthony. “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race.” In
‘Race,’ Writing, and Difference. Ed. by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. 21-37;
López, Ian F. “The Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication, and
Choice.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 29 (1994): 1-62. 10ff.
879 Cf. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the
1990s. London: Routledge, 1994. 54.; López makes the point that is through membership in racialized
communities that the link between race and identity is established (61).
876
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4.1.1 In Iran: Desiring ‘European’ Colors
Iranian Americans’ feelings of inferiority towards and admiration of lightskinned Westerners is portrayed most visibly in instances of cultural encounter. Nahid
Rachlin, for example, describes flirting with a boy in her childhood in Iran and
remembers that he “had blue eyes and was clearly at least half foreign”880 —
extremely “alluring”881 to her. This high regard for light, ‘European’ colors is also
applied to Iranians’ own shades of complexion. Dumas for instance recounts how her
and her mother’s fair “‘European’ look put [them] a couple of rungs higher on the
social ladder,”882 Aria Minu-Sepehr writes that his mother “was fair and blond, ‘like a
European,’”883 Reza Varjavand refers to Iranians as “white”884 and also Asayesh
makes sure to explain the effect of her father’s eye color: “Baba’s eyes are a light
sherry brown. This characteristic often leads people to defer to him, eager to bequeath
to him that special status reserved for Westerners or those who look like them.”885
Even Tara Bahrampour, born to an Iranian father and an American mother, narrates
being jealous of her mother’s complexion, “white, freckled skin that never gets a
tan.”886 Gelareh Asayesh is the most vocal in articulating her oppressive infatuation
with ‘Western’ looks, describing herself “secretly in awe of anyone with blonde hair”
and even dreaming about looking as “beautiful.”887 In her mind, the image of the
Western body becomes not only the epitome of beauty and beauty’s power, but also
the “essence” of ethnic superiority, both of which she thinks she will never partake in:
I remember staring for a long time at Jaclyn Smith, pictured in her bikini in our latest issue of
Time magazine. I studied that pale, slender body as if it belonged to someone of a different
species, a species I longed to join. I can still see her in my mind’s eye, (…) her eyes looking into
mine with a mysterious smile as if to suggest: ‘I will never reveal to you my essence.’ But I
knew what it was, this essence. It was the essence of the West.888
Iranian-American authors thus describe their memories of a perceived inferiority in
color, of a color hierarchy. This mindset is carried along in migration, it lives on and
changes in diaspora: The self-westernizing desire to look ‘European,’ to pass as white,
results in their rejection of assigned ethnic/racial labels, specifically ‘Arab.’
4.1.2 Identifying the Iranian Body in America, and Being Identified
Iranian Americans’ background thus complicates their endeavor of identifying
their bodies, and of placing themselves within America and its different system of
meanings concerning body, color and ‘race.’ The diaspora’s newness in the USA and
880
Rachlin 117
Rachlin 119
882 Dumas Funny 187
883 Minu-Sepehr, location 1184
884 Varjavand 25
885 Asayesh 78
886 Bahrampour 45
887 Asayesh 81f.
888 Asayesh 82
881
168
the fraught situation of their arrival calls for them to carve out their niche in the
American landscape of races and ethnicities.
It is their bodies that give them away, as Firuzeh Dumas says: “In America, I
have an ‘ethnic’ face, a certain immigrant look that says, ‘I’m not Scandinavian.’”889
Even children with a ‘Western’ parent (and thus comparably light in complexion)
have to experience how they suddenly stand out as foreign once they come to the
USA, as Darznik recounts: “Nothing about me was right in America; nothing about
me ‘fit’ here. In Iran I’d been coddled and fussed over as a ‘two-veined child,’ but
here my ‘gold’ hair and ‘honey-colored eyes’ were just plain old ‘brown.’”890 Iranian
Americans’ recognizably ethnic bodies relentlessly prompt questions as to their
provenance, which many of the authors, for example Azadeh Moaveni, remember
trying to dodge: “For years my overriding objective in meeting new people was to
avoid mention of my Iranianness.”891
This leaves Iranian Americans in an
identificatory dilemma — their bodies require a label, yet their reluctance of being
associated with politics hostile and mostly incomprehensible to Americans deprives
them of the possibility to embrace their ethnic heritage. There is the need for an
ethnic-racial identity to take pride in, which can be advertised, in order to defend
oneself against external labeling — for example being mistaken for another ethnicity,
or being made the exotic object of the orientalist gaze. However, the establishment of
such a label, of a positive own identification — that is always based on and
influenced by representations and notions of the Iranian-American body — proves to
be tricky, as the authors remember their own and others’ avoidance of the politically
fraught term ‘Iranian,’ their hiding behind the lesser-known and orientalizing
‘Persian,’ and their self-mislabeling in order to pass for other ethnicities.
Many also seek comfort in ethnic-racial ambiguity — an ambiguity at the
center of many a self-construction, providing a space outside the familiar categories
such as the ‘big four’ 892 (‘black’, ‘brown’, ‘Asian’, and ‘white’), for example by
finding a home in a multiethnic environment, embracing their difference by trying to
blend into the heterogeneity of post-racial America. While some autobiographers
narrate that they have personally overcome the urge to pass under the radar or hide
behind such misleading or wrong labels, there are also other voices, increasingly
pleading for awareness and pride in being an American from Iran.
Bodies Being (Mis)Labeled
Autobiographers unanimously recount their early years in the USA as
characterized by self-consciousness and alienation. They remember having no place
889
Dumas Funny 37
Darznik 278, ‘two-veined’ (do-rageh) means ‘of dual heritage’
891 Moaveni Lipstick 9
892 Junn/Matto 5
890
169
and identity in the USA, and, as a result, how their bodies are defined, (mis)labeled
and exoticized against their will.
Asayesh, for instance, describes how in the new social environment the
members of her family are marked as outsiders immediately: “The other children
would see in a glance that my baba was different. His foreignness and vulnerability
were visible in his dark skin (I did not consider it dark until we moved to America), in
the uncertainty of his carriage.”893 It is skin color and body language that prompt
Americans to perceive her father and other Iranian Americans as different and not
belonging. Similarly, Bahrampour recounts having the impression that her parents do
not fit into America properly — yet for her, it is missing color that sets them apart and
makes them look vulnerable and powerless: “Sonny’s red face filled the window (…).
Beyond him stood Mama and Baba — and at that moment they looked pale, almost
translucent, as if the bright light (…) had leached something out of them. They
seemed small and far away.”894 Iranian-American bodies appear, in the memories of
writers, to have not fully arrived yet, to have the wrong color and posture. They are
narrated to have had no force and impact, and no niche in America’s ethnic landscape.
As Firuzeh Dumas puts it: “We were too new, and didn’t have a place yet.”895 As a
result, they are identified as outsiders. Placing, or defining, oneself thus is a crucial,
but also crucifying endeavor for Iranian Americans, a tedious and contested project
that also involves negotiating external attempts of being placed and defined.
One such definition from the outside is rather vague, but no less powerful in
its impact: The orientalist gaze of many an American onto Iranian-American bodies
objectifies them and renders their exact provenance irrelevant; merely their
‘exoticness’ is important. This exoticizing gaze onto the ‘oriental’ body defines it as
Other and relegates it to the margins of society, but also considers it an exotic
commodity. As Iranian Americans encounter such orientalism especially early after
their arrival in the USA,896 they have little means of defense: Rachlin, for instance,
remembers her female college principal making a veritable ethnic show of her,
forcing her to wear the full body chador, thus being defined according to another’s
imagination, Rachlin cannot help but feel taken aback, yet has no choice but to
comply:
‘I never wore one in Iran’ (…) ‘I still want to wear it for this occasion, to show a little of
your culture to us,’ she said, smiling cheerfully. To me the chador had come to mean a kind
of bondage, as religion had. It felt ridiculous to wear it in this American college. ‘Maybe I
can think of something else to wear,’ I mumbled. ‘No, no, the idea of the chador is
893 Asayesh
63
Bahrampour 4
895 Dumas Funny 26
896 Authors remember such orientalization of their bodies not only from their time in the USA, but also
from European countries, such as Darznik’s mother in Germany: “The surgeon (…) assured Lili that
black eyes and dark hair like hers were far more fetching — ‘more Orientalisch,’ he added, throwing
her a wink” (185).
894
170
excellent. I’ve seen pictures of women in Islamic countries wearing them. It fascinates
me.’ 897
While the principal is fascinated, Rachlin professes that making a chador feels like
cutting a shroud: The American exoticist gaze renders her and her body as unfree as
traditionalism in Iran had.898 What is more, even the few Americans who treat her
kindly or who she goes on dates with mostly see the exotic or “mystical”899 in her,
complimenting her on her “nice complexion and hair.”900 Rachlin cannot escape her
body and it is not until she arrives in multi-ethnic New York, where she does not
stand out as foreign any more, that she feels at ease in the United States.901
Tara Bahrampour’s situation is complicated by her mixed background. She
feels that she does not fit in anywhere entirely: She does not look American to
American eyes, but also not wholly Iranian: “My hair is too light, my eyelashes are
not thick enough, and my skin looks greenish next to their Middle Eastern apricot
glow.”902 As a result, she lacks a feeling of belonging in either world and sees herself
as set apart by her looks. The orientalist gaze, however, is also unrelenting in her
experience: “Americans look for the exotic in me.”903
Alienated by this external
definition of her body, and, by extension of her, in the society she considers home,
she works hard to change her appearance904 in order to assimilate as a teenager, and
relishes in the heterogeneity of Palo Alto once the family moves there.905
Through the American gaze on their bodies, Iranian Americans, especially
women like Rachlin and Bahrampour, are being constructed as Other on the basis of
their visibly ethnic bodies. They are furthermore reminded of their otherness, of not
being part of white American society, and alienated, making it impossible for them to
find a place and an American identity for themselves.
Yet Iranian Americans are not only being orientalized, they are also often
mistaken for other ethnicities and races, especially for Arabs. This, however, does not
sit well with Iranians considering their historical disregard, at times even
condescension, for Arabs. Firoozeh Dumas, for example, deplores “the belief of most
Westerners that all Middle Easterners look alike”906 and considers it necessary to
explain: “Iranians are an Indo-European people; we are not Arabs.”907 Darznik is
aghast when another Iranian girl is being discriminated against in her class: “[T]hey
called her a sand nigger. Nazi. Smelly A-rab.”908 And Bahrampour narrates how her
897
Rachlin 144
Rachlin 145
899 Rachlin 153ff.
900 Rachlin 165
901 Rachlin 180f.
902 Bahrampour 197
903 Bahrampour 197
904 Bahrampour 125f.
905 Bahrampour 158
906 Dumas Funny 21
907 Dumas Funny 33
908 Darznik 279
898
171
friend goes one step further in dissociating Iranians from Arabs by calling herself
Persian as “it sounds less terroristic.”909 This assertion of a ‘Persian identity’ (as I
have already described in chapter 2 “A Usable Past”) is a reaction to the Islamic
revolution and enables the diaspora to be proud and to distance themselves from
Islam. This becomes a particularly salient feature after the Gulf War, after the attack
on the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City Bombing,910 and then even more
post-9/11, as Iranians increasingly feel the need to distance themselves from
‘terrorist’ Arabs.911
Another label Iranian-American authors remember refusing is ‘Mexican.’ Very
status-sensitive, immigrant Iranians not only implement homegrown ethnic-racial
hierarchies, but also quickly adapt to American ones. As a result, the authors narrate
the diaspora’s fear of being mistaken for Mexicans. Dumas adopts a humorous
approach and remarks on the similarity of Iranians’ and Mexicans’ complexion:
“When we moved to California, we no longer looked foreign. With its large Mexican
population, Whittier could have passed as our hometown.”912
However, her
annoyance at incessantly being mislabeled becomes visible when she observes how
ignorant people around her are about ethnic-looking Americans’ origins, judging her
from her looks as Mexican, Peruvian and Alaskan,913 but rarely taking the time to ask,
listen or care. Azadeh Moaveni, too, writes about how important it is for Iranian
Americans not to be taken as Mexican:
My family had always insisted we weren’t really immigrants as such, but rather a special tribe
who had been temporarily displaced. Iranian women like Khaleh Farzi lived in daily fear of
being mistaken for a Mexican — a pedestrian immigrant rather than a tragic émigré. All my life
I had wanted to grow my hair long, but Khaleh Farzi always protested and bullied me into
cutting it short, a bob just above the chin. ‘Swingy and chic, not straggly and long, like a
Mexican,’ she would say. 914
Iranian-American bodies thus embody the risk of being mis-identified, but they are
also the tool with which to set oneself apart: Forming the body becomes, for Khaleh
Farzi and Moaveni herself, a means of defining Iranian-Americanness as different
from Mexicanness.
Self-Mislabeling
Iranian Americans’ disavowal of their ethnic heritage and ensuing selfmislabeling is a result of a set of circumstances surrounding their immigration: On the
one hand, the hostage crisis had rendered the term ‘Iranian’ a swearword to
Americans, as hatred against the Iranian hostage-takers quickly spread to those who
were fleeing the revolution themselves. Discrimination was ubiquitous during the
909
Bahrampour 192
which was initially attributed to Muslim fundamentalist terrorists
911 Bahrampour 192
912 Dumas Funny 37
913 Dumas Funny 38, 39
914 Moaveni Lipstick 26
910
172
1980s and especially young Iranian Americans remember suffering under the antiIranian atmosphere. The fear of being identified as Iranian has had its impact on the
diaspora’s interactions with Americans primarily during the time after the revolution
when discrimination soared and assimilation became a matter of survival. Iran Davar
Ardalan, for instance, recounts her desperate strategy of finding a place for herself in
America by disidentifying with her ethnicity — which happens to be mirrored in her
first name: “[I]n Boston I saw graffiti on the streets with the words ‘BOMB IRAN.’ I
felt out for place, lonely, and ashamed. I decided to drop my first name and use my
middle name, Davar.” 915 Similarly, Firoozeh Dumas remembers how she adopted an
American first name, and how, through her marriage to a Frenchman, her name was
suddenly not ‘ethnic’ anymore. As her skin is of a rather light color, she sheds her
Iranian identity and passes as an ‘American.’ This is portrayed as happening by
coincidence, not conscious design. She finally gets a job, but, as a result, encounters
the downside of the practice of self-mislabeling: American racism unfiltered.916
However, ‘self-mislabeling’ might just be another way to conceive of
assimilation, as Moaveni explains:
To be Iranian in the United States during the 1980s meant living perpetually in the shadow of the
hostage crisis. Many Iranians dealt with this by becoming the perfect immigrants: successful,
assimilated, with flawless, relaxed American English and cheerfully pro-American political
sentiments. 917
The pervasiveness of Iranian Americans’ need for assimilation often means that
Iranians are ignoring each other as Iranians in the American public, something which
some of the autobiographers, like Asayesh and Moaveni918 come to deplore. Asayesh,
for instance, remembers how she herself desperately tried to fit into America, her
feelings of ethnic inferiority and her “instinctive attempt to distance [her]self from
[her] own kind.”919 Gripped by a defiant pride of being Iranian, however, she narrates
her attempt of fighting against such a sense of inferiority in other Iranians920 and
regrets Iranian Americans’ insistence on ignoring fellow ethnics and staying invisible
as Iranian: “Iranians in America, like many immigrants, are a troubled group. (…)
The need to belong is a powerful thing. It pits those of us who are children of other
worlds against ourselves and one another.”921 For Asayesh, then, embracing one’s
ethnic heritage becomes crucial in claiming an identity as an Iranian American.
Another strategy in avoiding being identified with Iran is identifying with the
term ‘Persian.’ Linguistically derived from the province of Fars in Iran, ‘Persia’ was
the Greek name by which the empire was once made known across Europe. 922 While
915 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 144
Dumas Funny 65
917 Moaveni Lipstick 8
918 Cf. also Moaveni Lipstick 11
919 Asayesh 175
920 Asayesh 176f.
921 Asayesh 210
922 Clawson 11
916
173
the nation itself always has referred to itself as ‘Iran,’ 923 the name stuck in foreign
politics, until Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi asked the international community in
1935 to adopt the native term ‘Iran.’ The term ‘Persia,’ however, was never forgotten
entirely, but became associated with the historical Persian Empire and, more
importantly, with an orientalist idea of the quintessential — and imagined — East: the
Orient, complete with colorful spices and rugs, luxurious feasts and alluring harems.
It is this vague and unplaceable notion that autobiographers like Moaveni remember
hiding behind: “Growing up, I had no doubt that I was Persian. (…) It was the term
we insisted on using at the time, embarrassed by any association with Iran, the
modern country, the hostage-taking Death Star. Living a myth, a fantasy, made it
easier to be Iranian in America.”924 Moaveni in retrospective acknowledges ‘Persian’
to be “a fantasy,” not referring to reality. What is more, the vagueness of the idea also
has its pitfalls: “Saying I was Persian helped, but no one knew what or where Persia
was, exactly, and there would often be follow-up questions.”925 Neither does the
imaginary label seem to be a solution for Tara Bahrampour: Recalling her reunion
with a childhood friend, she is positively surprised that the friend no longer
completely disavows her Iranian heritage, but embraces it — and yet her alienation is
tangible when the friend endorses the term ‘Persian’ instead of ‘Iranian’ on the
grounds that “it sounds less terroristic, and (…) it was the original name of [the
Iranian] people.”926
Others decide to adopt even more extreme measures in the aftermath of the
revolution and attempt to pass for other ethnicities, as Dumas observes: “With each
passing day, palpable hatred grew among many Americans, hatred not just of the
hostage takers but of all Iranians. (…) Crimes against Iranians increased. (…) Many
Iranians suddenly became Turkish, Russian, or French.”927 The writer pokes fun at her
mother, who all of a sudden claims to be from “Torekey.”928 Similarly, Bahrampour's
friend changes her name and pretends to be Catholic Italian. The author herself,
however, distances herself from such a complete denial of her heritage: “I might not
tell people at school that I am Iranian. But this (…) is like a slap in the face.”929
So while authors admit to veiling their ethnic identity with the term ‘Persian,’
and while they explain the circumstances in which their fellow countrymen denied
being from Iran, many also make the point that they themselves stayed loyal to their
ethnic identity: Ardalan recognizes her American corporeality as a “disguise,”930
Dumas decides to go back to her Iranian first name, Asayesh laments that Iranians
ignore each other, and Moaveni and Bahrampour realize the hollowness of the term
923
Clawson 11
Moaveni Lipstick vii
925 Moaveni Lipstick 9
926 Bahrampour 192
927 Dumas Funny 117; 39
928 Dumas Funny 39
929 Bahrampour 133
930 Ardalan, Iran Davar 146, 282f.
924
174
‘Persian.’ What is more, although all of them describe the difficult situation of Iranian
Americans and thus seem to excuse others’ disavowal of their Iranian ethnicity, they
narrate themselves either to always have been loyal to their Iranianness, or to have
gone through a transformation towards ethnic loyalty.
Ethnic-Racial Ambiguity
Above mentioned ethnic loyalty notwithstanding, Iranian-American
autobiographers seek to fit their ethnic bodies into American society more
comfortably, to not be so visible as ‘Other.’ Although they perceive their bodies as
‘ethnic-looking’ — which is, to them, a challenging situation, as Americans’
perception of them as ethnic is unavoidable — they are so in an ambiguous way. “[T]
he question of race, in the American sense” forces itself onto Iranian-American
autobiographers’ minds time and again. As Moaveni asks herself, “Was I brown? All
the Iranians I knew seemed to consider themselves Europeans with a tan. Was I an
immigrant? My family had always insisted we weren’t really immigrants as such, but
rather a special tribe who had been temporarily displaced.” 931 The Iranian-American
body is resisting to be defined by existing parameters — it is neither white, nor black
or brown; it is in between exile and immigration, undecided and heterogeneous. Its
ambiguity bears heavily on its owners, and prompts Asayesh to exclaim, “I wish I
were completely vanilla.”932 Over time, however, this ambiguity becomes a source of
comfort to many autobiographers, as it offers them a chance to find a home in
heterogeneity. Jasmin Darznik, for example, remembers thinking, “If I could not be
ordinary (and already I knew I could not), then I would be invisible.”933 And yet,
there are also voices that demand more pride in Iranian ethnic identity, and more
visibility of Iranian-American bodies.
One way in which Iranian-American autobiographers narrate dealing with
their ambiguous ethnic appearance is settling down in a multicultural environment
such as California or New York. This is a conscious decision for ambiguity, for
seeking comfort and a home in heterogeneity. Afschineh Latifi, for example, at first
recounts her struggles of finding a niche in the system of races and ethnicities at their
American high school. Not fitting anywhere neatly, she and her sister have to make
do and float as a little island of no man’s land in between the large continental masses
of ‘established’ races and ethnicities. Yet there are alliances and power structures, and
Latifi specifically remembers the solidarity of colored skin, of outsiders:
The black kids at the school were definitely much nicer to us. (…) I think they were curious
about who we were. We weren’t really white, not in the Mayflower sense of the word, anyway,
931
Moaveni Lipstick 26
167
933 Darznik 278
932 Asayesh
175
but we certainly weren’t black, either. Whatever we were, we were outsiders just like them, and I
think they saw us as kindred spirits. 934
Latifi thus sees herself decidedly influenced by her skin color, placing them next to
(but also distinct from) African Americans as “outsiders.” Besides being non-white,
however, the Iranian-American body, its definition and location within the USA,
remains as yet uncertain in her narrative. It is not until she and her family move to
New York with its multitude of ethnicities that she can relax, as ethnic-racial identity
simply does not matter anymore. Although intimidated, she feels at home in New
York and its heterogeneity of bodies: “The streets were teeming with people in all
shapes, sizes, and colors. We were part of it. We looked like we belonged.“ 935 A brief
stint “in the lily-white American heartland,” where she had felt like “the worst kind of
interloper”936 cements her decision to make a home in ethnic heterogeneity: “I loved
the anonymity. Nobody stared at me. Nobody wondered who I was. Nobody sent
reporters along to do ‘human interest’ stories on the odd-looking girl from Iran. I was
free. I would make my way along the teeming sidewalks, thinking, Here I am, where I
belong.”937 Similarly, Bahrampour remembers her family’s move from Portland to
Palo Alto and how her “family is slowly starting to relax”938 in an atmosphere where
many people have foreign roots. Hakakian describes forgetting about her own
“outsiderness” in the company of black Americans,939 and Rachlin narrates of her
experience in New York, “I was at ease (…) in the whole city, with all its ethnic
variety and different languages. I didn’t stand out as ‘foreign’ in New York the way I
had in Lindengrove [Ohio].”940 The multi-ethnic, heterogeneous environments of
New York and California thus offer the enticing possibility of dissolving in a sea of
ethnic bodies.
A heterogeneous environment of a different kind is embraced by Azadeh
Moaveni. She describes how her deep confusion as a teenager over her identity was
alleviated by “ethnic ambiguity.”941 It is thus only when her mother finds them a
social environment that dispenses with the race/ethnicity question, a Hindu ashram,
that Moaveni has the feeling that she can relax: “The hours I spent crosslegged in
these candle-lit, incense-infused rooms were among the only moments I felt
comfortable in my own skin. (...) we were embraced with the squishy affection of
people fond of the exotic.”942 There, she recounts, her body ceased to ostracize her as
it did not need definition, and in its undefined otherness made her more attractive to
934
Latifi 139f.
Latifi 161
936 Latifi 255
937 Latifi 275f.
938 Bahrampour 159
939 Hakakian 16f.
940 Rachlin 181
941 Moaveni Lipstick 10
942 Moaveni Lipstick 10
935
176
Americans. Here, the exoticizing Western gaze is welcome, as it dispenses with the
constant need to define and explain the Iranian-American body’s ethnic appearance.
Bicultural Iran Davar Ardalan’s (dis)solution of the fraught ethnicity/race
question is even more abstract: She finds a home in a Sufism-inspired spiritual
oneness of humanity, where ethnicity and race become irrelevant. Already during her
first stay in the United States, she remembers having been touched by a poem that
expresses her disidentification with clear definitions, be they religious or ethnic:
What is to be done, O Muslims? For I do not recognize myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew nor Zoroastrian nor Muslim.
I am not of the East nor of the West nor of the land nor of the sea.
(…)
My place is the Placeless. My trace is the Traceless.
It is neither body nor soul for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.
I have put duality away. I have seen that the two worlds are one.
One I seek. One I know. One I see. One I call. 943
Her search for spiritual oneness mirrors her struggle to reconcile her American and
Iranian sides, and she eventually arrives at the conclusion that she is both, but that
both do not exhaust her. 944 It is the “Placeless” that she decides on, being neither “of
the East nor of the West,” and she finds a home in this ethnic ambiguity,
communicated via Sufi vocabulary.
Also bicultural Tara Bahrampour and Jasmin Darznik resist a clear definition.
Bahrampour narrates that already as a child she rejected the idea of being restricted to
one ethnic identity: “I know that no matter what anyone says, [my sister] is half
Iranian and half American, just like me and Ali. But people are always trying to make
us one thing or another.”945 Both think of themselves in terms of the Persian word dorageh. Darznik recounts, “I was doh-rageh, a two-veined child. Not ‘half’ or ‘mixed,’
as they say in America and many other countries besides, but double. Two. For
Iranians, such legacies are carried in the body, intimate as blood and unopposable as
destiny.”946 And Bahrampour explains the term as “two-veined, or two kinds of blood
in one vein” and attaches a telling image to it: “two bloods swirling together like a
two-colored lollipop.”947 Both “bloods” are distinct, yet only together, form the
whole, constantly changing and in flux. Bahrampour’s and Darznik’s self-definition
thus is grounded on two ethnicities, but constitutes something new which cannot be
pinpointed and stays ambiguous.
It is the conscious placing of their bodies in heterogeneous environments or
framing with ideas of ethnic ambiguity that eventually allows Iranian Americans to
feel at home in a post-racial USA. Through that, they are no longer forced to define
943 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 151
Iran Davar 296
945 Bahrampour 61
946 Darznik 257f.
947 Bahrampour 48
944 Ardalan,
177
themselves, an endeavor made virtually impossible by their bodies’ visible otherness.
The ambiguity grants them a resting place in the arduous process of becoming an
American from Iran. As Asayesh writes, it is distance that has allowed her to make
peace with her heritage. 948 She confesses that such uncertain ground is hard to
maneuver, but that it also provides her and others with agency and the possibility of
self-definition.949
Yet not all autobiographers are, or remain, content with such ethnic ambiguity.
Tired of mislabeling themselves, they call out for making society aware of Iranian
Americans, and wish for more ethnic pride. Azadeh Moaveni, for instance, professes
to have envied a Mexican student she used to tutor: “[A]wareness and pride replaced
ambivalence and shame (…). The notion of finding power in your otherness (…) was
incredibly compelling.”950 Asayesh, too, seems to suggest the necessity of — at least
sometimes — overcoming the distance to one’s ethnic heritage when she remembers
an aging relative’s visit: “Khaleh Farah’s company keeps me from blending into the
crowd; it robs me of the anonymity it took me so long to achieve in the West. I step
closer and take her hand into mine.”951 Asayesh is literally taking her ethnic identity
by the hand, temporarily accepting it into her life. It is a hard step, but she describes
finding it a rewarding effort. And so does Tara Bahrampour: “I am (…) proud to have
been identified as an Iranian, to be sharing something with the worried-looking
Americanized Iranians.”952
Young autobiographers like Moaveni, Asayesh and
Bahrampour then narrate that letting oneself be identified as Iranian is not easy on
them, but that they end up being proud of being an American from Iran, having
finally carved out a niche for their foreign-looking bodies in the U.S.
4.2 Revealing Clothes — Inscriptions of the Iranian-American Female Body
Besides the appearance of the body itself, the way it is inscribed significantly
interacts with self-identification. Elizabeth Grosz argues with Alphonso Lingis that
the body is socially and culturally inscribed by (in)voluntary procedures, habits,
lifestyles and behaviors. 953 Especially salient to Iranian-American autobiographers
seems to be inscription through dress, which may be a result of perceived differences
of Iranian and American styles of clothing. However, this importance of dress is
surely also a function of their ethnicity and the orientalism that it is often met with in
the everyday lives of Iranian Americans, but also by audiences and publishers. After
all, the epitome of the exotic Oriental might be the veiled ‘Eastern’ woman.
Therefore, I want to ask with Judith Butler, “[h]ow has the ‘Orient’ been figured as
948 Asayesh
214
215
950 Moaveni Lipstick 27
951 Asayesh 124
952 Bahrampour 135
953 Grosz 142
949 Asayesh
178
the veiled feminine?”954 And so it is in particular Iranian-American women’s bodies,
faced with the thorny issue of hejab (the traditional rules of keeping certain parts of
the body clothed) that will be important in this chapter.
It is an overarching topic for the older generations to remember the clash of
Iranian traditionalism and European influence in the Iran of their childhoods through
images of dressed bodies — hejab vs. ‘modern dress.’ They try to explain the
conflicted cultural politics of Iran before and during the revolution and negotiate the
impact of these memories in their American lives. However, with the revolution,
hejab becomes mandatory and the authors’ attitudes towards it play out in different
ways: On the one hand, some express negative feelings regarding hejab, declare it to
be oppressive and narrate how free they feel without it in the USA. While these are
probably not fabrications, such life writing caters to orientalist and neoliberal
audiences, a constellation conducive to self-victimization as described in chapter 1.
On the other hand, writers especially of the younger generations attempt more
nuanced treatments of the topic, striving to remain unbiased towards hejab in their
memories and to incorporate Iranian traditional dress and what it stands for into their
self-constructions. Besides the focus on hejab, Iranian-American autobiographers also
try to capture their initial struggle with American clothing, which comes to stand for
their more general efforts of becoming ‘American,’ of fitting in. What is more, those
who go on return journeys describe the pain of coming back to Iran dressed as a
stranger, navigating the tricky waters of dress and identification to arrive at new
shores.
4.2.1 Iranian Politics of Hejab
Vilifying Hejab: The First Generation
One of the writers most sensitive towards the clash of traditional and
European dress in her pre-revolution childhood is Nahid Rachlin. Having grown up
with her working-class aunt Maryam, her autobiography starts with a loving
description of Maryam performing her prayer rituals, dressed in a chador. After
involuntarily returning to her middle-class family at age nine, she compares their
modern dress and lacking affection to her beloved foster mother.955 She also notes her
sudden self-consciousness about her clothing, extending its meaning to a
disidentification with the European-influenced upper classes: “Suddenly my dress,
made by the seamstress, seemed crude. I felt that I did not belong with these
people.” 956 With time, she gets used to the new style, but her retrospective opinion is
very critical, explaining that the European influence had done away with hejab, but
had remained at the surface, leaving intact an age-old traditionalism separating the
954
Butler 1993:117
Rachlin 8
956 Rachlin 26f.
955
179
genders. 957 Still, she and her sister are hoping for a life that they determine
themselves and in which they can follow their dreams. Especially her sister Pari is
infatuated with American movie stars and wants to pursue acting herself, something
neither their father nor Pari’s future husband will allow her to do. Pari is a sort of alter
ego to Rachlin, an alternative self that later in the book can not leave Iran — Rachlin
herself can — but dies in uncertain circumstances within Iran’s oppressive patriarchy.
Rachlin highlights the tragedy of Pari’s fate by depicting her dressed as and looking
like an American star, as if to point out the life she deserved: “Pari was wearing a
white dress with yellow and red flowers on it, and a white ribbon held her hair back.
It struck me that she looked like a younger version of the actress in the poster, the
same lively and expressive face.”958 However, Rachlin stresses that traditionalism
imposes itself incessantly, and after the revolution even the small gains for women’s
freedom that were made under the monarchy are set back: “Now all women were
required to wear chadors.”959 While hejab regulations are soon loosened and the full
chador is no longer mandatory, Rachlin describes traditionalist dress to hide women’s
bodily individuality and criticizes the Islamic regime’s oppressive politics of
imposing hejab regulations.960
In Rachlin’s memories, Iran’s struggle between
traditionalism and European-oriented modernization plays out especially through
dress. Juxtaposing her sister’s and her own life stories, Rachlin shows how the
seemingly freer atmosphere encourages women to pursue their dreams.
Traditionalism, however, overshadows women’s lives, and while Rachlin can flee to
the USA to live — and dress — freely, it ultimately crushes her sister, as it crushes
many other women. The imposing of hejab becomes a symbol of oppression.
Farideh Goldin describes hejab in similar terms. In her narrative, her wearing
hejab results in others’ moral condemnation of her revealed female body, as can be
seen when she and her friend walking about in European-style clothes are called
prostitutes,961 or when an American teenager in a short skirt is being sworn at.962
Goldin feels threatened as a Jew by Islamic hejab: already in the USA, she suffers
from nightmares involving chador-clad women attacking her with daggers and calling
her “filth.”963 The sexist traditionalism she remembers is directed at women’s bodies,
considering them to be immoral if they are too visible.
Similar to Rachlin and Goldin, Jewish Roya Hakakian narrates the cultural
schizophrenia of Muslim families during her pre-revolution childhood, when mothers
were wearing chador and daughters miniskirts.964 And it is not only dress, but also
more durable Europe-oriented fashions that seem incongruent with Iranian bodies:
957
Rachlin 32
Rachlin 44
959 Rachlin 238
960 Rachlin 254
961 Goldin 168
962 Goldin 184
963 Goldin 191
964 Hakakian 55
958
180
“From plastic surgery, Mrs. Ferdows had emerged with the youthful, upturned
American nose she had always dreamed of. Except that her perfect American nose no
longer fit her olive, often sullen Iranian face.”965 In a way then, Hakakian seems to
say, Iranians need to become more self-confident, less imitating of European bodies.
Yet the revolution, grounded to a large part on sentiments like these, goes awry, and
traditionalism experiences a renaissance. It had always loomed in the background,
threatening to subdue the female body again, Hakakian notes, as the general attitude
is unchanged since times immemorial: “[A] woman’s destiny was to suffer and
sacrifice.”966 Unlike Rachlin, she is Jewish, and finds a refuge from revolutionary
Iran and mandatory hejab at the Jewish Iranian Students Organization, where girls
can take off their scarves and sit next to boys.967 Her opinion of the head scarf is not
moderated by loving childhood memories, like Rachlin’s. Instead, she regards hejab
as a form of oppression of female bodies against which one has to stand up: “My
scarf had fallen to my shoulders, and for the first time in months, the wind was
blowing through my hair. That sweaty, matted web, which lay under the scarf for
most of my waking hours, still had life, and bounced.”968
What makes Hakakian’s portrayal of female Iranian lives problematic,
however, is some of its imagery and its lacking complexity regarding the topic of
hejab that caters all too well to neo-liberal, neo-orientalist American audiences: “We
were in exile in our own city. We were girls, living in a female ghetto. Instead of
yellow armbands, we wore the sign of our inferiority on our heads.”969 Dress here
becomes not only the sign for traditionalism and female oppression, it also plays on
the ‘Western’ morbid fascination with and totalizing sentencing of hejab. While
Rachlin does allow for positive connotations of the chador, Hakakian’s narration has
hardly any place for such shades of meaning. Hejab to her symbolizes the end of
female individuality,970 whereas the shedding of dress is described as a sublime
uncovering of female beauty:
Z and I had thought our reedy limbs were destined to become the varicose, stretch-marked limbs
of our mothers. We had never seen or imagined a third female stage, until Bibi’s hands circled
around her back and undid her soaking bra, then reached down the elastic waist of her panties
over her buttocks, thighs, knees, shins, till they dropped to the floor and she stepped out of them,
perfectly nude. Bibi was that sublime possibility of which no one had ever spoken. 971
Azar Nafisi contrasts hejab and female individuality in the same stark colors. In her
narrative, her students only start to have identifiable bodies once they take off their
imposed clothing:
965
Hakakian 173
Hakakian 68
967 Hakakian 182
968 Hakakian 194
969 Hakakian 212
970 Hakakian 221f.
971 Hakakian 102
966
181
I could not get over the shock of seeing them shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into
color. When my students came into that room, they took off more than their scarves and robes.
Gradually, each one gained an outline and a shape, becoming her own inimitable self. 972
The body, its “color,” its “outline and shape,” is what makes a person an individual to
Nafisi. She unilaterally declares mandatory hejab to render women’s bodies and
identities invisible, a point of view she underscores by recounting her game of
pretending to disappear when wearing the robe and veil.973 As Nafisi narrates her own
experience as if it represented all Iranian women’s, her ‘autobiography’ is —
consciously or not — water on the mills of neo-liberal American audiences and, like
Hakakian and Goldin, she leaves no place for a more complex interpretation of hejab.
These authors thus position themselves not only as staunch opposers of the Islamic
government and its body politics, but also, not unlike early 20th-century immigrant
autobiographers such as Mary Antin, as eager subscribers to an American view of
(bodily) individuality. These authors try to express their memories of being oppressed
and imprisoned; but as life writing tends to mirror present rather than past attitudes
towards past events, 974 their autobiographies have to be read with the authors’ current
political and financial interests in mind. The desires of the literary market and those
of publishers influence ethnic autobiographers as much as fiction writers.
Complicating Hejab: The Younger Generations
Iranian-American autobiographers of the younger generations, born in
America or having left early during the revolution, seem to be able to ‘afford’ a
greater complexity regarding the subject of hejab. Maybe it is their increased distance
from revolutionary Iran and from the jarring experiences that left their traces in the
life writings of authors of the older generations, or their questioning of how ‘Iranian’
they are, that prompts them to seek no easy answers regarding the Islamic dress code
— while they are, of course, nevertheless just as influenced by the literary market as
earlier autobiographers.
When Azadeh Moaveni recounts her return journey, she portrays a country
that has changed visibly from the Iran that the older generations describe, a country
where hejab is still enforced, but not as strictly anymore. While Moaveni is aware of
the not-too-distant past,975 and although she remembers her aunt reminding her that
“it’s just a prettier cage,”976 she confesses to be happy about the change. As the title of
her book Lipstick Jihad indicates, she considers women’s clothing and their pushing
the limits of hejab regulations a struggle against the Islamic regime through fashion, a
struggle through subverting imposed bodily inscriptions of dress and makeup: “[T]he
972
Nafisi Reading 6
Nafisi Reading 167f.
974 Cf. e.g. Conway, Martin A. Autobiographical Memory: An Introduction. Bristol, PA: Open UP, 1990.
12.
975 Moaveni Lipstick 43; roopoosh is a coat, worn in public to conceal a woman’s figure
976 Moaveni Lipstick 43
973
182
fashion spring was like a silent coup. Girls dressed in every color imaginable — veils
of bright emerald, violet, buttercup — and in short, coat-like tunics called manteaus
that hugged their curves, Capri pants that exposed long stretches of calf, pedicured
toes in delicate sandals.”977
While Moaveni regards this as progress and supports women’s struggle of
freeing themselves from the oppressive dress code, she also observes Iranians’
obsession with the topic of sex, which she thinks to be a direct result of hejab: While
women had been forced to hide their bodies and the genders were separated in order
to make the subject unmentionable, “[t]he constant exposure to covered flesh (…)
brought to mind, well, flesh.”978 Bahrampour, also on a return journey, similarly notes
this sexualized atmosphere.979 Moaveni is thoroughly alienated by this Iranian culture
that is so focused on the body and on its sexuality, but is also restricting it severely.
This becomes most apparent when she voices her desperation about regularly being
regarded as a loose girl because she was born in America980 — where, in the Iranian
imagination, sexuality is unrestricted by both cultural standards and dress. Similarly,
she feels dissociated when observing Iranian teenage girls taking American TV to
represent reality: “They assumed, with a touching naiveté, (…) that girls in the United
States wore tight, revealing clothes at all times. Thus convinced, they would show up
at any social occasion — yearning to feel worldly — in wildly inappropriate
clothes.”981 Moaveni, although also not a fan of hejab, cannot identify with this
fascination with the West, and eagerly seeks an ally in her American-born cousin,
becoming aware of how her attitudes towards clothing mark her as American.
Moaveni is also aware of how in Iran, the regime’s gaze is internalized by the
populace and turned in to a self-policing of dress. She specifically describes a walk
during which her aunt let her scarf slide off — in public: “I couldn’t concentrate on a
word she was saying. Her bare head might as well have been a bare breast. The effect
would have been the same.” Consciously trying to not react like an ‘Iranian,’ Moaveni
decides not to interfere.982 She also makes clear that ultimately she would like to see
the scarf gone, but does not vilify it like earlier autobiographers. Moaveni’s more
complex interpretation thus grants Iranian women agency in subverting the clothes
that mean to oppress them. With the distance of a second-generation Iranian
American, she recognizes Iranian women’s struggle, but does not regard her identity
to be endangered by hejab.
Tara Bahrampour, like Moaveni, is initially surprised by how Iranian women
have pushed the boundaries of permissible fashion983 and how expertly they flout the
977
Moaveni Lipstick 70
Moaveni Lipstick 71
979 Bahrampour 268
980 Moaveni Lipstick 71
981 Moaveni Lipstick 81
982 Moaveni Lipstick 84
983 Bahrampour 219
978
183
regulations.984 Yet after these initial observations, she hardly ever mentions hejab —
this omission already sets her apart from writers like Nafisi. It is only when she leaves
Iran that it becomes apparent that her relationship with the head scarf is rather
positive. While she has internalized the dress code, is annoyed at her self-policing and
at first relieved to be able to shed the scarf, it also stands for Iran as home:
Flying out of Iran, I had sat down in my airplane seat with other Iranians and feyly pushed down
my scarf (…). But at the end of my journey, whizzing in a taxicab down a slick Belgian
highway, I grabbed at the scarf and pulled it back up, wanting it to cover me and take me back
again. I held it to my face and inhaled, trying to catch a last, lingering breath of Iran. (…) Going
through the motions [of putting it on] made me feel better, as if I was still participating in the life
I’d left behind; and for a few nights, when I was missing Iran, I would wear the scarf alone in
the bedroom like a secret vice. 985
With this confession, Bahrampour complicates her readers’ understanding of hejab —
no longer is it portrayed merely as a tool of oppression, as obfuscating female
individuality, but it can take on positive connotations of well-known routines, of a
protective everyday life, and ultimately, of home. As such, Moaveni and Bahrampour
become examples of how the younger generations of Iranian Americans expand their
identifications to include more complex interpretations of hejab.
4.2.2 Across-Dressing
In order to fit in better, clothes are changed to alter one’s appearance quickly.
However, this involves the risk of a split between external and internal ‘identity,’ a
lacking synchronicity of self-change. The constructed exterior, not backed up by an
accompanying feeling of identity, is unstable and incomplete, prone to crack and
always threatening to reveal the ‘sham.’ This is an issue for authors between Iran and
America in two ways: when immigrating into the USA and on return journeys to the
home country.
Dressing American and the Question of Loyalty
Iranian-American autobiographers remember feeling uneasy with American
clothing, unsure of what to wear exactly, and struggling to negotiate inherited Iranian
ideas of what is proper. They narrate being embarrassed by, trying to distance
themselves from or to change other Iranians in America who are slower to adapt in
their dressing habits. They profess feelings of disloyalty to their Iranian ‘identity’ or
engage in a conscious showcasing of such loyalty — both versions underline how
unstable the grounds of bodily appearance are on which subjects in between cultures
attempt to build their identity.
Tara Bahrampour, shuttling between Iran and America all through her
childhood, is mesmerized by American girls and their looks, and tries to emulate their
984
985
Bahrampour 225
Bahrampour 348
184
style. 986 Young Bahrampour is still sheltered by her naiveté, and while she does not
realize the transparency of her disguise then, as a teenager at an American high school
her awareness of the precariousness of the construction is all too apparent when she
distances herself from another Iranian girl. 987 After all, changing one’s appearance
does not mean becoming American, as also Afschineh Latifi has to realize: “I was
sure my life would change overnight. But of course life didn’t change. I was still that
weird girl from Iran.” 988
The instability of ‘dressing American’ is more obvious in these authors’
writings when they are scrutinizing others, and so they remember their sadness and
embarrassment when observing especially their family members. Gelareh Asayesh,
for instance, notes how her father’s clothes are “indefinably different from what
Americans wore”989 and Latifi has to first laugh and then cry when she watches her
sister dress up as a cheerleader, trying too hard to lead an American life. 990 As a
result, there is the wish to change others, as if through that, one could cement one’s
own ‘Americanness.’ The Latifi sisters buy clothes for their mother and brother, who
are coming from Iran to join them: “This was all designed to spare our family any
sartorial ridicule. We were going to give them the benefit of our vast experience and
turn them into Americans right from the very first day so that they wouldn’t
embarrass themselves.”991 They mean well with their family, trying to ease the
difficulty of fitting in. But Latifi’s narrative also seems to reveal that she wanted to
erase their own mistakes, and to shield themselves from further embarrassment.
However, they have to face that even a superficial transition needs time, as it is
subject to what one feels comfortable in. Here, Grosz’ Möbius strip of the body’s
internal and external identity folds back on itself, as their mother’s sensitivities to
what is proper female dress will not allow her to put on the dresses that they have
bought for her: “She wasn’t ready to be that American.”992 When met with resistance,
the endeavor to change others can lead to feelings of disloyalty. After having cut her
hair and acquired new clothes, Bahrampour goes to work on her brother. When he
rejects her suggestions, she suddenly feels silly: “I hope he doesn’t think I have
changed. I haven’t.”993 Bahrampour recounts her bad conscience and with that
narrates her changing self, a self that has to straddle the cleft between past and
present, between old and new culture.
Afschineh Latifi reacts quite differently, constructing herself and her sister to
negotiate the clash between American and Iranian dress codes with an unchanging
986
Bahrampour 60
Bahrampour 141
988 Latifi 158
989 Asayesh 63
990 Latifi 158
991 Latifi 219f.
992 Latifi 221
993 Bahrampour 125f.
987
185
loyalty to an Iranian identity. As Janet Bauer also argues,994 the Iranian diaspora has
imported traditional ideas of proper clothing — especially in the case of women who,
with their dress and demeanor, signify purity of the group’s identity. Latifi remembers
the moral judgment of the Iranian diaspora at her attempt to dress American: “‘What
are you? A cheap girl? A loose girl?’ It would be years before I had the courage to try
again.”995 In her narrative, she henceforth stresses how unfashionable she and her
sister were — but how this is judged as positive by the Iranian community, who tell
their mother, “‘You have two such nice, traditional girls, not wild like some of these
other creatures.’”996 It is only with the arrival of the mother, and through her doing,
that Latifi remembers herself and her sister to be changed into fashionable American
girls: “[E]very day [Mom] seemed more determined to transform us. She made us get
rid of the long sleeves and the long skirts. She bought us heels. She bought us our
first pantyhose. (…) Suddenly, Afsaneh and I were looking pretty hot.”997 It is not
without pride that Latifi remarks on their old-school Persian manners, while
distancing herself from Iranian ‘party’ girls: “They dressed too trashy!”998 However,
as we have seen, Latifi does not reject Western dress as such. Rather, she is
constructing herself as a traditional girl, unable to shed her Iranian identity — only
allowing herself to dress and become American (within limits!) with her mother’s
help and permission. It is the authority of the elder that makes the presence of
Western influence on her body acceptable.
Dressing oneself or others in American clothes is always bound up with the
question of loyalty. While some autobiographers recount how they struggle to
negotiate their desire to fit in, Latifi constructs herself as a ‘good’ Iranian girl, loyal in
dress and identity.
Coming Back to Iran, (Dressed as) a Stranger
Also on return journeys, Iranian Americans are struggling with clothing their
bodies ‘properly.’ Not used to, or never having faced, Iranian dress codes, they feel
insecure or ambiguous about hejab. But they are also suddenly confronted with the
discovery that they adorn and clothe their bodies differently to ‘Iranian’ Iranians. As a
result, these authors start to doubt their own Iranianness and have to accept their
being different.
Especially arriving in and getting used to living in Iran seems to be hard on
returnees, as they are very insecure about how to dress the right way in the
comparably restrictive atmosphere of the Islamic Republic. Still on the plane,
994
Bauer, Janet. “Corrupted Alterities: Body Politics in the Time of the Iranian Diaspora.” In Dirt,
Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface. Ed. by Adeline Masquelier.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2005. 233-254.
995 Latifi 169
996 Latifi 225
997 Latifi 229
998 Latifi 241
186
Bahrampour is particularly worried about her head scarf, a piece of cloth with which
she had hoped to ‘pass’ for an Iranian:
If I land in Tehran with this cloth on my head — obviously not a real scarf — the authorities
might pounce on me: ‘An impostor!’ they would shout. ‘She clearly does not cover her head in
her daily life. And now she wants to enter the Islamic Republic with little strings hanging off her
hejab! She probably eats pork! She probably doesn’t even fast! And just ask her if she knows
how to pray!’ 999
The raw fabric becomes symbol of her own Iranianness: raw and not ‘real,’ the same
idea, but not the same style. And indeed, Bahrampour remembers with embarrassment
how none of the other women’s scarves are as big and bulky as hers, but sheer and
colorful, marking her as a cultural outsider. Azadeh Moaveni remembers similar
estrangement, remarking with self-irony on her early days back in Iran: “I was like a
running sitcom played for their amusement, Azadeh in Ayatollahland: Watch her
accidentally insult powerful clerics! See her try to wear a beret instead of a veil!”1000
Her relatives laugh about her Americanness, her lacking knowledge of how to act and
what to wear. As a result, she becomes all too aware of her otherness.
Iranian-American autobiographers recount having a hard time getting used to
the difference in dress codes, and nowhere is this more palpable as in the realm of
religiously inspired regulations of clothing. Gelareh Asayesh narrates her frustration
and alienation when she has failed to dress properly for a religious festival: “As I
walked up the steps into the house, guilt turned into resentment. Why should
something so trivial as the color of my shirt matter? I hated the rigidity of my
religion, its messages of shame and blame.”1001 Her feelings are ambiguous, however,
as she also makes an effort to understand conservative attitudes.1002 Still, she finds
comfort in her American clothes while watching a religious ritual:
I am suddenly very much aware of the cotton of my favorite shirt, a striped button-down from
the Limited, against my skin. The jeans hugging my hips seem to be a symbol of the close
embrace of the West. This physical reminder of my connection with another world reassures me,
providing a counterpoint to the ritual unfolding before my eyes. 1003
Asayesh appreciates her un-Iranian clothes as they give her something to hold on to in
order to remember her Americanness and not get lost in the religious ritual.
But it is not only in public (often enough religious) situations that IranianAmerican women become aware of the difference in their looks. In private homes
they become aware of how even without hejab, their sensitivities regarding dress and
makeup are diametrically opposed to Iranian women’s. Moaveni, for instance, writes:
“Since I was neither looking for a husband nor habituated to overcompensating for
the veil with too much makeup, I usually went about with what I called a natural look
999
Bahrampour 210
Moaveni Lipstick 44
1001 Asayesh 74
1002 Asayesh 148
1003 Asayesh 135
1000
187
and Mira called self-neglect.” 1004 Not all of the autobiographers are as self-confident
as she is: Bahrampour sees herself as “washed out”1005 and even feels like a child
again. While she is all too aware that this marks her as an American and an outsider in
Iran, she cannot get used to wearing more make up and to dressing up. Likewise,
Moaveni describes how she accepts her difference — changing her appearance would
only be pretension: “I could sit there pretending to be as Iranian as the heavily
madeup girl next to me, but the tapes would whir on, urging me to keep running, keep
eating tofu, keep washing my fruit sixteen times to rinse off the pesticide.”1006
To summarize, clothes and makeup should be seen as a non-permanent
inscription of the body, its link to self-identification more tenuous than for example
skin color. In spite of this, dress is often used to make the body fit in — a new
cultural environment, for example, such as the USA and Iran in the transnational lives
of Iranian Americans. Trying to adapt in America, Iranians are confronted with
‘Western’ style, something that most try to subscribe to, but have to discover that this
does not make them American. Others distance themselves from it, fashioning
themselves non-compromised Iranians. Returning to Iran, Iranian Americans have to
face that they are — even externally — outsiders in a culture they had thought
themselves to be a part of, and construct themselves to accept their Americanness.
4.3 Bodies in Danger? — The Female Body, Sexuality, and the Public
Zaher/baten is an opposition of terms that can be translated with ‘outside/
inside,’ or ‘public/private,’ yet is very different in denotation at the same time. While I
will delve deeper into the subject in chapter 5, also Iranian-American bodies are
significantly influenced by their public and, respectively, private surroundings,
especially as these writers react to the fundamental differences between American
ideas of public/private and Iranian approaches. Therefore, I will include the concept
of zaher/baten here, insofar as it applies to the autobiographers’ negotiation of
corporeality in between Iran and America.
The writers describe Iranian cultures as strictly separating public and private
in both architecture and social relations, much more so than the American cultures
that they perceive and depict to be less differentiating. The Iranian private realm is
fiercely shielded from the outside, which is perceived to be threatening, insecure and
dangerous. The watchful and judgmental gaze of society has to be countered by
keeping up appearances, by pretension. What is more, the body — especially the
female body — is considered to be private and has to be hidden and ‘protected’ from
the public. As a result, sexuality and romance are seen as absolutely private and are
frequently described as having no place in traditional matchmaking.
1004
Moaveni Lipstick 187
Bahrampour 278
1006 Moaveni Lipstick 153
1005
188
The public and publicly acceptable behavior thus shape the body and its
movements. The autobiographers construct the distinction of public and private as
completely different in Iran and the USA. They narrate conflicting feelings regarding
the traditional Iranian strict separation of spheres: Men’s sexuality is said to be
lurking in the unknown space outside the family sphere, and so women’s behavior is
policed in order to prevent them from attracting undue attention. The Iranian inside
sphere is thus perceived as protective or stifling at different times, the American
outside sphere as threatening or freeing. The experiences and eventual identifications
of the immigrating first and returning second generations differ considerably, which is
why I will look at them separately.
The first generation describes and criticizes the restrictive rules of how to
dress and move especially a female body in the Iran of their childhood, and they
construct the USA as a place which to them promised freedom. Some authors seem to
exaggerate the imagery of restricted, mistreated and suffering female body for their
criticism of the IRI. They distance themselves from Iranian traditionalist conventions
of corporeality, yet once in America, they also cannot identify with the sexual
freedoms there and despair of the persistence of the conventions of corporeality that
they grew up with.
The second generation of female writers narrates their negotiations of
American and Iranian body concepts, of how their diasporic parents thought they
should behave and how this stood in contrast with what is considered acceptable in
American society. They remember wanting to please both sides at once, torn between
Iranian and American ideas of corporeality. Returning to Iran, they expect to fit in
effortlessly, but instead, they are confronted with how different their body concepts
are. As a result, they perceive themselves to be Americanized.
4.3.1 The First Generation
“[L]ike a wind-up doll” 1007 — Remembering Oppression of the Female Body
On the one hand, first-generation autobiographers note as positive how
traditional Islamic architecture shields especially the female body, allowing women to
go about the house and courtyard unveiled,1008 how walls serve to shelter those
inside1009 and give them “private space.”1010 The writers thus seem to fondly
remember and miss the enveloping security that the walled in Iranian home provides,
a space where their bodies were safe from harm and intruding gazes. 1011 In
comparison, Western style architecture seems to them unsettling in its openness, as
1007
Rachlin 160
Rachlin 4, Asayesh 69
1009 Asayesh 40
1010 Goldin 124
1011 This aspect connects to nostalgic feelings about Iranian childhood gardens, which I describe in
chapter 7.
1008
189
both Rachlin observes in Iran1012 and Asayesh upon moving to the USA: “Afsaneh
and I were outraged at the absence of walls — ‘What do you mean, anybody can walk
across our lawn?’”1013 The separation of the private sphere from the public ensures to
them not only bodily safety, but also a public sphere that is acceptable to Iranian ideas
of propriety.
On the other hand, narrating their childhoods, first-generation female
autobiographers often make a point of how oppressed they perceived female
corporeal existence in Iran, describing how girls and women were expected to dress
and move their bodies. According to these writers, many ways of self-expression like
running, skipping, laughing or looking at men were off-limits to women, restricting
female bodies, as Nahid Rachlin and Farideh Goldin explain. 1014 Women were also
assigned their separate public spaces, away from men.1015 What is more, many kinds
of female desires are portrayed to be oppressed because of traditionalist moralism:
Charges of promiscuity are applied to women who do not conform to the established
norms of the public sphere, whether they want to succeed in the arts, get a divorce or
just want to show their beauty.1016 The ideal woman shows neither her body, nor her
voice and thus opinion. Even looking elders in the eye is considered recalcitrance and
is frowned upon.1017 Goldin returns to Iran after a year of freedom in the USA and
remembers falling back into old habits she detests: “I had become soft-spoken, never
disagreeing, and even covered my mouth with the palm of my hand if I laughed to
suffocate its sound, to be lady-like.”1018 The public silence that is imposed on women,
Roya Hakakian narrates, has its effect on the female bodily self: “The words that
described a model woman were charged with muted stillness. (…) Quietness was
celebrated. And I began to keep so many cries of joy inside, I feared for my
chest.” 1019 Conforming to these societal restraints on the female body signifies purity
of body and mind. Considered the ultimate virtue for women, Hakakian explains, 1020
it is also a virtue that is easily lost by straying from the narrow path of accepted
female corporeality: “Once a woman came in close proximity to a man, she already
knew too much and could corrupt the innocent virgins.”1021
Goldin and Hakakian, two Jewish autobiographers, describe suffering to be
the foremost paradigm of an Iranian woman’s life. Getting her first period and thus
entering womanhood, Goldin remembers her mother telling her that she will be
suffering, that it is women’s lot.1022 Women’s menses provide them with some much1012
Rachlin 9
62
1014 Rachlin 58, Goldin 52, 82, 88, 121
1015 Rachlin 238
1016 Rachlin 70,159, 219; Goldin 83
1017 Goldin 90
1018 Goldin 180
1019 Hakakian 76
1020 Hakakian 80
1021 Goldin 62
1022 Goldin 5
1013 Asayesh
190
needed space of their own; however, they are also considered impure, even filthy
during that time, and are momentarily outcast from public society.1023 Hakakian
narrates being outraged by society’s double standards concerning women’s blood:
Blood, the blood that flowing out of a sheep’s body was so holy was unclean flowing out of my
body? Why? What made one clean and the other…bad? Was it ‘bad’ she had in mind, but called
it ‘filthy’ on the telephone? Filthy? Me? I had seen a protester, clubbed in the face, be raised
upon the arms of men, his bloodied shirt instantly a talisman. I had seen the group of mourners,
their heads wrapped in white bandannas, slap their chests, stand in a circle, and with chains
flagellate themselves, with daggers beat their heads until blood gushed forth. No matter how
young or old, that bleeding head was venerated. And not my blood? 1024
While Hakakian tries to expose Iranian society’s traditionalism as the culprit of
women’s oppression, Goldin seems to stress that it is also women who perpetuate
traditionalism. Although initially glad to join what she thinks will be a sisterhood of
women, Goldin soon comes to the conclusion that there is no community at all, that
women do nothing to alleviate their situation, but make it worse for each other by
supporting and carrying on society’s oppression of women. Her disillusionment with
having a female body in Iran is expressed most poignantly when Goldin remembers
her strained relationship with her mother: “I wished I could free myself from the
blood that linked me to my mother, for she was the carrier of my oppression.”1025
Blood here becomes a symbol of female suffering under traditionalism, a symbol of
the pain it inflicts on women every month, marking them as female and thus ‘Other’
in a society the autobiographers portray as misogynistic — a condition that is
transferred from mother to daughter through her genes, linking their bodies in a blood
line.
Suffering also looms large in Hakakian’s descriptions of her childhood. As she
writes, growing up in Iran, it had always been clear to her that being a woman meant
primarily being a mother, and thus living with bodily pain and sacrifice:
We were the (…) women-to-be. (…) The women before us were Grandmother, Aunt Zarrin, and
Mother. And where were they now? At motherhood, a place with suffering to the north, suffering
to the south, suffering to the east, and suffering to the west. Motherhood was the only mark of
their femaleness. I had watched [them] long enough to know that grim geography.1026
Not only are women’s bodies marked as female only by motherhood, and pain is
considered to be “their closest companion,”1027 but also the public, governed by
traditionalism, keeps silent about women’s sexuality and sensuality, even considering
it to be sinful.1028 It is only in the private space of home that Hakakian and her friend
become aware of what society wants to keep hidden: They watch the friend’s sister
undressing, suddenly realizing that in between the “reedy limbs” of childhood and
1023
Goldin 6
Hakakian 127
1025 Goldin 8
1026 Hakakian 74
1027 Hakakian 76
1028 Rachlin 59
1024
191
“the varicose, stretch-marked limbs” of motherhood,1029 there is the sensuality and
beauty of a young woman’s body.
Women’s beauty is thus kept hidden in public and their romantic desires are
suppressed. Both Hakakian and Goldin not only see an imminent connection between
womanhood and suffering, but also liken arranged marriage — that of Hakakian’s
cousin and Goldin’s threatening own one — to the slaughter of a sacrificial animal.
The two Jewish autobiographers remember the “masculine hands”1030 that press down
and eventually kill the sheep and the calf’s “legs held tightly by four men,”1031 both
instances symbolizing women’s oppression through patriarchy. Neither draws a direct
comparison to the wedding night, but the imagery suggests it, especially when Goldin
sees herself mirrored in the calf:
Our eyes met, big black eyes, scared eyes, and I felt an affinity with the familiar look. Time
stretched. We stared at each other’s eyes as a hairy arm reached over with a sharp knife and
sliced through the long neck that was pulled back tightly. Blood gushed out and showered the
walls, the ground, and my shoes (…). I held my neck tight, trying to push the words out: no, no,
but my vocal cords would not obey.1032
Resembling a rape, the slaughter becomes symbolic of the two autobiographers’
criticism: that Iran’s traditionalism, its oppression, maltreatment and subjection of
women and their bodies to men’s will is a horrible crime.
Comparison to sexual abuse is the stylistic device of choice for Azar Nafisi,
who invokes Nabokov’s Lolita in order to talk about the impact of public Iranian life
on the female body, thus again linking it to rape: “Living in the Islamic Republic is
like having sex with a man you loathe (…) you make your mind blank—you pretend
to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body.”1033 Indeed,
for Nafisi, the traditionalism of the Islamic Republic is worse than Humbert
Humbert’s pedophilia, as it is socially accepted: “[P]lease remember, ladies and
gentlemen of the jury, (…) this child, had she lived in the Islamic Republic, would
have been long ripe for marriage to men older than Humbert.”1034 With this, Nafisi
puts the IRI on trial in front of her readers.
Also other authors note bodily abuse, for example when Rachlin’s sister Pari
is being beaten and burnt with cigarettes by her husband.1035 Nevertheless, her father
makes her stay in the marriage in order to save face in public. Rachlin, who seems to
consider her sister representative of what could have happened to her had she stayed
in Iran, is appalled and comments by reciting a poem by the author Forough
Farrokhzad, who describes Iranian women’s situation: “[Y]ou stand there motionless
and like a wind-up doll, / you see the world with glass eyes / (…) / You sleep for
1029
Hakakian 102
Hakakian 85
1031 Goldin 165
1032 Goldin 165
1033 Nafisi Reading 329
1034 Nafisi Reading 43
1035 Rachlin 106
1030
192
years in lace and tinsel, your body stuffed with straw / Rise up and seek your
freedom, my sister.”1036 Women here are depicted as helpless, lifeless bodies with no
will or movement of their own, yet Farrokhzad (and thus Rachlin) wants them to
resist and claim agency. However, women who try to rise up against traditionalism
are often further restricted. In Pari’s case, she is put into a mental asylum. Rachlin
narrates that when she had visited the sanatorium, women were imploring her to help
them flee from this confinement:
I unfolded the paper. Please get me out of here. As I continued to the entrance, another patient
came into the yard. “Get me out of this cage,” she shouted. “What have I done to be punished
like this? Get me out, get me out.” Another woman joined in. “I want to die, please let me.”1037
Women’s bodies are depicted as being abused and restricted by society, to be marked
by suffering, their beauty hidden away. The public sphere especially is described as
imposing traditionalism on female lives, and encroaching also on their private lives.
The authors thus narrate their time in Iran as unbearably confining, a situation from
which they want to break free by leaving for Amrika. Their narratives of their
restricted past lives in Iran thus build up in urgency and teleologically point towards
their migration to the States, reminiscent of classic immigrant tales. While this
reflects their politics, i.e. animosity towards the revolution, the traditionalism it
sprung from and the Islamic Republic (as I have discussed in chapter 1), it also should
be seen as a strategy of finding a place in American society: By narrating a past as
oppressed women, some Iranian-American female writers seem to jump onto the neoorientalist bandwagon by supporting opinions of the Middle East as generally
misogynistic. This is not to say that those memoirs are made up, but that they appear
to favor self-victimization of their Iranian pasts. Through this, their books not only
succeed on book markets, but the Iranian-American woman is received with open
arms by American society, ever eager to be a place of refuge for the oppressed —
reminding us of Gayatri Spivak’s concise observation of “white men saving brown
women from brown men.”1038
Confrontation with American Corporeality
Yet breaking free from Iranian social norms is not as easy as some of the
autobiographers had envisioned. While they remember thinking of the USA as a place
of freedom, often with the impression that Hollywood movies have left on them, 1039
the restrictive power of traditionalism over the Iranian body is deeply embedded in
the culturally conditioned subject and not easy to shed. As Rachlin explains:
I had tried to model myself after American women in movies and books but I was crippled
by the voices of my own past. Here I am, I thought, in the land of freedom, and yet I am so
1036
Rachlin 160; Farrokhzad had written the poem during the reign of the Shah.
Rachlin 262
1038 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice.” Wedge
7-8 (1985): 120-30.
1039 Rachlin 59
1037
193
unfree in my own life. In spite of my rebelliousness, the deep fear of losing my virginity
was still with me. 1040
Also Firoozeh Dumas seems very much influenced in her corporeality by her Iranian
upbringing, for instance when she is loath to display her body in public using a
common shower room.1041 Autobiographers thus remember the time lag of cultural
norms influencing their bodily existence, their inability to adapt to a dramatically
different corporeality in their new cultural surroundings.
Especially hard is a head-on clash of Iranian and American values, for
example when autobiographers remember being confronted with new rules of sexual
behavior in public. This also pertains to the 1.5th generation, who have spent their
childhood in Iran and have first-hand experience of Iranian norms, but who have
come to the USA at an early age. Gelareh Asayesh, for instance, admits: “I was
shocked when I saw my classmate Samantha sit on a boy’s lap. In the hallway I saw a
boy and a girl entwined next to their lockers, kissing deeply, and felt rocked to my
core.”1042 It is not surprising that for some writers, American ‘freedom’ is initially
close to ‘immorality’ and that the adaption to American corporeality is portrayed as a
slow process against the resistance of the protagonist — too big might be the risk of
appearing to be a sell-out, of forgetting one’s original culture too easily. What is
more, the process often is described as a negotiation with elders, both in Iran and in
diaspora. Both Rachlin and Goldin of the first generation often feel restricted by the
mere thought of their fathers’ opinions;1043 likewise, Afschineh Latifi and her sister of
the 1.5th generation have a hard time convincing their uncle to let them attend the
prom in the USA, as he considers it immoral.1044 The sisters do try to defend the prom
as an innocent American tradition, showing themselves susceptible to American
corporeality. Yet at the same time Latifi seems, like Asayesh and Dumas, deeply
influenced by Iranian traditional corporeality — or at least wants to construct herself
to be. She makes sure to present them as traditional girls who have not given in to
American promiscuous behavior: “The women often took Mom aside to say nice
things about me and Afsaneh. ‘You are very lucky,’ they would tell her. ‘You have
two such nice, traditional girls, not wild like some of these other creatures. You
should be very proud.’”1045 Her rejection of American behavior, however, is part of a
longer negotiation. On the one hand, Latifi calls herself — with self-consciousness
regarding their relationships to their bodies — “über-virgins”1046 and “perfect
geeks.”1047 This appears to be an adoption of a rather American point of view, or an
attempt to make their (former) corporeality more understandable to American readers.
1040
Rachlin 166
Dumas Funny 46
1042 Asayesh 102
1043 Rachlin 166, 176; Goldin 171, 163
1044 Asayesh 182
1045 Latifi 225
1046 Latifi 169
1047 Latifi 225
1041
194
On the other, she bows to Iranians’ judgment regarding matchmaking,1048 America
does not cease to feel immoral to her, and she remains self-conscious about her
boyfriend in front of her family.1049 Latifi’s narration seems to some extent to be a
self-fashioning as a ‘good Iranian girl,’ thus underlining how deeply her self and
corporeality remain rooted in Iranian identifications.
We find a similar tendency in Iran Davar Ardalan’s narrative, who describes
how her disenchantment with American-style dating and her desperate desire for a
feeling of rootedness made her decide to let herself be set up in an arranged
marriage.1050 Yet, like Latifi, Ardalan seems to feel the need to negotiate the image of
the ‘traditional girl’ with American attitudes: she stresses how her self-perception was
that of a “modern woman who had chosen to succumb to tradition.”1051 She thus
portrays her decision against an ‘American’ life as a conscious one, informed by the
experience and rejection of its corporeal freedoms.
Also, Iranian-American writers have to face the fact that they do not feel at
home in an environment where the private sphere is not the sacred sphere of the
family; Abbas Milani, for example, notes his disenchantment: “What I once prized as
the mobility of American life now seemed the source of its rootlessness. The
friendliness of Americans in their first encounters, their cheerful faces, now often
seemed to hide lives of loneliness.”1052 Likewise, Nahid Rachlin, who had thought
herself finally free from patriarchal oppression, regards herself as “all alone”1053 in
the USA, and Iran Davar Ardalan misses the support of her family, feeling
“vulnerable, lost, and alone.”1054
So while first-generation Iranian-American autobiographers long for the
greater freedom of American life with its seemingly less strict separation of public
and private, at the same time they feel uncomfortable with exposed bodies1055 and
sexuality, 1056 and feel unsafe without protective walls. Corporeality in between Iran
and America thus continues to be a fraught topic for the first generation, whether they
ultimately reject American bodily behavior, for example Ardalan, who in retrospect
regrets her American lifestyle in her early years in the USA as a mere “disguise”1057
of her ‘true self,’ or whether they embrace it, like Rachlin, who professes to have
been happy to spend her wedding night without “vigilant eyes (…) looking for
virginal blood.” 1058
1048
Latifi 268
Latifi 281
1050 Ardalan, Iran Davar 156
1051 Ardalan, Iran Davar 157
1052 Milani, Abbas 257f.
1053 Rachlin 143
1054 Ardalan, Iran Davar 151
1055 Dumas Funny 164, Rachlin 149
1056 Rachlin 156
1057 Ardalan, Iran Davar 146
1058 Rachlin 187
1049
195
4.3.2 The Second Generation
Confrontation With Iranian Corporeality in the USA
Much more so than the first and 1.5th generations, the second generation is
influenced by American cultural norms, which they encounter in public — but also in
private with friends — every day. They face the challenge of negotiating the
diaspora’s attitude towards bodily propriety with the wish to fit into American society,
particularly as teenagers.
Both Azadeh Moaveni and Tara Bahrampour1059 remember the difficulty of
coming to terms with how different Iranian and American body cultures are.
Moaveni, for instance, narrates an episode from her adolescence when her mother had
pretended to subscribe to American standards and thus tricked her into telling her
about her boyfriend: “A wise voice inside my head told me to be skeptical, but I was
so enchanted at the prospect of having a modern mother (...) that with breathtaking
stupidity I told her the truth.”1060 Moaveni knows that in Iranian cultures, pre-marital
sexuality is frowned upon, but her hope that her mother has become ‘modern’ (i.e.
American), the hope that she can talk to her about the hardships of an American
teenage life, including sexuality, gains the upper hand. Her hope is futile, however, as
her mother gets angry and reproaches her for her — in Iranian eyes — transgression.
As a result, Moaveni remembers rejecting her Iranian heritage and embracing an
American corporeality: “Being Iranian amounted to psychological torture. (...) It
demanded a rejection of the only lifestyle I knew and wanted and offered only vague
promises of community inclusion in exchange. (...) And so I decided then and there
that Iranianness and I must part.” 1061
Bahrampour relates a similar struggle when a male Iranian cousin makes her
talk about her sexuality and her father berates her heavily for revealing her private
life:
“Why did you have to answer him?” Baba says, agonized. “(…) You should have just said ‘none
of your business’ and left the room. He has no right to ask you those things.” “I guess I didn’t
feel that insulted. I felt like it was a normal thing to talk about. I mean, he’s been raised in
America.”1062
While her father is afraid that the cousin will not keep Bahrampour’s secrets about
her love life and that she (and the family) will lose face in the Iranian community,
Bahrampour does not perceive her sexuality to be something that she should keep
hidden, especially with another American-raised teenager. Remembering her father’s
reproach,1063 Bahrampour reveals misgivings about not being ‘Iranian enough’ to
have reacted appropriately and narrates how later, in similar circumstances, she takes
1059
While Bahrampour has spent her childhood in Iran, she has also stayed in the USA often before
settling there with her family. She feels that she never led a really Iranian life while in Iran, which is
why I regard her as a second-generation Iranian American.
1060 Moaveni Lipstick 25
1061 Moaveni Lipstick 25
1062 Bahrampour 173
1063 Bahrampour 173
196
care to ‘Iranianize’ if not her private corporeality, then what information about it she
gave away,1064 negotiating and attempting to exist between two very different cultural
approaches to having a body.
Ultimately, the second generation finds it hard, if not impossible, to reconcile
Iranian and American attitudes concerning the body. Striving to fit into their
American environment — the only society and public space they know — they
remember their struggles with the older generation’s concept of what behavior is
acceptable, or acceptable to disclose to others as they grow up and are increasingly
being held responsible for their actions. They narrate how their lacking knowledge
destabilized their self-perception as ‘Iranian,’ leading to disenchantment with or even
rejection of their heritage in young adulthood.
“[E]ndangered by so much safeness”1065 — Second-Generation Bodies in Iran
Having negotiated the rift between body cultures in the USA for a few years,
authors of the second generation like Azadeh Moaveni and Tara Bahrampour seem to
grow more comfortable with their Iranian heritage. Confronted with ignorance and
anti-Iranian attitudes in American society, some even come to hope that they would
feel more at home in Iran and try to live there. As Moaveni, remembering her return
to Iran, puts it: “[W]e had assumed here, in this country where people could
pronounce our names, our world would expand. Instead, we felt constricted.
Everywhere, it seemed, there were barriers. Of thought and behavior, of places and
time.”1066 It is the public sphere that poses most problems — not only because the
division between public and private is stricter in Iran, but also because the restrictive
body politics of the Islamic Republic forces people to hide their (especially female)
private lives more than ever before.
Moaveni admits that to her, public Iran feels “terribly foreign”1067 and she is
only slowly and tentatively exploring the intricacies of corporeality outside of the
family in the Islamic Republic. With the topic of sex taboo and thus immensely
attractive, Tehran has, in Moaveni’s eyes, become an extremely sexualized milieu.
Especially young people, unsure of how to deal with their sexuality in an intolerant
environment, attempt to make up for it by circumventing the obstacles. Moaveni,
however, finds herself unable to identify with the considerable effort and resulting
fraught atmosphere at private parties: “[E]rotically dressed girls and bored-looking
young men prowled about self-consciously, oppressed by the pressure to have wild,
illicit fun. Staging and attending such an event involved such elaborate subterfuge
1064
Bahrampour 184, 251
Bahrampour 263
1066 Moaveni Lipstick 55
1067 Moaveni Lipstick 49
1065
197
that nothing less would do.”1068 Thus observing Iranian teenagers’ comportment and
clothing, Moaveni’s description is marked by her tangible distance and alienation.
Things are worse in the public sphere, where women’s bodies become a
testing ground for the political climate, for what has to be hidden and what can be
shown.1069 As a result of the rigidity of this negotiation, even the slightest deviation
from the standard is interpreted immediately, leaving the unexperienced Moaveni,
already uncomfortable with the tense atmosphere, prey to her American background:
With the ‘West’ virtually held equivalent to loose morals, she is especially alienated
by the impact of her origins: “In such a climate, the country of my birth singled me
out as a sexual target: a giant, blinking red light signaling availability immediately
after a round of introductions.” 1070 Moaveni narrates not knowing how to effectively
rebuff Iranian men’s advances and being unaware that her own behavior actually
invites it. As she recalls, it had taken a friend to tell her why people recognize her as a
foreigner and think her to be an easy girl:
One, you laugh whenever you want. And two, you smile too much. This is very American
of you. It doesn’t really occur to you, to alter yourself in public. So I should smile less? I
asked. I should be less nice? No, she replied, you need to be more selective about who
you’re nice to. 1071
However, such advice is not easy for Moaveni to accept: Having grown up with
American ideas of how to behave in public, she is afraid that she will seem arrogant if
she is not smiling. It is only when a stranger she talks to with her usual openness is
emboldened and suggests sigheh — temporary marriage used to superficially legalize
extramarital sexual contact and even prostitution — that she narrates understanding
just how different Iranian and American concepts of public behavior are. As a result,
she remembers not feeling able to trust Iranian men and relax in their company in the
beginning, making friendship impossible:
Reza and I became easier in each other’s company and stopped being so formal and Iranian
about everything. (...) Because he was not suave and Westernized, I was initially suspicious
when he talked freely about everything, even sexuality. I worried it was a clever, drawn-out,
intellectual ploy to seduce me.1072
Finding the necessity of shielding her body through cool behavior in the Iranian
public sphere exceedingly hard to cope with, she sums up her experience with a
friend’s words: “Having a façade is normal, because being honest is such a
hassle.”1073
Moreover, it is shocking to Moaveni how well Iranians seem to be able to shut
out the horrors of public life from their private sphere; witnessing a gruesome attack
by a fundamentalist paramilitary group on a celebrating street crown and then
1068
Moaveni Lipstick 81
Moaveni Lipstick 70
1070 Moaveni Lipstick 71
1071 Moaveni Lipstick 69
1072 Moaveni Lipstick 114f.
1073 Moaveni Lipstick 74
1069
198
returning to friends peacefully watching TV is inconceivable to her.1074 Admitting to
herself that adjusting to Iran does not come easy to her, Moaveni concedes that Iran is
even slowly making her sick. 1075 The strain of dealing with what she perceives as a
constricted private and oppressive public space is getting to her, is having a decisive
and painful impact on her body — and as a result, she constructs and criticizes herself
as too American:
I felt (...) that there must be something wrong with me, to be experiencing Iran so painfully, with
a constant sense of suffocation and gloomy dread. Clearly, I must be a spoiled, self-absorbed,
consumerist foreigner, to be suffering so much. Every day, I put myself on trial, and ruled
myself guilty as an American, instead of a resilient, roll-with-the-punches Iranian. 1076
Eventually, Moaveni seeks stress relief and refuge from the external world in one of
Tehran’s many gyms,1077 a place that to her combines characteristics of both public
and private in that it gives her the freedom of not having to obey the oppressive rules
of Iranian public life, but also of getting away from the enveloping, suffocating webs
of family life. 1078 It is thus in her bodyliness, her inability to adapt to Iranian
corporeality that Moaveni ‘recognizes’ herself to be American, and it is a bodily
therapy that she finds consolation in — a therapy that she considers a compromise
between her two worlds.
Moaveni, then, is alienated at first by her own lack of knowledge and by
Iran’s restrictive atmosphere. While she quickly starts exploring and venturing
outside, not letting herself be relegated to the private sphere, she reports being taken
aback by the over-sexualized atmosphere and public dissimulation, to the extent that
they are making her physically sick. This is an aspect she finds herself unable to get
used to, ultimately constructing her need for outright honesty and a more relaxed
approach to sexuality as ‘American’ characteristics she just cannot shed.
Like Moaveni, Tara Bahrampour remembers having trouble adjusting to
Iranian corporeality. The early days of her return are marked by a profound
uneasiness; she remembers relying on an exaggerating diaspora friend’s advice and
seems embarrassed by her own naiveté and over-cautiousness.1079 On the other hand,
her unthinking attempt at hugging her uncle in public is met with horror and a serious
reproach: “‘Never do that!’ he hisses. ‘Never try to kiss me in a public place.’”1080
Bahrampour is not at all used to the dissimulation necessary in the Iranian external
sphere, and the situation leaves her nauseous. In contrast, she narrates, Iranians like
her aunt seem much more able to deal with the physical strain of life in the public of
the IRI: “She looks serene; all her tension from last night has dissipated (…). I can
1074
Moaveni Lipstick 146f.
Moaveni Lipstick 155
1076 Moaveni Lipstick 153
1077 Moaveni Lipstick 154f.
1078 Moaveni Lipstick 155
1079 Bahrampour 209, 214
1080 Bahrampour 217f.
1075
199
barely eat — I am still too tense and exhausted.”1081 Indeed, Bahrampour cannot
understand how little Iranians let the everyday annoyances and restrictions on
especially female bodies get to them. When the moral police disturbs her cousin’s
wedding, but leaves after being bribed, Bahrampour is the only one left shaken: “I
(…) [am] indignant to see everyone acting as if nothing had happened.”1082 She
eventually observes that the country has changed from when she used to live there as
a child, that everybody is leading double lives now, that defying the rules by
dissimulation has become an everyday necessity, and like Moaveni, her alienation is
palpable.1083
Not only does Bahrampour reject such pretense, such covering up of body and
behavior in public, but ultimately she constructs her nature as ‘American:’ freedomloving and explorative. At first, she is partly afraid of the public sphere1084 and partly
annoyed at the “constant assumption of ill fortune.”1085 She finds particularly
restrictive Iranian society’s dictate that single women are not to go out alone. 1086
When she eventually ventures outside for a walk against all instructions, her uncle is
furious, and Bahrampour narrates her insistence on exploring and being alone as an
‘American’ characteristic — or at least quite unusual for an Iranian woman:
“She’s American,” Massi says quietly. “She needs to be alone sometimes.” Suddenly, as if a
switch has been pulled, Zia’s bluster evaporates. He gives me an odd look — recognition,
perhaps, or incomprehension. Is it that I am American, not of his kind? Or am I doing something
he understands, something he himself might have done in my position? 1087
Afterwards, her uncle seems to be more understanding, yet will still not let her
travel1088 or go into the bazaar alone.1089 And indeed, she does not yet know enough
about appropriate conduct in public to not socialize with strangers, is picked up by the
police and berates herself for not being a real Iranian woman. 1090 While Bahrampour
remembers how she and her body slowly seemed to get used to the new cultural
surroundings,1091 her “urge to break free”1092 from Iran’s restrictiveness remains
powerful, and she tries to convince her family of the necessity of venturing into the
unknown, of risking to leave the private sphere — to no avail: “Sometimes I feel
endangered by so much safeness. (…) If you never go out on your own, you might
not be prepared for the world when it crashes in on you. But [my relatives] just shake
their heads.”1093
1081
Bahrampour 219
Bahrampour 226
1083 Bahrampour 231
1084 Bahrampour 231
1085 Bahrampour 229
1086 Bahrampour 233
1087 Bahrampour 235
1088 Bahrampour 253
1089 Bahrampour 254
1090 Bahrampour 302
1091 Bahrampour 238
1092 Bahrampour 253
1093 Bahrampour 263
1082
200
Ultimately, therefore, Bahrampour constructs her fearlessness,
explorative nature and her need to be alone at times as decidedly American
characteristics.
In terms of sexuality, Bahrampour’s attitude seems to be ambiguous. She
narrates herself to adapt quickly, even if this seems like something she is not too
happy about when she finds herself suddenly influenced by Iranian ideas of gender
relations, feeling self-conscious talking to her boyfriend over the phone.1094 In
contrast to Moaveni, she is able to adjust to Iran’s overly sexualized public sphere.
For instance, she narrates having wised up about talking about her private life and
keeps it hidden even from her Iranian-American cousin. 1095 More importantly,
however, she starts being sexually rebellious like her Iranian compatriots and seems
to enjoy it:
In America I would have ignored this boy. But here, when he burns his eyes into mine, I don’t
look away. Partly it is defiance — the enforced covering makes me want to rebel, to demonstrate
that this clothing code has not cowed me. But partly it is the fact that the draped cloth makes me
feel safe, and oddly alluring. 1096
She feels it is the very way her body is hidden and taboo that enables her to do so. 1097
Thus exploring Iranian sexualized behavior, she also seems to identify with an Iranian
corporeality when, at a private party, she dances next to other young Iranians: “The
gyrating bodies fall against me, and as I am sucked in they feel warm and familiar, as
if I am dancing alongside my own teenage self.”1098 Yet eventually she also confesses
to being alienated by the arbitrary nature of Iranian sexuality 1099 and matchmaking1100
— she herself cannot imagine anything else than falling in love with someone. 1101
Ultimately, Bahrampour’s attitude towards Iranian sexual corporeality stays
ambiguous. While she seems to subtly criticize the way females are overly sheltered
from sexuality until marriage, 1102 she finds herself unable to condemn certain
practices that would be forbidden in the USA: “In America, if I heard a grown man
marrying a ten-year-old or kidnapping a teenager from her father’s house I would
consider him a criminal. But here in the village none of this is so clear.”1103 On the
contrary, she portrays her shock at the permissiveness of the ‘Western’ public sphere,
and to miss not only the protection of the headscarf,1104 but also the “silent bonds of
solidarity, (…) the watchful, comforting community”1105 that she had grown to
appreciate in Iran’s restrictive public.
1094
Bahrampour 252
Bahrampour 258
1096 Bahrampour 267f.
1097 Bahrampour 268
1098 Bahrampour 274
1099 Bahrampour 268
1100 Bahrampour 281f.
1101 Bahrampour 290
1102 Bahrampour 318
1103 Bahrampour 327
1104 Bahrampour 348
1105 Bahrampour 348
1095
201
In summary, Moaveni and Bahrampour experience difficulties (re-)adapting to
an Iranian corporeality. While both are alienated by the extent of dissimulation they
encounter, and rebel against rules relegating the female body to the private sphere,
Bahrampour narrates having much more trouble in overcoming them than Moaveni.
Conversely, Bahrampour seems able to adjust to Iranian sexual corporeality to some
extent, whereas Moaveni cannot find herself able to get used to Tehran’s highly
sexualized milieu. Ultimately, both attribute those areas they find most problematic to
what they see as their ‘American’ concepts of corporeality. Their journeys back to
Iran thus seem to partly reinforce their self-perception as American.
4.4 Conclusion
Confronted with their ethnic-looking bodies, Iranian Americans encounter the
limits of self-construction: Although a body may be moved, styled and dressed
differently, autobiographers continue to have the feeling that they stand out, and that
this marks them as ‘different.’ Therefore, they address and negotiate the topics of
color and ethnicity, outrightly rejecting some wrong ethnic-racial labels, while
adopting other wrong labels in order to avoid discrimination. This is, as I have shown,
the result of a combination of perceived Iranian Americans’ homegrown and
American color and race hierarchies. What is more, they also often dodge definition,
seeking refuge from the travails of being Iranian in the USA in ethnic-racial
ambiguity. There are, however, increasingly also those who call for pride in Iranians’
ethnic bodies and for carving out a niche within American society.
While dress and makeup is less permanent than skin color and other ethnic
‘features,’ they constitute strategies to alter the body, to fit into a new cultural
environment. Yet both the first and second generations of Iranians in between Iran
and America have to realize that adopting a different style is only one step on a long
journey of acculturation. Some of the first generation narrate rejecting American
clothes, fashioning themselves traditional Iranians, whereas the second generation
confesses being alienated by the Islamic dress regulations that has changed Iranians
— a change they had not partaken in, and which now makes them and their bodies
outsiders.
Remembering the female body in the public sphere in Iran means
remembering oppression and restriction of their bodies for many first-generation
autobiographers. Such narratives of victimicy, I have argued already in chapter 1,
have served them well on book markets and have resulted in their being welcomed as
evidence of an alleged Middle Eastern misogyny. However, most describe not feeling
completely comfortable with American public corporeality either, with some even
fashioning themselves, in the truest sense of the word, as non-compromised Iranians.
And also the second generation struggles, first with their parents about permissible
corporeality as an Iranian teenager in America, then, on return journeys, with their
202
lacking knowledge of how to act Iranian, how to move a body through the Iranian
public sphere. As a result, their self-perception as Iranian is destabilized and they
increasingly see themselves as American.
In all these instances, identifying the ‘other’ constitutes a construction of
Iranian individual and collective identity. The difference between autobiographers of
different generations showcase how ethnic identity is fluid and constantly contested.
203
204
PART THREE: CULTURE INHERITED/IN FLUX
205
206
5. Between Fiction and Fact: Telling the Iranian-American Self
Make a statement, Hafiz, since on the page of the world,
only the stroke of a pen will be left as the souvenir of your life.
-Hafiz1106
As I have shown in the introductory part, Persian literary history features
comparatively little self-writing. Time and again, scholars have argued that the reason
for this lies in Iranian culture which traditionally puts much emphasis on protecting
external appearances, on keeping the truth hidden from the public for fear of such
knowledge being exploited. I will explore this division of private and public more in
depth below to provide some background information on the conditions of Iranian life
writing.
Regarding this dearth of autobiographical tradition in Iran, one might wonder
why Iranian Americans have taken to life writing in such substantial numbers.
However, as I have argued in the introduction, an Iranian autobiographical tradition
exists — albeit formed and often discouraged by a pervasive need for privacy and by
centuries of censorship and persecution of authors. Maybe it is thus that Iranian life
writing has been described to be rather fictional, whereas fiction often seems to
feature autobiographical influences.1107 In diaspora, first-person narratives appear to
carry on this tradition, but also change to accommodate the American market’s desire
for the ‘authentically’ exotic and insider information on foreign cultures.
So while this chapter is entitled “Between Fiction and Fact,” it is, to put it
more precisely, the matrix of tendencies towards self-containment on the one hand
and of claims of authority and authenticity on the other that has inspired my analysis
here. ‘Fictionalized’ and fact-oriented autobiographical writing are realizations of
these tendencies: It is especially older, Iranian-born authors that show their
autobiographical narratives as stories or decisively influenced by fiction, and it is
especially younger, American-socialized authors that present themselves as
authoritative journalists or historiographers and fascinated with factual information
and photographic evidence. While it would constitute an oversimplification to
attribute any one tendency to a particular ‘generation,’ these preferences are evident.
5.1 The Public/Private-Divide: The Aporia of Iranian Autobiography?
As mentioned above, Iranian cultures tend to emphasize self-containment
rather than self-revelation. The basis for this cultural standard, it has often been
argued, lies in the strict division of public and private spheres — a circumstance
1106
Hafiz, Shirazi. Divan. Ed. by M. Qazvini and Q. Ghani. Tehran: Chap-e Sina, 1941.
174; Milani, Farzaneh 1375/1996
1107 Abedini
207
which, however, should not interpreted as making autobiographical writing
impossible.
It has already been described by William O. Beeman in 1982 and 1986 1108 and
more recently by Dale Eickelman 1109 and Roxanne Varzi1110 that the philosophicpsychological opposition of baten [inside, soul] and zaher [outside, surface] governs
surprisingly many aspects of Iranian life. This is true on an architectural level, where
traditionally houses have been divided up into andaruni and biruni, the architectural
equivalents of zaher and baten. The andaruni is a secluded and private inside part for
the family, where, as Beeman argues, “events are the most predictable”1111 and where
therefore people can act freely.1112 The biruni however is an outside part of the
household where visitors are received, and can also denote the public space in
general. Therefore, it is also an area in which hierarchical relationships are more
important, events less predictable and it is generally advisable to be careful, as people
outside the immediate family cannot be trusted.1113 This is especially the case in the
Islamic Republic of Iran, as everybody has to (pretend to) adhere to Islamic rules,
even if in private one’s attitude might be very liberal. Also, the familial and domestic
spheres that had traditionally been the primary sphere for woman 1114 still nowadays
are the area where she can show herself as she is, without Islamic covering. In public
situations though, everybody — especially woman — needs to be covered physically
and mentally at all times, where, as Milani expresses it, “keeping what is private
private (…) is (…) everyone’s preoccupation.”1115
As Beeman1116 and Dale Eickelman discuss, the outside or biruni is the
location of a strategy to protect external appearances, zerangi:
The ‘architecture’ of Iranian verbal interaction indicates a pervasive distinction between the
‘external’ (zaher), public aspects of social action and speech and an ‘inner’ (baten) core of
integrity and piety revealed only to one’s family and trusted intimates. In the ‘external’ social
world, characterized by insecurity and uncertainty, the cultural ideal is the clever dissimulator
(zerangi), the shrewd and cynical manipulator capable of maintaining a ‘proper public face’ and
holding ‘true’ feelings in check (…). 1117
Zerangi then means ‘cleverness,’ being able to deceive others. Whereas in English
this immediately conjures negative connotations, in Persian, it is an ability that is
1108
Beeman 1982:52; Beeman 1986:10ff.; Beeman, William O. “Emotion and Sincerity in Persian
Discourse: Accomplishing the Representation of Inner States.” International Journal of the Sociology of
Language 148 (2001): 31-57.
1109 Eickelman, Dale F. The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach. Upper Saddle
River: Prentice Hall, 2002. 222.
1110 Varzi 147
1111 Beeman 1986:10
1112 ‘Free’ is of course relative also in the andaruni, as family elders have to be treated with respect.
Hierarchy thus also governs baten spaces, yet it is here that equals can openly talk to each other.
Women of one family, for instance, can dard-e del, speak about their sorrows with each other.
1113 Cf. Beeman 1986, chapters “The Clever Dissimulator,” “Whom Do You Trust?“ and “The Language
of Zerangi”
1114 Tohidi 180
1115 Milani, Farzaneh 1992:5
1116 Beeman 1976:314
1117 Eickelman 222
208
admired and aspired to. Zerangi is not only ‘used’ often, in the outside world it is
constantly anticipated. This leads to a cultural standard of generally not trusting
people; yet not mistrusting in a negative sense, but being expectant of zerangi — it is
‘part of the game.’
To conclude: the internal baten and its architectural equivalent andaruni
describe an internal, private place of security, whereas the external zaher and its
architectural equivalent biruni denote the public where events are unpredictable and
people cannot be trusted because of zerangi. Except with close family and good
friends, one should never give away too much information — including feelings — as
others could use this to their advantage.
Self-revelation in the sense of ‘Western’ autobiography then is often
considered a difficult issue in Iranian cultures. 1118 Generally, it is discouraged to give
away emotions, details about one’s private life or any hardships oneself or the family
has to endure. Keeping one’s countenance and saving face is of utmost importance. A
typical Iranian caution that Beeman quotes is ‘zaher-ra hefz kon!’1119 [Protect external
appearances!], another idiom reminding of the same is ‘sorat-ra ba sili sorkh
kon!’ [Keep the face red with slaps!].1120 What is more, self-containment and being
secretive about the self are powerful motives also in Iranian literature, as Farzaneh
Milani points out.1121 And also Islam contributes to this dynamic, as “the preference is
to repent [a sin committed in private] and keep it unpublicized.”1122 This stands in
contrast and tension with the Christian confessional and the public culture of
confessional self-expression that has evolved in the United States not only since “the
age of the literary memoir,”1123 but already since Puritan times.
The separation private life and public life is being kept very much alive in the
Iran of today by the restrictions of Islamic theocracy, as for example Azadeh Moaveni
describes in a 2006 Time article: The zaher/baten-division is invested with renewed
significance and passed on to the next generation when parents have to make their
children understand “that the values [they] teach at home — that alcohol is alright in
moderation, that satellite television is acceptable, that a divorced mother has the right
to date — are part of a special, private world of which they should never speak
outside.”1124 Also — and maybe especially — in diaspora, Iranians “maintain a facade
of success and happiness. Thus they are extraordinarily secretive, and reluctant to
expose personal or familial vulnerabilities for fear that these will be exploited and
1118
Milani, Farzaneh. “On Walls, Veils, and Silences: Writing Lives in Iran.” Southern Review 38
(2002): 620-24. 623.
1119 Beeman 1986:11
1120 Pale faces are believed to indicate poor health — something that should be hidden from the public
in order keep up appearances.
1121 Milani, Farzaneh 1992:201f.
1122 Kadivar, Mohsen. “An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islam.” Social Research: A
Quarterly of the Social Sciences 70:3 (2003): 659-82. 668.
1123 Cf. Atlas
1124 Moaveni, Azadeh. “Raising a Child in Iran’s Cultural Divide.” Time 26 Oct. 2006. 29 June 2007.
<http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1551049,00.html> (last retrieved October 5, 2012)
209
their status and good reputation subverted.”1125 What is more, Iranian Americans have
experienced much discrimination especially in their early years in the USA and are
likely to be careful how they portray themselves towards an American audience.
Indeed, Farideh Goldin, an Iranian-American autobiographer, speaks of a “taboo
about speaking and writing candidly” that has been imported “from our Iranian past
to America.”1126
This Iranian(-American) disinclination of revealing the self thus seems to be
at odds with the traditional conceptualization of autobiography. The Iranian
propensity of keeping up appearances and self-containment has led researchers to
conclude that Iranian literary expression has shunned self-writing1127 or has not
brought forth genuine autobiography.1128 But what is genuine autobiography? As I
have argued in the introduction, ‘autobiography’ has to be thought in less strict terms
as it has often been. A wider definition in the original sense of the word, self-lifewriting, in all its possible variations, will aide autobiography scholarship to rid itself
from its still-prevalent Eurocentrism and more accurately include writing from nonWestern backgrounds in its analyses. After all, such writing mostly follows paths of
tradition different to Western autobiography — which has become standard solely on
the grounds of cultural hegemony. A more open definition of autobiography allows us
to approach Iranian life writing as autobiographical writing, even though it tends
towards self-containment rather than self-revelation.
Still, the disclosure of private lives is a tricky subject to Iranian Americans, so
much so that autobiographers often comment on their experience in between cultures.
Abbas Milani, for example, remembers being aghast when airport border control
rummages through suitcases in front of everyone else: “For a society whose
traditional Islamic architecture eschews windows in deference to pardehs, veils and
enclosures, such openness seemed infamous to me.”1129 Similarly, to open up one’s
private life voluntarily remains an uncomfortable idea to Milani, as he says:
Writing a memoir is no doubt an act of self-assertion, an explicit recognition of the
perceived value of an individual life. Memoirs are all but absent from the rich Iranian
literary legacy. It is only in the last two decades that they have become common as a genre.
In fact, when talking to Persian friends, I still refer to this narrative as a collection of essays
about modernity. (…) The word ‘memoir’ makes me uncomfortable. With American
friends, my discomfort dissipates. 1130
While Milani, writing as an American, regards autobiography as decidedly positive,
as a sign of cherishing the individual and its life, he has to admit that he feels uneasy
1125
Kelley, Ron. “Wealth and Illusions of Wealth in the Los Angeles Iranian Community.” Irangeles:
Iranians in Los Angeles. Ed. Ron Kelley et al. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1993. 247-273. 250.
1126 Goldin 2004
1127 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, ed. Women’s Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1990. 2.
1128 Hanaway 56; Zonis 60f.
1129 Milani, Abbas 15
1130 Milani, Abbas 224f.
210
about it in Iranian social contexts. And also Azar Nafisi writes of the difficulties
concerning Iranian self-writing: “It is such a strong part of Iranian culture to never
reveal private matters: we don’t air our dirty laundry in public, as Mother would say,
and besides, private lives are trivial and not worth writing about.”1131
In English, observes history professor Afshin Matin-Asgari in an
autobiographical essay, it is easier for him as an Iranian American to write about his
life: “[In] Persian, (…) I am more ‘private’ and less likely to publish an
‘autobiographical’ narrative.”1132 The new language, it seems, opens up the possibility
of writing one’s private life to Iranian Americans — and yet, reading IranianAmerican autobiography, there is, more often than not, the distinct feeling that the
authors write with a reluctance to reveal the self.
5.2 Storytelling, Telling Stories: Fictionalizing Lives
True to the beginning sentence of Persian fairy tales, “There was, or maybe
there wasn’t…”1133 diasporic Iranian autobiographers often seem to carry on the
tradition of ‘fictionalizing’ their autobiographical writing. What I mean by this is a
many-faceted influence of storytelling onto their narratives: They narrate themselves
and their view onto life as heavily influenced by stories, they interpret their past
through literature and tell it as story, or even as imagination. Moreover, they discuss
their own life-writing techniques as storytelling, rewriting and re-imagining the past,
so that their narrated lives acquire a feel of fiction.
The ambiguity of storytelling seems typical of Iranian-American literature and
its frequent interweaving of autobiography and fiction. Contemporary fiction writers
like Gina Nahai or Dorit Rabinyan, for instance, incorporate old stories of life in Iran
and are thus influenced by life writing.1134 For diasporic autobiographers, storytelling
might be a way of attenuating autobiography’s claim to factuality, of writing their
lives while distancing themselves from autobiographical revelation: The border
between public and private appears less penetrated if the life told has a fictional
character. Indeed, it seems, a number of ‘autobiographical’ works by Iranian
Americans had initially been conceived as fiction, but authors are encouraged by both
market and publishers to provide ‘real’ personal experience — a process that I will go
further into in subchapter 5.3.
1131
Nafisi Things xv
Matin-Asgari, Afshin. “Tehran Memoirs and Diaries: Winter 1979 and Summer 1997.”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 20:1-2 (2000): 171-79. 172.
1133 The Persian ‘Yeki bood, yeki nabood’ can be translated in slightly different ways that always
convey an ambiguity of fiction versus non-fiction. It thus excellently captures how many IranianAmerican autobiographies ‘flirt’ with fiction.
1134 Goldin 2004
1132
211
5.2.1 Interpreting Life Through Fiction
Iran Davar Ardalan, for instance, narrates early on in her memoir how
important the stories of Iran’s national epic are to her life. She sees these stories
almost as blueprints for her and her family’s lives, casting her grandparents’
relationship into the love story of Zal and Rudabeh, 1135 and explaining her own
arranged marriage in these terms, too.1136 She is always looking for parallels between
myth, her ancestors’ stories and her own, and eventually fashioning herself after the
independent women of the Shahnameh to account for her decision to settle in the
USA.1137 But also the stories of important women in the Quran influence her
considerably, as she sees her life also mirrored in their self-reliance. 1138 Throughout
her life, Ardalan fashions and interprets herself through stories — also once she
moves to the United States. She relates to Native American storytelling instantly, and
it helps her incorporate her past into her present:
Much as my Kurdish paternal grandfather and paternal greatuncles would retell the Shahnameh,
Littlebird’s stories helped me think of myself as a living link in a chain of humankind. His words
served as a bridge between the lives of the people before and the lives of my grandchildren yet
to come, for I heard: ‘Cherish your family, heritage, and friends. Find common threads through
storytelling. The stories of our people — whoever they may be — preserve who we are, make us
unique.”1139
While Ardalan thus finds a way of linking her two cultures, and seeing her life as a
continuous whole, her reliance on stories to narrate her life makes the reader wonder
how much congruence there actually is between myth and life, and how much
interpretation on her side. Ardalan’s usage of stories and storytelling ultimately makes
her narrative seem so determined by the models provided to her that her life narrative
takes on a story-like quality itself. The strategy of relating and comparing her life to
mythical narratives seems to help Ardalan to write her own life while attributing less
agency to her own self, and thus revealing little of it.
5.2.2 Being Imagined, Imagining Oneself
The tendency to fictionalization is maybe most pronounced in Azar Nafisi’s
Reading Lolita in Tehran. Not only does she discuss fiction in relation to reality with
her secret class, fiction redefines reality for her: “This, then, is the story of Lolita in
Tehran, how Lolita gave a different color to Tehran.”1140 She has complete power over
neither, however: “Not just our reality but also our fiction had taken on this curious
coloration in a world where the censor was the poet’s rival in rearranging and
reshaping reality, where we simultaneously invented ourselves and were figments of
1135 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 108
Iran Davar 156
1137 Ardalan, Iran Davar 195
1138 Ardalan, Iran Davar 155
1139 Ardalan, Iran Davar 207
1140 Nafisi Reading 6
1136 Ardalan,
212
someone else’s imagination.”1141 Indeed, Nafisi voices the same feelings of being
determined by stories in her follow-up memoir Things I’ve Been Silent About, where
it is her parents’ narratives and lies that decisively influence her life,1142 and both
Eastern and Western fiction that she tries to model herself after: “I escaped into
stories: Rudabeh was my role model, Julien Sorel my lover, Natasha Rostova,
Elizabeth Bennet, Catherine Earnshaw, and numerous other heroines of literature my
ladies-in-waiting, who would help me find that elusive self I hoped to become.”1143
Everything in Nafisi’s memoirs seems fictional, then: Fiction colors reality, censors
and poets shape reality, identities are a result of self-invention and outside
imaginative determination.
This fictional feeling is supported by how Nafisi’s students seem to exist only
through stories for her: She never actually partakes in their lives,1144 but only relates
the stories that they have told her. Nafisi is aware of her active role in re-narrating
these stories:
I cannot leave Sanaz and her story alone. Time and again I have gone back to it — I still do —
re-creating it bit by bit (…). I remember this incident just as I remember so many others from
my own life in Iran; I even remember the events people have written or told me about since I
left. Strangely, they too have become my own memories. 1145
Nafisi actively re-creates these stories, and begins to believe such imaginative
recreations herself: “And the moment I say this, I begin to believe it.”1146
Furthermore, her own life at times overshadows others’ stories: “As I write about
them in the opaque glow of hindsight, Mahtab’s face slowly fades and is transformed
into the image of another girl, also young, in Norman, Oklahoma.”1147 By conceding
how she re-narrates others’ stories, how these stories slowly become her own memory
whereas she never witnessed them, and by acknowledging how her own life colors
her memory of others’ stories, Nafisi further distances her autobiography from
‘reality.’
What is more, Nafisi throughout the book urges the reader to “imagine” their
lives, thereby ostensibly opening up the most private spaces:
I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we won’t really exist if you don’t. Against the tyranny
of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn’t dare to imagine ourselves: in our
most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening
to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then
imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us.1148
1141
Nafisi Reading 25
Nafisi Things xvii, 15
1143 Nafisi Things 167
1144 Nafisi Reading 58
1145 Nafisi Reading 74
1146 Nafisi Reading 171
1147 Nafisi Reading 113
1148 Nafisi Reading 6, cf. also, among many, 26
1142
213
However, by declaring everything fictional and surrendering to the reader’s
imagination, she also gives up something which is usually characteristic of
autobiography: the claim to truthfulness and factuality.
Through this, she achieves control: “An absurd fictionality ruled our
lives,”1149
writes Nafisi, and narrates how she and her students only could gain some
agency by narrating their everyday struggle in the Islamic Republic as stories and
thereby impose their own interpretation, their own meaning onto their life.1150 Nafisi’s
memoir is just such a reinterpretation, or rather an interpretation that is once further
removed when she re-narrates others’ stories. She admits that it is her urge “to narrate,
to reinvent [herself] along with all those others,”1151 and that she cannot but interpret
the world through literature.1152 Nafisi’s autobiographical writing is remarkably
fictional, an active construction of the past. With such blurred boundaries, the
autobiographer can write her life while revealing little for which she is actually
accountable.
5.2.3 Re-Writing the Past
Also Nahid Rachlin narrates herself and her reality to be heavily influenced
by stories. Her foster mother tells young Rachlin tales from One Thousand and One
Nights which she makes “sound as if they were true”1153 and later, Rachlin writes, she
turned to fiction to understand why her mother abandoned her: “Perhaps those words,
those stories, would provide me with answers.”1154 In her memory, as an adolescent in
Iran, both the story lines of religious passion plays and American movies have an
impact on her. 1155
Most importantly, though, Rachlin starts rewriting her life. Not only a story
about a fight with a friend gets a darker ending,1156 but she also tries to make sense of
her mother Mohtaram giving her up: “I wrote a story based on the plight of the
woman who had been tempted to abandon her blind child.”1157 From then on, her
narratives begin to circle around her mother, as she constructs a story about “how an
affair could have happened between Mohtaram and the jeweler.” When she reads it to
her sister, they almost become convinced “that it was true, that it had to be.”1158
Her rewritings of the past are not only powerful, but also perilous, Rachlin
notes, as she is afraid her father will find the story about the affair. 1159 He might take
fiction for reality, or be angry at her even thinking of such a story. Little later, Rachlin
1149
Nafisi Reading 26
Nafisi Reading 30f.
1151 Nafisi Reading 266
1152 Nafisi Things 240f.
1153 Rachlin 15
1154 Rachlin 24
1155 Rachlin 44f.
1156 Rachlin 179
1157 Rachlin 74
1158 Rachlin 68f.
1159 Rachlin 72
1150
214
argues that in Iranian culture “books were considered dangerous, that the written
word was given so much power”1160 — and her stories have this same power. When
she thinks up another version of the story of her mother in which she is an illegitimate
child from the affair with the jeweler,1161 what seemed to be fiction appears a possible
past. Rachlin assures that she herself does not know, but when she inherits a ring from
her mother, it seems to be a sign in favor and fiction suddenly seems ever more
probable.1162 What Rachlin suggests as a narrative of her imagination might be what
actually happened. We cannot find out, however, whether she does not know the truth,
or whether it is a subject too taboo to be broached as real event.
Much the same happens when Rachlin’s sister Pari dies. Rachlin has her
doubts about Pari’s falling off the stairs: “Lost her balance. Something ice-cold
slipped into my crowded thoughts: the accident must have been intentional.”1163
Although she tries to investigate, talking to her partner, friends and staff at the
sanatorium Pari had been to, Rachlin cannot find out the truth about her sister’s death.
She seems to have her suspicions, but does not go as far as to claim to be sure. She
does not know — and what is more, suicide is a grave sin in Islam. Possible truths,
possible fictions exist next to each other, and Pari’s story remains unfinished. Pari’s
life is especially significant in Rachlin’s narrative, as it is an alternate reality of sorts
— what could have been Rachlin’s life, had she not left for America. All in all,
Rachlin is, through re-writings of the past, giving many options for interpretation
without presenting any single one as truth. Fiction here becomes a powerful
suggestive device without the claim to factuality, and autobiography shimmers with
possibilities rather than claiming to present reality.
Roya Hakakian too narrates her life as fiction — and yet also criticizes such
fictionalization which she sees as deception typical to Iranian culture. At first, she
establishes her own life as a story never told, but that she is about to tell.1164 Also,
similar to Ardalan, she interprets her life through and as fiction, as she includes
several lengthy excerpts of her favorite story, The Little Black Fish by the author
Samad Behrangi, into her account of her childhood. 1165 A story dense with allusion
and political and social criticism, Hakakian judges it central to her growing up in preand revolutionary Iran, and she compares her own life to this piece of literature.1166 In
a central moment in the metaphor, she recounts her brother reading to her from the
book and reminding her that both stories and life need interpretation: “‘You can’t
miss a single thing that happens in a book or in life.’”1167 Life in Iran then, according
1160
Rachlin 73
Rachlin 199
1162 Rachlin 280
1163 Rachlin 245
1164 Hakakian 18
1165 Hakakian 19, 23, 31, 38
1166 Hakakian 89
1167 Hakakian 32, cf. also 39
1161
215
to Hakakian, has fictional qualities, it is not what it seems. It cannot be trusted and
needs be interpreted.
Like Rachlin, Hakakian uses fiction as a “corrective device”1168 to reality in
her own writing, but narrates how she then becomes disillusioned with fictional
ambiguity. She starts to mistrust the revolutionary movement that she had supported
when she learns that her admiration of the anti-shah intellectual Samad Behrangi is
based on fiction: “One of the pivotal legends that had tormented a generation and
ignited the revolution had been nothing but a hoax. A strategic maneuver! A little lie
between revolutionaries!”1169 What is more, she charges herself: “My talent was not
writing. My talent was deception. Such great aspirations, and all I had become was a
masterful liar.”1170 Eventually, she professes herself disillusioned at Iranian culture as
she regards it as based on fiction: “The lies had festered in me. The lies I had been
told about everything. The lies I had told to others. Maybe the festering had begun
before me, Samad Behrangi, the shah, or Khomeini, and I was simply born into
it.”1171 Reality and open self-expression has no place in Iran, as becomes obvious
when her parents burn her diary and poems in the end of the memoir — it is too
dangerous to keep them.1172 Hakakian portrays life in Iran as characterized and
dominated by stories and fiction — something she at first subscribes to and then
criticizes. Hers is a skillful move as an autobiographer, as it allows her to have her
cake and eat it, too: She can make the point that life in Iran is like fiction, i.e.
unreliable — rendering her writing unaccountable. At the same time, criticizing
fictionality, she can implicitly claim factuality without undoing the former.
As we have seen, storytelling and fiction figure large in Iranian-American life
writing. Authors employ myths, oral stories and fictional literature in such a way that
their autobiographies acquire a fictional character themselves. Whether they interpret
their own lives through myths like Ardalan, narrate their lives as imagined by
someone else and encourage the reader to also imagine them like Nafisi, re-write the
past through ambiguous stories like Rachlin, or stress how reality needs to be
interpreted similarly to fiction like Hakakian, these authors blur the boundary
between autobiography and fiction. This allows for self-containment in their life
writings, as with such fictionalization, the authors appear to reveal their lives, but
also dispose of accountability to a considerable extent.
5.3 On Fact-Finding Mission: Creating Authority, Dealing with Trauma
While Iranian-born authors tend to fictionalize their life writings, the younger
generations, having come to the USA as children or having been born here,
1168
Hakakian 89
Hakakian 220
1170 Hakakian 222
1171 Hakakian 221
1172 Hakakian 227
1169
216
overwhelmingly eschew ambiguity in their autobiographies and write from the
position of journalists or otherwise show a penchant for factuality and verifiable
‘truth.’ But also those of the first generation that identify closely with the USA come
to display a fascination with facts as they endeavor to convert storytelling into
historiography and journalism. Their autobiographies creatively mix fictionality, as
shown above, and factuality.
I want to argue here that this emerging tendency towards factualization,
towards the recording and communication of ‘real personal experience’ and
‘historical truth,’ follows American audiences’ (and thus publishers’) demand for
authenticity, but also aids the diaspora’s process of slowly coming into itself.
On the one hand, fact-oriented life writing helps achieve authority: Factual
information (and the alleged ‘evidence’ of personal experience) ‘proves’ the authors’
cultural expertise to both American and Iranian audiences and to themselves. Through
competing performances of ethnic authority, diasporic subjects are, by and by, vying
for power of representation, are negotiating Iranian-American ways of thinking about
Iranian identity and what this identity means in diaspora.
On the other hand, fact-oriented autobiographical writing also should be
considered a strategy of dealing with the traumatic events of the past and of laying the
basis of a collective memory and history of the Iranian-American diaspora. It thus
represents a stylistic device equally as self-containing as fictualization: writing the
emotional trauma of the Iranian-American self from the safe distance of factuality.
Iranian-American autobiographers then grapple with the diaspora’s ‘PTSD’ by
chronicling facts about the past, engaging in historiography and examining
photographs, tapes, news and other ‘traces of truth.’
5.3.1 Ethnic Journalism, Personal Experience: The Authority of Factuality
The link between life writing and fact writing has become strong for diasporic
Iranian-American writers: Amy Motlagh has pointed out recently how the boundaries
between Iranian Americans’ personal narrative on the one hand and their journalism
and academic writing on the other hand have become blurred.1173 She gives the
example of Azadeh Moaveni and Pardis Mahdavi who both “examine the dating and
mating among bourgeois Tehran youth through a confessional lens during the late
period of Mohamad Khatami and the early period of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”1174
The books resemble each other closely in style and situation — yet one is declared as
autobiographical, the other as scholarly ethnography. While Mahdavi’s work has been
1173
Motlagh, Amy. “Autobiography and Authority in the Writings of the Iranian Diaspora.”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31:2 (2011): 411-424.
1174 Motlagh 2011:411; Moaveni Lipstick; Mahdavi, Pardis. Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual
Revolution. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 2008.
217
criticized as “a thinly academized memoir,”1175 it has also been suggested that
Moaveni’s memoir has grown out of a journalistic piece, re-written maybe under the
influence of publishers.1176 I would suggest the same for Afshin Molavi’s Persian
Pilgrimages, which hovers even more undecidedly between life narrative and
journalistic writing. As Iranian-American autobiographical writing becomes so
popular to ‘invade’ academic and other non-fiction writing and to attract genreswitching, we need to ask ourselves what makes memoir so authoritative.
I maintain with Motlagh that personal experience and its claim for
referentiality has, for ethnicities no less than for other minorities, become central for
being able to speak authoritatively about one’s cultural background. ‘The Evidence of
Experience’ (also the title of Joan W. Scott’s seminal critique of the legitimation of
knowledge through experience), 1177 has become dominant to such an extent that not
only memoir depends on it but also other forms of Iranian-American writing that
want to be regarded as authentic. Writers seem to flock to the memoir genre and to
the evidence of personal experience in order to present ‘the real Iran,’ as Motlagh has
shown for what I like to call the ‘Lolita Debate’ — the discussion surrounding Azar
Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, part of the diaspora’s internal fight for the
power of representation: Who gets to represent Iran, Iranians and Iranian Americans,
and how? Who has more authority and determines how Americans (and generations
of Iranian Americans to come) perceive the diaspora and its country of origin? These
are both highly personal and highly political matters — after all, the personal is
political.
What is more, also audiences desire — and publishers promote — authentic
ethnic autobiographies, as they “signal indirect access to ‘exotic’ cultures.”1178 In the
‘natural selection’ of the book market, those Iranian-American authors are the ‘fittest’
and most likely to survive that give their readers the feeling of revealing more — and
more intimate — details of that strange and hostile country in the Middle East than
others. Getting ‘the inside scoop’ and ‘lifting the veil,’ the twin desires for authority
and exoticism, have likely directed the evolution of Iranian-American writing to a
considerable extent. At the same time, this does not mean that such writing should be
dismissed as solely serving such audience desires. As Graham Huggan puts it, “[a]
uthenticity emerges as both a self-validating identitary category and as a consumeroriented strategy to consolidate Western power by alleviating white-liberal guilt.”1179
1175
Secor, Laura. “Stolen Kisses: Iran’s Sexual Revolutions.” The Nation December 15, 2008. <http://
www.thenation.com/article/stolen-kisses-irans-sexual-revolutions?page=full#> (last retrieved October
10, 2012).
1176 Suggested by Amy Malek in personal conversation. However, also novelists are being asked to
change their work to fit the autobiographic genre, like for instance Zohreh Ghahremani, the author of
the novel Sky of Red Poppies, who told me this in person.
1177 Scott, Joan W. “The Evidence of Experience.” Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 776.
1178 Hawthorne, Susan. “The Politics of the Exotic: The Paradox of Cultural Voyeurism.” Meanjin 48:2
(1989): 259-68. 263.
1179 Huggan xiv
218
Journalism and its reputation of reliability and neutrality contribute to
authority in Iranian-American autobiography. To publishers, “the appearance of
authenticity and the belief in the truth of a created image are vital and are
manufactured to create a bond of trust with the audience.”1180 Arguably, IranianAmerican journalistic autobiography combines the ‘authenticity’ of (exotic) personal
experience with the authoritative voice and alleged objectivity of journalism — their
“professional training and experiences as journalists,” as Gillian Whitlock has argued,
are “important in the fix of this memoir surge.”1181 Thus, journalist autobiographers’
popularity with book markets and publishers1182 comes to no surprise and ethnic
journalism qua memoir has become an exotic (and at the same time ostensibly
factual) commodity.
As a result of both the diaspora’s and audiences’/publishers’ desire for
authority, the autobiographical genre has attracted a striking number of IranianAmerican authors that are journalists, among them Roya Hakakian, Afshin Molavi,
Iran Davar Ardalan, Gelareh Asayesh, Tara Bahrampour and Azadeh Moaveni. 1183
Babak Elahi has stressed, in an article subchapter entitled “Fake Journalism: Riffing
on the Language of Discourse,” how several Iranian-American autobiographers
“consciously write through the formulae of journalism” [emphasis original]. 1184
Azadeh Moaveni, for instance, narrates not only her experience of Iran, but her
experience as a journalist, reflecting even on the difficulties of detailed and thorough
representation:
The history lessons I absorbed during this first visit back helped me understand the struggles
revolutionary Iran was facing. But understanding the full splay of the history also complicated
my work as a journalist, to document these events for the American media. In my files,
generalizations like “reformist, liberal, progressive, moderate” appeared over and over again.
My conscience bristled at this language, especially since news stories rarely had room for the
historical context required to explain the nuances of these misleading labels. 1185
Implicated in such a statement is the promise that Moaveni will try to provide more
accurate and contextualized information in her memoir, and she does so not least
through examples of her life in Iran. She reports and reveals the ‘hidden Iran,’ her
personal experience of parties, drinking, love, sexuality, and friendship. All the while,
she takes care to examine the difficulty of translating both language and culture. I
concur with Elahi, who claims that through such self-conscious reflection, her
narrative “questions the very basis of journalistic discourse: discursive lucidity that
renders objective truth.”1186 However, I want to take the argument further: Moaveni
1180 Ween
92
1181 Whitlock
2008:16
2006a
1183 The striking success of journalists of Iranian descent in the USA is exemplified maybe best by
Christiane Amanpour and Rudi Bakhtiar, but also by Roxana Saberi, who in 2010 published the widely
read prison memoir Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran. New York: Harper, 2010.
1184 Elahi 2008:40
1185 Moaveni Lipstick 39
1186 Elahi 2008:44
1182 Dabashi
219
skillfully questions conventional journalism, thereby implying that in her journalistic
memoir, saturated as it is with personal experience, she will try to provide facts and
information more thorough, more true.
Also Roya Hakakian consciously presents herself as a journalist, although not
narrating a return journey as a professional adult like Moaveni, but her childhood in
Iran. Her autobiography is framed by her work as a journalist, as she narrates in the
very beginning of her memoir how she reluctantly becomes a source for a fellow
journalist, thinking herself too subjective:
I had to provide (…) “insider facts,” information only natives are privy to, and add my own
views, which were embittered by my history. Every time I wanted to substantiate an opinion, I
drew upon a personal experience I had never talked about before, until at last I wrote,
apologetically, that I could not continue. Despite my reputation, I confessed that I was not a
good source after all. There were experts far better than I, whose names I suggested. When it
came to Iran, I admitted, I was anything but objective. The past and the events of the years that
followed the revolution had biased me forever. 1187
However, it is, of course, exactly her personal experience that is cherished as ‘insider
information’ by her colleague. Indeed, Hakakian constructs herself as a ‘natural
journalist,’ as she narrates how she had been trying to convert vagueness into fact
since childhood — only to realize later “that the proper term for the technique was
journalism.”1188 Thus presenting herself able to give information that goes deeper
than usual precisely because it is personal, Hakakian achieves an aura of truth and
factuality for her autobiographical narrative.
Some authors seem to derive their authority more from personal experience
whereas others put journalism in the foreground. Gelareh Asayesh for instance
indicates her profession several times,1189 but rather than building her narrative on her
being a reporter, she feels exposed to the harshness of American life in her work and
discovers a need to return to Iran. What is more, her narrative style is far from
journalistic. Afshin Molavi represents the other extreme, as his work focuses largely
on fact, garnished with personal encounters with other Iranians. As he puts it in his
prologue, “the following pages are (…) devoted to a description, as best as I could
represent, of the history of this old civilization, of the current Iranian predicament,
and, most of all, of the lives, fates, and hopes of Iranians I met along the way.”
However, it is his intention “to experience the land of [his] ancestors”1190 [my
emphasis] that is central to his narrative. Readers are granted an inside look into
“[his] own little Tehran” along with Molavi himself as he slowly gets used to Iranian
cultural values. 1191 The understanding gained from personal experience, Molavi
argues himself, supersedes journalistic insights: “After each visit [as a journalist] I
returned home to Washington or Dubai more perplexed than before, grasping the
1187
Hakakian 13
Hakakian 55
1189 e.g. Asayesh ix, 114
1190 Molavi xx
1191 Molavi 228
1188
220
politics but failing to comprehend the seismic shifts taking place in Iranian society,
hints of which I culled from my conversations with average Iranians.”1192 Narrating
how at the end of his journey, he is judged to understand Iran by a native Iranian, he
constructs himself as an authority, due to the combined influences of his background
in journalism and his personal experience of Iran.1193
While Iran Davar Ardalan tells her life through stories, as I have shown
above, she is also a journalist. Therefore, she might be regarded a creative
combination of the polar tendencies towards fiction and fact. Ardalan regards her
“newfound passion for journalism and communication” to root her in her Iranian
past, 1194 as it resembles naqqali, traditional Persian storytelling.1195 As a radio
producer, she braids the factuality of journalism with her fascination for Iranian
myths to perform “the art of storytelling on radio.”1196 The creative act of mixing raw
audio material from Iran, connecting through it with her own past, translating it, and
bringing it into a coherent story line represents a transition from interpretative
storytelling to factual journalism. Her autobiography closely resembles her
storytelling-journalism, as it is both her story and ‘factual’ account at the same time,
as she tells of Iranian people, of copper artisans, Zoroastrians and former empress
Farah Pahlavi, of human rights activist Shirin Ebadi and author Azar Nafisi. 1197
Arguing that “[f]or [her], the best bridge between East and West is storytelling —
communicating,”1198 Ardalan establishes herself as a bridge builder, an ethnic
journalist that is rooted in her culture and thus has the authority and knowledgeability
to provide insider information about Iran to her American audience.
While I have focused on journalist autobiographers here, I want to note that
also other autobiographers claim cultural expertise through the ‘factual’ evidence of
personal experience. I have already analyzed some autobiographers’ performances as
self-confident Persian speakers in order to claim authority in chapter 3.2 and many do
this simultaneously for cultural authority. For instance, writers like Abbas Milani,
Azar Nafisi, Nahid Rachlin, Roya Hakakian and Fero Sadeghian have been living
abroad for decades at the time of the publication of their memoir, often almost as long
or longer than they lived in Iran. However, they never doubt their knowledge of this
culture and offer a wealth of ethnological ‘insider information’ that they evidence
with their own experience from living in Iran, 1199 return journeys,1200 or experience
1192
Molavi xx
Molavi 306
1194 Ardalan, Iran Davar 215f.
1195 Ardalan, Iran Davar 232
1196 Ardalan, Iran Davar 255
1197 Ardalan, Iran Davar 245f., chapter 15, 252
1198 Ardalan, Iran Davar 286
1199 Some examples, among many: Sadeghian, F. Fero M.D. They Call Me Fero: Reflections,
Recollections of an Iranian-American Doctor. CreateSpace, 2010. (Kindle Edition). Location 55-954.;
1069-1089; Milani, Abbas 21, 25, 29ff.; Hakakian 52ff., 74f., 121f.; Goldin 38, 106f., 152; Rachlin 19,
40ff.; Nafisi Reading 24f., 26ff., 144, 234
1200 Sadeghian, e.g. “periodic visits to Iran” location 2860
1193
221
mitigated through relatives.1201 Such representations of a personal past with their
implied claims to factuality and without reflection on fading memory, the changing
nature of culture or the singularity of experience are typical of ethnic autobiographers
giving a guided tour. Narratives like these easily (and often consciously) cater to
Western audiences’ orientalist preconceptions and their expectation of an expert
author. The performance of the cultural expert — who has to be bilingual and
bicultural, a shaky notion as we have seen in chapter 3.1 “The Self-Conscious
Speaker” — only remains trustworthy if he refrains from questioning his own
linguistic-cultural authority.
To summarize, Iranian-American autobiography has developed a strong
tendency towards ‘factual’ representation, not least because of its interlinkages with
journalism. A considerable number of writers are journalists and stress their
profession to create authority in their autobiographical narratives. But it is also
noteworthy how authority in writing about Iran is created and claimed very much
through the narration of personal experience, through autobiography. While this may
be a development similar to other ethnicities’ self-representation, it also has its
implications for the Iranian-American diaspora: Writing autobiographically becomes
paramount in the diaspora’s struggle for representation and in its negotiation of what
is the ‘truth’ about the past and Iranian identity.
5.3.2 Recording Facts, Overcoming Trauma
Gillian Whitlock has argued that the surge of Iranian-American memoir can
be explained, similar to Holocaust literature, as a belated mourning of such traumatic
events: “[L]ike other symptoms of post traumatic stress, autobiographical truth will
eventually manifest itself some decades later.”1202 I concur with her, and I want to
argue here that Iranian-American autobiographers deal with their own and the
diaspora’s ‘PTSD’ by focusing on facts: either by engaging in historiography, by
obsessively collecting and recording facts to salvage them from oblivion, or by
closely examining the ‘truth-value’ of evidence like photos and tapes.
As I will also argue in chapter 6.1, some Iranian-American autobiographers
attempt to write history in and through their memoirs. Joan Scott’s article “The
Evidence of Experience” becomes salient here once more: While personal experience
is the origin of knowledge, she argues, writing is the communication of knowledge
gained through experience. Historians that want to document “the lives of those
omitted or overlooked in accounts of the past” — groups with traumatic experiences
— have often relied on “the authority of experience, the direct experience of others,
1201
1202
Sadeghian, e.g. 2980
Whitlock 2008:15
222
as well as of the historian who learns to see and illuminate the lives of those others in
his or her texts” in order to legitimize their accounts.1203
Especially Farideh Goldin, a Jewish author, tells her and others’ lives in order
to focus on the history of Iranian Jews, and, in doing so, stresses the importance of
relinquishing fiction for fact:
The history of Shirazi Jews had not been documented then. When I was a child, many of us were
still lost in ignorance and illiteracy. Elders of the community, their stories frightening, were our
only source of information and historical continuity. 1204
The oral narratives of elders, for example of “jude-koshi, the killing of Jews,” are
simultaneously stories and bearers of history, Goldin says,1205 and she writes them
down so that the “young American minds”1206 of the children of the diaspora will gain
an understanding of the group’s past. Goldin remembers how she had initially sought
distance to her Iranian past with all its trauma of traditionalism and patriarchy for
example conveyed by her mother’s story of her marriage: “I distanced myself from
[my mother’s] constant retelling of the same tale. What did she expect of me? That I
would be the historian of her life, conspiring against my father, grandmother, aunts,
and uncles? Impossible!”1207 She seems glad to have left behind the Iranian past and
refuses to remember. It is only once she is ready to confront her own trauma and
writes her life that she makes it her mission to record and document the hardships of
women like her mother in Iran’s traditionalist past: “[L]etting my book be published
took [a lot] of daring. (…) The purpose of writing this book, and publishing it, was
simply to tell the truth as I knew it, my truth.”1208 This attempt to bring out the history
that is stored in stories, this stress on the factual and truthful, is Goldin’s attempt to
chronicle her own traumatic past and communicate it to the next generation — and
thus contribute to the collective memory of the diaspora.
Other writers do not go as fas as attempting to engage in historiography, but
they obsessively collect and record facts in order to achieve control over their
confusing situation as survivors of a revolution, as exiles, migrants, as hybrid
Americans. They too deal with the trauma of the past — and by reiterating ‘the truth’
again and again, and by fighting the vanishing of personal memories, engage in the
creation of a collective memory. Roya Hakakian, for example, examining a new map
of Tehran, narrates her discomfort at the sweeping name changes the revolution has
brought about not only in street names: “Everything was either renamed or dropped.
Instead of a magnifying glass, I thought, I ought to hold a pen. Instead of maps, I
ought to buy notebooks, for those cartographers, geographers, and their fancy
societies could not be trusted.” She recounts her fear that the Iran of her childhood,
1203
Scott 776
Goldin 75
1205 Goldin 71
1206 Goldin 70
1207 Goldin 38
1208 Goldin 200
1204
223
the Iran that she loves, will be forgotten. For this reason, she devotes herself to record
everything, to write the truth and her past: “I had to record, commit every detail to
memory, so I could do in words what the cartographers had not done in their maps:
attest to the existence of a time, an alley, and its children whose traces were on the
verge of vanishing.”1209 The collecting and writing of facts is a way for her to keep
her past from being forgotten, and with that not only she works through the trauma of
living through the revolution, but also guards herself against the (potential) trauma of
having her past taken away from her by a vanishing memory, by the ignorance of U.S.
society, by the history-rewriting of the Islamic Republic.
Azar Nafisi distinctly remembers how she too tried to get a grip on her life by
collecting facts in the form of newspaper articles: “What had begun with an impulse
to record events in my diary turned gradually into a greedy and feverish act of
hoarding, as if through such actions I could place a jinx on forces beyond my control
and impose upon them my own rhyme and reason.”1210 Besides collecting facts in this
way, Nafisi tries, an endeavor much more complicated, to find the factual basis of her
mother’s conflicting and oftentimes unreliable memories:
I became fixated on my mothers’s memories. I even took from her several photographs. It
seemed the only way of gaining some access to her past. I became a memory thief, collecting
her photographs alongside pictures of the old Tehran in which she grew up, married, had her
children. My curiosity veered into the realm of obsession. 1211
Nafisi, whose narrative at other times often veers into the fictional realm (as
described above), here describes herself as fascinated with the factual, with trying to
carve out the ‘truth’ about the family’s past. This quest for facts about the past seems
to be her underlying intention in narrating her life as she writes: “[W]hen historical
events are gathered up, analyzed and categorized into articles and books, their
messiness disappears and they gain a certain logic and clarity that one never feels at
the time.”1212 Her collecting of facts is an attempt at gaining control over the past —
both in the sense of a collective (counter)memory and in the sense of making sense of
a traumatic past.
For Tara Bahrampour, the tales of the past always seems closer to history than
fiction. When she narrates and re-narrates the story of the revolution “as if it were
some holy legend,”1213 she tries to remember each detail. Understandably, she is
annoyed when her mother writes a novel whose characters resemble the family, when
fiction intrudes upon Bahrampour’s remembered reality:
I hate them because I cannot separate them from us. (…) [I]t is hard to tell where the truth stops,
and late at night I cannot keep dark thoughts from creeping in. What if my parents had not
1209
Hakakian 201
Nafisi Reading 159
1211 Nafisi Things xviii
1212 Nafisi Reading 157
1213 Bahrampour 125
1210
224
always been so loyal to each other? What if our life had really fallen to pieces like that? When I
finish the last chapter at two in the morning, I am cold with fear. 1214
The fictional account unsettles Bahrampour; it has more power over her imagination
than she feels comfortable with. Indeed, like Nafisi, she tries to understand and
achieve a certain control over the situation by collecting newspaper articles in a
scrapbook.1215 She also narrates hearing about the revolution and hostage crisis
through news coverage in other media like radio,1216 TV,1217 and later books, 1218 thus
showing her desperate need for reliable information about a confusing time. Also
during the her adolescence in the USA, Bahrampour finds recorded facts about her
old life — like her former singer mother’s name printed in a catalogue1219 or an old
Iranian identity card1220 — comforting, as they are “solid proof that our old life really
was the way I remember it.”1221 Remembering the truth about Iran is so central for
Bahrampour that she decides she cannot rely on her parents’ or others’ stories, and not
even her own memories:
I listened to [both of my parents]. And yet neither one could give me a full picture. People might
tell stories about what Iran was really like, but they were not talking about ‘my’ Iran. We had left
at the end of my childhood, and like childhood it had frozen in my mind into a mythical land.
Once we landed in America, I lost the power to separate Iran from my memories of what it had
been. The only way to do that would be to go back and see it for myself.1222
Her return journey is a mission to set her memory right, to see the truth and to collect
facts about Iran and her past. She tries to ‘factualize’ her memory and others’ stories
by collecting facts — for example by rummaging through old belongings in Iran,
treasuring her long-lost school yearbook and taking a picture of their old home.
Bahrampour thus, like Hakakian and Nafisi, tries to avert the vanishing and distortion
of memory and thus contributes to the diaspora’s collective memory. By physically
revisiting the home country and mentally revisiting the past, she wants to work
through the trauma of having had to leave Iran and gain an informed and factual view
of both.
Also physical evidence, especially photographs, often become vehicles for
‘truth’ and ‘fact.’ Authors use photos both on a meta-level by describing them and as
actual in-text insertions in order to produce credibility, to prove their narratives — to
themselves as well as their audiences. How the alleged authenticity of photographs
intersects with the authority of journalism is apparent, for example, when Afschineh
Latifi mentions the newspaper article on her father’s execution. She narrates how her
uncle uses the article that prominently includes a picture of her father to prove her
1214
Bahrampour 144
Bahrampour 92ff.
1216 Bahrampour 109
1217 Bahrampour 121, 131, 133, 199
1218 Bahrampour 162f.
1219 Bahrampour 139
1220 Bahrampour 246
1221 Bahrampour 246
1222 Bahrampour 203
1215
225
and her sister’s need for political asylum to the immigration authorities. 1223 The
newspaper article and its photo make the fact of her father’s death more real to her
within her narrative and also functions as a piece of evidence to herself and to the
American reader outside the narrative, a tangible trace of else rather distant events in
Iran.
What is more, Latifi includes 124 photos on the 320 pages of her
autobiography, a few of which are displayed in the beginning of each chapter, the
others interspersed in the text.1224 Their frequency (particularly of the photos within
the text) is especially dense and almost achieves a photo-album quality in the family’s
years before and during the revolution1225 — visual evidence of a time in which
everything seemed to be perfect for a happy Latifi family, but also of the falling apart
of this happiness: scans of notes the father wrote from prison, one frayed picture of
Latifi’s brother Ali that the father had with him in prison, the newspaper article of his
execution, and photos of the family’s flight. The notes are for Latifi evidence for the
parents’ mutual love; the worn edges of Ali’s picture seem to prove the father’s love
to his children. The happiness and consequent destruction of the family through the
revolution, and her parents’ devotion to each other and her father’s love are aspects
that for Latifi need to be demonstrated visually so that they become more real and
tangible. Her way to deal with the trauma of the past is to gather visual evidence of
what she wants to remember. For instance, there are few pictures of the years of
trying to adapt to American life. Latifi tries to concentrate on the positive moments, if
not always successfully: More than half the pictures show the few friends and family
in the USA and two are of a happy trip to New York. However, an awkward attemptmodeling shot of her sister makes obvious the arduousness of trying to fit in. The
most revealing is a photo of herself on her first birthday in the USA, lonely and sad,
that Latifi juxtaposes with an earlier birthday picture: happy together with her
mother.1226 Her focus here seems to be the idealized past which the years of hardship
after immigration cannot live up to.
The last few chapters are characterized by pictures of the more recent past, of
her and her sister’s journeys back to Iran, at tourist sites and grieving at the father’s
grave. The trajectory of the photo narrative, however, ends on a happier note: photos
of the family’s reunion, of graduations, of her and her family happy, well settled-in
and successful in the new environment. The ongoing parade of photos feigns a
deceptive continuity and teleology, and belies it as well: The rupture in her life
remains visible through the comparative scarcity of photos of her early years in the
1223
Latifi 142
This is excluding cover photos and flap pictures. I am including scans of handwritten notes and a
scan of a newspaper article set in the text.
1225 With 45 pictures, the first five chapters (of eighteen) already make up more than 36%.
1226 Latifi 149
1224
226
USA.1227 Yet Latifi’s point, it seems, is to prove to herself and the world through the
ostensible factuality of photographic evidence that she and her family have ‘made it’
in spite of all obstacles, has achieved the immigrant’s dream of becoming American.
They have returned to Iran and remain connected to it, but their choice is America.
Jasmin Darznik’s relationship to pictures is more complicated: Having always
expected pictures to prove true and provide a stable ground to base her own story and
identity on, she is thoroughly shocked when, after the death of her father, she finds
out through an old wedding photograph that her mother had been married before and
has another daughter:
Like all the photographs that came with us when we left Iran, this one was supple and as thick as
leather. Its edges were tattered and a long white crease coursed through its image. I might easily
have mistaken it for just another old photograph, but this one was nothing like the others. (…)
The man at [my mother’s] side was not my father.1228
She remembers feeling betrayed by her mother and by the wedding picture with her
father, that up until then had been the only truth she had known, and that seemed to be
solid proof of a past as she had know it:
I carried the photograph to the living room and sat cross-legged on the floor for a long time,
staring up at the large black-and-white portrait of my parents on their wedding day. (…) As
proof of who she’d been, of what our country had once been, she hung this picture in every
home we ever owned in America. (…) If, for many years, someone had asked me to tell them
about Iran, I would have pointed to this photograph of my parents, as if every story began there,
in that moment. Now I’d found a photograph that had survived revolution, war, exile, and
something else besides: my mother’s will to forget the past. 1229
It is thus the old photo that becomes a reliable piece of evidence of a different past
which shatters the narrative that Darznik had had of her own and her parents’ past
until then, symbolized by the newer wedding picture. However, the exact story is only
revealed by a series of ten tapes that the mother fills with her story and sends to
Darznik, unable to talk about the past in person.1230 Here, the threat of unreliability
(of her mother’s story) and the tapes’ quality of apparent physical ‘evidence’ are in
conflict with each other, as Darznik initially has problems fitting her mother’s tale
into her existent narrative of the past. Yet she slowly starts threading her memories
through her mother’s, until the tape becomes more real than anything else: “The thin,
broken voice that I’d scarcely recognized as hers grew more familiar, really, than
even my own voice.”1231
Darznik also narrates how the ‘truth’ revealed by the old photo and the tapes
show in a completely new light her mother’s narrative of “The Good Daughter,” a
1227
Only ten photos of their early time in America in chapters 9 and 10, five of which depict friends and
family there. She also includes an earlier picture of herself and one of her mother and brothers back in
Iran.
1228 Darznik 1
1229 Darznik 4
1230 Darznik 5
1231 Darznik 316
227
persona that adult Darznik had taken for metaphorical warnings not to become to
Americanized:
The Good Daughter lived in Iran. She didn’t talk back — as I had learned to do in this kharab
shodeh, this broken-down place. (…) The Good Daughter sat by her mother’s side and heeded
her mother’s words. When a man looked at her, she lowered her eyes at once. (…) The Good
Daughter I knew back then was just a story she’d made up to scare me and make me into a good
daughter, too. 1232
All of a sudden, the old photo is proof of her mother’s other family, of an actually
existing other daughter in Iran. It pains Darznik to consider that her mother might
prefer her Iranian sibling Sara to herself.1233 And yet she cannot talk openly with her
mother about Sara, imagining “that Sara belonged to my mother’s memories and not
at all to me.”1234 It is only when she sees photos of Sara and her children, making
their existence more real, that Darznik remembers being unsettled, picturing herself
getting to know her sister.
She never does go to Iran, but retells her mother’s story to make it hers,1235
while photos and tapes become her evidence: the newer wedding photo is proof of
her mother’s will to forget, the old wedding photo and the tapes are proof of the ‘real’
past. For Darznik, the truth is revealed on photo and tape — and in her autobiography.
Writing her life is an act of re-writing, of taking the power of interpretation from her
mother — an endeavor to purge fiction from her life, to narrate the truth about the
past.
Both Latifi and Darznik, yet in very different ways, use and regard photos as
evidence for the past. Whereas Latifi inserts them in her text in order to document
what she wants to be remembered, like her parents’ happiness before the revolution
and the family’s successful settling in in the USA, Darznik’s narrative revolves
around the disruptive experience of finding a picture that reveals her mother’s hidden
past. Together with her mother’s tapes, this and other photos form the basis of her
own re-writing of the truth.
As we have seen, Iranian-American autobiographers show a fascination with
factuality. They hang on to facts, approaching their lives and their family’s pasts as
journalists, through history writing, collecting facts, and tangible evidence like photos
and tapes. They do this in response to the authenticity desires of their American
audiences and arguably to be able to shape Iran’s and the diaspora’s image in the
USA, but also to keep the past from being altered and forgotten, and in order to work
through the trauma of revolution, exile and life as an immigrant or hybrid American.
5.4 Conclusion
1232
Darznik 2f.
Darznik 319
1234 Darznik 320
1235 Darznik 321
1233
228
To conclude, the traditionally strict division of inside and outside, or public
and private spheres, has had persistent influence on Iranian autobiography. This still
seems to be the case in diaspora, as the first generation in particular ‘fictionalize’ their
autobiographical writings. They employ myths, oral stories and fictional literature so
that their autobiographies acquire a fictional character themselves. This enables
autobiographers to engage in self-containment, as they are revealing their lives, yet
keeping the ‘truth value’ of their revelations unstable at the same time. What is more,
through this strategy, authors can gain considerable control over their narratives, as
fiction allows them more freedom in re-creating ‘memory.’ Although writing
autobiographically, they cannot be held accountable. Iranian-American
autobiography’s often fictional qualities might also be a result of publishers’
considerable influence: Iranian-American autobiographical expression has been
promoted for its lucrative ‘authenticity,’ and, as a result, also fiction has been nudged
towards autobiography. In any case, Iranian-American autobiography’s frequent
tendency towards fictionality underlines once more that the traditionally strict borders
that autobiography scholarship used to draw between fiction and life writing
rightfully have been rethought since the mid-1980s.
The market’s desire for authentic personal experience and publishers’
anticipation of it very likely has also played a major role in ushering in the more
recent trend towards ‘factuality’ in especially younger Iranian-American authors’
autobiographies. But such discernible fascination with facts — particularly writing as
a journalist and writing journalistically — should also be seen as a way to achieve
agency as an ethnic writer: The combination of the profession’s ostensible factuality
and the authority of personal experience seem to provide a vehicle for attaining
credibility and thus the ability to influence how Iranians are being seen in America,
and how they see themselves. Others have turned to historiography and the recording
of facts, as they eschew the ambiguity and unreliability of their parents’ their own
memories. With a focus on facts, history and tangible evidence, they trace and
‘correct‘ the past as it is being remembered by themselves and their readership. This
helps, I argue, autobiographers deal with the traumatic past, document and
communicate it to the next generation and to their American audience. Fact-orientated
autobiographical writing not only has become a new strategy of telling the IranianAmerican self, but has to be regarded as an important contribution to the diaspora’s
collective memory and thus identity.
229
6. Relative Identities: The Iranian-American Self in Its Relation to
Others
As I have mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, it has often been
claimed that in the Middle East and Asia there is historically virtually no tradition of
writing autobiography in the ‘Western’ sense. By ‘Western,’ scholars are referring not
only to the expectation that autobiography ought to be confessional, revealing private
details hitherto hidden from the public, but also to autobiography’s reputation as an
account focusing on single individual’s life and trajectory. In contrast, non-Western
autobiography is said to be engaged with other selves more intensely — thus
ostensibly reflecting the findings of some cross-cultural psychologists that different
cultures display different levels of collectivism and individualism.1236 I find, with
Janet Bauer, 1237 that such scholarship is blacking out many nuances and overstating
the case.
Needless to say, identity always is relational,1238 as already Paul Ricœur
explains in Oneself as Another.1239 While G. Thomas Couser points out that it has
been primarily feminist critics who have drawn attention to relationality as a
characteristic of life writing also in Western literature, 1240 relationality has been
recognized in autobiography of both genders for example by Paul John Eakin in his
chapter “Relational Selves, Relational Lives: Autobiography and the Myth of
Autonomy” in his 1999 How Our Lives Become Stories. 1241
With this in mind, I want to argue that Iranian-American autobiographical
writing is indeed relational in several important respects — yet I also want to show
how interdependence and independence of the Iranian-American self can be curiously
interlinked. Firstly, I will explore the diverse reasons for Iranian-American
autobiographers to narrate not only their own life stories, but also others.’ Among
those are the strategy of narrating one’s identity through proximate others and the
desire to find and consolidate one’s (ethnic) roots in ancestors’ stories. On a
communal level, this represents a (re-)claiming of Iranian and diasporic history, as
Iranian Americans narrate their own versions of events through family history,
countering American media portraiture. Furthermore, little-known community history
is documented for the first time in the case of Iranian Jewish authors. Both should be
1236
Cf. e.g. Hui, C. Harry, and Harry C. Triandis. “Individualism — Collectivism: A Study of CrossCultural Researchers.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 17 (1986): 225-248.; Triandis, Harry C.
“Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts.” Psychological Review 96 (1989): 269-289.
1237 Bauer 250
1238 A word on terminology: ‘Relative’ and ‘relational’ are, in my usage here, exchangeable, yet I prefer
‘relative,’ as it has the additional reference to family members. I do not intend to restrict it to that
meaning though, as writers also narrate stories of non-related proximate (and also less significant)
others.
1239 Ricœur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.
1240 Couser, G. Thomas. Memoir: An Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 20.
1241 Eakin 1999:43ff.
230
regarded as a fashioning of collective memory and, eventually, diasporic identity.
Overarching these diverse reasons of narrating relational selves is certainly a
therapeutic motif, the conscious or unconscious attempt to heal shattered individual
selves and foster nascent communal diasporic identity by rooting them in a common
past.
Secondly, I will analyze how Iranian-American autobiographers negotiate the
tug of what they see as American individualism on the one hand and Iranian
relationality on the other. While they remember being transfixed by the possibility of
existing as a single person without the manifold responsibilities and dependencies
that come with being part of an Iranian family, they also narrate their grief and
nostalgia at having lost this sort of communality and interconnectedness with others.
The balancing of both these desires becomes central to the construction of an IranianAmerican identity.
6.1 Telling My (Family’s) Story
Szalay et al. have found in their 1979 comparative study (published just
before the revolution and presumably conducted in the heyday of American-Iranian
friendship 1242) that both Iranians and Americans focus on the ego or self with an
intensity that exceeds practically every other nationality studied up until then.
However, according to them, Iranians tend to be much less individualistic than
Americans, insofar as they “emphasize more the group.”1243 Maybe it is thus that
even only a quick survey of Iranian-American life writing yields the insight that
stories of authors’ ancestors and family figure large: Appearing in every work, they
are examples of how the family’s past has been remembered traditionally and how the
authors themselves tell their community’s story. Farideh Goldin, for example,
remarks: “These memoirs weave my recollections together with those of my parents
and their families, often incomplete and sometimes contradictory.”1244
Such
interwoven stories make up a veritable carpet of Iranian-American collective memory.
Rocío G. Davis in her analysis of Asian American family memoirs rightly
observes not only how, on an individual level, ancestral and family stories become
central to the formation of the narrating self,1245 but also highlights its importance to
the diasporic community: “In the plural context of American society, these texts,
which privilege the progression in time of relational life stories, (…) [explain]
communities to themselves by highlighting their origins.” 1246 Family memoirs thus
1242
For this reason, the study might be downplaying differences between the two groups, so as to
promote Iran to America. However, the US-Iranian collaboration seems to have avoided such
lopsidedness.
1243 Szalay, Lorand B., Elahe Mir-Djalali, Jean Bryson Strohl, and Hossein Moftakhar. Iranian and
American Perceptions and Cultural Frames of Reference: A Communication Lexicon for Cultural
Understanding. Washington, DC: Institute of Comparative Social&Cultural, 1979. 19.
1244 Goldin 3
1245 Davis, Rocío 2011:12
1246 Davis, Rocío 2011:8
231
are, according to her, a re-imagination of the past and help the community develop a
collective memory.1247 Collective memory is not history, only made from similar
material, as Wulf Kansteiner maintains,1248
yet the diaspora certainly reads
autobiographical accounts as history from a personal perspective.
Davis defines family memoir as “narratives or films that inscribe the story of
at least three generations of the same family. (…) There is (…) substantial historical
information (…) to supplement the relatives’ stories. (…) In these memoirs, the
stories of the author’s relatives occupy as much narrative space and importance of
those of the auto/biographer.” While Iranian-American autobiographies for the most
part do not devote quite as much space to others’ stories, all of them include historical
information about the Iran before, during and after the revolution and almost all go
back in time to tell their parents’ and grandparents’ stories, if not further.
According to Davis, there are three overlapping motivations for the writing of
a family memoir: 1) The family’s story is constitutive of the writer’s own. 2) The
author recognizes the power of personal narratives to engage historical or cultural
issues in the public. 3) The author feels committed to preserve these stories and
provide the ethnic community with potentially empowering narratives.1249 While
aspect 1) focuses on individual identity and will be addressed in the first part of this
subchapter, 2) and especially aspect 3) tie in with the possibility for narrators of
creating a ‘countermemory,’ that is, a revision of the Iranian-American community’s
past and will be analyzed in the second part.
6.1.1 Family Constellations: The Relative Iranian-American Self
Iranian-American autobiographers then often look for identification in
relation to both their living family and their forebears — the significant others that
figure in their personal histories of migration and those that had lived before them in
Iran. I will explore these issues in the following two subchapters ‘Group Therapy,’ i.e.
relations to others in the authors’ migration histories, and ‘Root Therapy,’ i.e.
ancestral roots, which become especially important for the second generation.
The often expansive treatment of proximate others mirrors the way AsianAmerican family memoirs privilege interconnectedness,1250 and seems to serve
therapeutic ends: positioning of the (identity-wise) free-floating diasporic subject in
relation to its ancestry and to its contemporary family, and thus anchoring it.
Enmeshed in this positioning is Iran’s contentious history of the last century or more,
an aspect that I will go further into in 6.1.2.
Group Therapy: Narrating Identity Through Proximate Others
1247
Davis, Rocío 2011:7
Kansteiner 180
1249 Davis, Rocío 2011:150
1250 Davis, Rocío 2011:12
1248
232
Iranian-American autobiographers write not only their own personal histories,
but all trace their identities considerably through others. As Paul John Eakin puts it,
they write their lives as “viewed through the lens of its relation with some key other
person, sometimes a sibling, friend, or lover; but most often a parent — we might call
such an individual the proximate other to signify the intimate tie to the relational
autobiographer.”1251 In this way, they narrate their opposition to or admiration of their
parents (or siblings), constructing their own identity as mirroring their parents’ or
investigating a dark secret of theirs and its significance for their own lives.
The authors try to record and explain these diverse relational identities to
themselves as much as to their readers. Many experience the simultaneous state of
being-from-Iran and being-removed-from-Iran as something that they had no choice
about, that was decided or brought about by the parental generation. As Tara
Bahrampour puts it: “Those young enough to have adjusted to America but old
enough to remember Iran seem to have the most difficulty choosing their cultural
allegiances, perhaps because they were too young to have made their own decisions
about staying in Iran or leaving.”1252 Narrating their family’s migration and the
factors leading up to it — and accepting this story as their own — becomes central to
their personal coming to terms with an identification as Iranian-American. Indeed,
many think it “therapeutic to retrace the steps [their] parents had taken”1253 or even
speak of catharsis. 1254
Nahid Rachlin is one of the authors that had left Iran on their own account,
but narrates her parents’ stories in order to explain how their traditionalism left her no
choice. Already in her youth, she writes, she is traumatized by the complete power
that her father has over her life, as he takes her away from her foster mother. She
traces his traditionalism way back into his life story:
My father had traveled and been exposed to other ways of thinking, but still he adhered to the
tradition of arranged marriage and wasn’t troubled by the age discrepancy between him and his
bride, or by the fact that his bride was a mere child. He was Mohtaram’s second cousin; he had
watched her grow and anticipated marrying her one day. When they married he was thirtyfour. 1255
But also her cold and distant mother is of no help to her. While Rachlin explores her
life and how she has become ‘modern’ through marrying into non-practicing circles
— unlike her sister, Rachlin’s foster mother 1256 — Rachlin also narrates how this
progressiveness is but a thin veneer, for example when the mother supports the
arranged marriage of Rachlin’s older sister. Her family’s traditionalism (which I have
analyzed more in detail in chapter 1 “Explaining Departure”) leaves Rachlin with no
1251
Eakin 1999:86
Bahrampour 348
1253 Ardalan, Iran Davar 141
1254 Goldin 200
1255 Rachlin 23
1256 Rachlin 11
1252
233
choice but to leave Iran. However, in her parents’ life stories, she finds an explanation
for their attitudes:
I wondered if Father and Mother were evil. But my grandmother whom I loved so much, had
done the same to her daughters, had forced them to marry men she and my grandfather chose.
They themselves were victims of the oppressive system that dictated to people how they should
feel and live their lives. 1257
In the end, it is up to her to break the cycle of oppression, which she does by leaving
for America.
While Rachlin emigrates from Iran comparatively early, Afschineh Latifi’s
and Roya Hakakian’s narratives are set during the revolution. Both initially write very
much from the view of the family group und usually use the collective pronouns ‘we’
and ‘us.’ Their autobiographies are family stories — until the revolution shatters the
respective unity: Latifi’s father is executed, and the sisters leave for Austria, while the
mother and brothers stay on in Iran; similarly, Hakakian’s brother’s are sent abroad
and the family joins them only at the end of the book.
Besides that, both focus on proximate others. Latifi tellingly begins her
memoir with her father’s picture and his arrest.1258 The family’s whole world comes
crashing down, a world that Latifi describes in detail: her father’s and mother’s youth,
their courtship and loving marriage, their life of privilege and harmony through the
parents’ virtuousness.1259 It is the father’s execution that stands for the impact of the
revolution and thus marks the beginning of a painful era of migration. Yet it is a
shaping event also in another way. Latifi focuses very much on her executed father,
which does not surprise as G. Thomas Couser observes: “[w]hen children write a
parent’s life, it seems, they are inclined to write a memoir of the more distant parent
— indeed, of the absent one. The writing of narratives is often a form of
compensation: a way to restore, repair, or even establish a relationship with the
missing parent.”1260 Latifi then stresses how her father had been a “good soldier,”1261
who admonished his family in his last days to emulate him: “‘You are the wife of a
soldier. You have to be strong. You are the children of a soldier. I ask that you be
brave and that you look after your mother.’”1262 It is clear that she idealizes him 1263
and the rest of her memoir is characterized by her attempts to fulfill her father’s
expectations: “We didn’t cry. Crying was not permitted. We were the children of a
soldier. We were on our way to America.”1264 Latifi’s and her family’s successful
settling in the USA becomes, in her narrative, an indicator of achieving this
emulation.
1257
Rachlin 69
Latifi 2
1259 Latifi 72
1260 Couser 2012:155
1261 Latifi 16
1262 Latifi 10
1263 Latifi 56
1264 Latifi 127
1258
234
Roya Hakakian too focuses on her father, describing others’ deference to
him1265 idealizing and reflecting on herself in relation to him: “Being one of Father’s
own was an honor and a burden.”1266 She also narrates her early life very much in
relation to her brothers. She describes them and their achievements at length, but
focuses on her admired brother Albert.1267 It is his emigration that heralds the
breaking apart of the family, that foreshadows her own eventual fate: She narrates
how, as a young girl, she aspires to emulate her brothers’ critical thinking. Javid’s
constant reminder to “Think!”1268 becomes central to her self-conception, and she
investigates the reasons behind Albert’s going away, knowing intuitively that his story
is key to a deeper understanding of her own life.1269 An artist and critic of politics,
Albert has to leave for America as a precautionary measure; not much later, the other
brothers have to leave as well for the same reason. 1270 Hakakian feels left alone by
them and after her father has a fit of madness, she is about to commit suicide. In the
end, she starts writing instead, but at the same time narrates that she no longer sees
herself in relation to her brothers and her father.1271 Indeed, they play a lesser role
from then on; it is only when the situation in Iran heats up that her father becomes
important again, as he is the one who decides to move the rest of the family to
America. In summary, Hakakian constructs her life very much in relation to both her
father and her brothers, identifying with and through them.
Other authors see themselves as practically mirroring their parents’ lives and
characteristics, such as Iran Davar Ardalan, whose parents both grew up IranianAmerican in the USA, but had moved to Iran still before the revolution and then back
again to America. Not only does she see her pride in Iran mirrored in her parents, 1272
but also her description of her parents’ desire to reconnect with their roots seems to be
a portrayal of her own quest for identity. 1273 At other times, she actively constructs
herself in relation to her parents, for example her love of tradition 1274 and her attempts
to balance out American and Iranian values.1275 She claims to share many traits with
her father that are central to her self-conception, like “his passion for exploring the
unknown and his creativity,” whereas she narrates her attachment to her mother to be
so deep, “it was as if we shared the same heart and soul.”1276 Both explorative nature
and creative potential to deal with her dual heritage on the one hand and spirituality
and the intimate connection to her American and Iranian female ancestors on the
1265
Hakakian 28
Hakakian 29
1267 Hakakian 30f.
1268 Hakakian 39
1269 Hakakian 43
1270 Hakakian 90
1271 Hakakian 139
1272 Ardalan, Iran Davar 1
1273 Ardalan, Iran Davar 11f.
1274 Ardalan, Iran Davar 7
1275 Ardalan, Iran Davar 81
1276 Ardalan, Iran Davar 102
1266
235
other hand become important to her identification as Iranian-American, as in between
cultures.
Similarly, Tara Bahrampour sees her identity mirroring her parents’ to a
considerable extent. Recounting both her father’s Iranian1277 and her mother’s
American growing up,1278 she narrates how these two very different lives came to
intersect. Her parents’ respective desires — that were fulfilled by meeting the other
— meanwhile seem to represent aspects of her own personality. She describes, for
instance, how her mother “conceived an urgent desire to see as much as she could of
the world.”1279 Her father, on the other hand, is non-traditional1280 and fascinated by
the freedom and possibilities the USA have to offer.1281 She sees herself as made up
by both of these tendencies, constructing her identity as a product of her parents’
characteristics. 1282
The most striking example for an autobiographer narrating herself in relation
to a proximate other, however, is Jasmin Darznik, whose book centers around her
mother’s story throughout the book. Shocked by a photo that depicts her mother’s
first wedding, witness of a previous life of her mother’s that she had never known
about, 1283 Darznik finds the very basis of her self-conception shattered. She then
narrates her mother’s story in order to come to terms with this ‘new’ past and with the
discovery of an older half-sister. She regards this ‘Good Daughter’ as her Other: the
daughter that grew up in Iran instead of abroad, a native girl instead of a “foreign
doll”1284 like herself, someone who behaves as is expected of an Iranian daughter and
is not obstreperous like an American one. Her sister then becomes an alternate reality
to her, the girl that could have been herself had the mother stayed in Iran.
To conclude, Iranian-American autobiographers often define their identities
through proximate others; be it through opposition to or admiration of their family, or
constructing their parents’ or siblings’ lives to mirror their own identity or provide an
alternate self. By tracing these others’ lives, the authors explore their identities in their
relationality. They try to come to terms with their family’s past and the personal and
political disasters that led to their leaving Iran and coming to America, and slowly
move towards a construction of a diasporic Iranian-American identification —
narrating others’ stories thus becomes a therapeutic endeavor.
Root Therapy: Anchoring the Self in Ancestry
1277
Bahrampour 17f.
Bahrampour 21f.
1279 Bahrampour 23
1280 Bahrampour 21
1281 Bahrampour 19
1282 Bahrampour 342
1283 Darznik 1
1284 Darznik 255
1278
236
Bernard Lewis has noted that already the Persian king Darius begins one of
his inscriptions with his pedigree,1285 and that this practice would become standard in
Islamic times to show nobility.1286 Hierarchy and its (re-)negotiation is highly
important to Iranian diasporic subjects, but showing (off) social position does not
seem to be the primary motivation for diasporic autobiographers to write about their
ancestors — it is, rather, for the first generation a coming-to-terms with the past and
for the younger generations an anchoring of an otherwise unstable and unrooted self
in its ethnic past.
The first generation seems to feel at odds with their forebears. Farideh Goldin,
for instance, narrating her fight against traditionalism, wants to make her peace with
the family’s past, especially her female ancestors’ lives: “My grandmother’s story had
jolted me. Hurting inside, feeling trapped, I sensed that I couldn’t go forward unless I
stepped back in time and understood the women who had come before me.”1287
Narrating her ancestor’s lives, Goldin is trying to accept Iran’s traditionalist past as
her own, and — quite literally — to incorporate her ancestors’ life stories into her
own. Her re-narration of especially her mother’s suffering resembles what has been
dubbed ‘postmemory’ by Marianne Hirsch: “the relationship of the second generation
to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were
nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their
own right.”1288 Gillian Whitlock observes the same when she argues that IranianAmerican autobiographies are “a form of memory produced by images, stories and
transgenerational hauntings rather than recollections of personal experience.”1289
Especially the family is a space of transmission of postmemory,1290 and Goldin’s
autobiography shows that in a powerful way.
Like Goldin, most autobiographers of the first generation are not completely
successful in coming to terms with their forebears. While she does write, for example,
about the time of her grandmother 1291 and describes a photo of her grandfather, 1292
Azar Nafisi remains alienated 1293 and confesses: “I never quite knew what to do with
these distinguished ancestors.”1294
Similarly, Nahid Rachlin includes short
descriptions of her grandfather’s and father’s lives, but cannot get beyond their
traditionalism.1295 Unable to accept how they had been conditioned by their socio1285
Lewis 22
Lewis 23, Misch Vol. 3.2 970
1287 Goldin 177
1288 Hirsch, Marianne. “The Generation of Postmemory.” <http://facweb.northseattle.edu/cscheuer/
Winter%202012/Engl%20102%20Culture/Readings/Hirsch%20Postmemory.pdf> (last retrieved May 4,
2012)
1289 Whitlock 2008:15
1290 Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard UP, 1997. 22.
1291 Nafisi Things xviiif.
1292 Nafisi Things 45
1293 Nafisi Things 2
1294 Nafisi Things 44
1295 Rachlin 23
1286
237
historic environment, she does not succeed in accepting these ancestors as part of her
Iranian heritage.
Other writers remain ambiguous about their relationship with their ancestry.
Abbas Milani, for example, does include his ancestors — yet only in pictures. Of the
twelve photographs included in his autobiography, four show ancestors and a further
five his core family; only three depict Milani himself, one with his son. It seems then
that he sees both his ancestors and his son, i.e. the next generation, as a natural
extension of his own life. Yet the fact that he does not mention his forebears at all
casts doubt on this impression. Especially considering his rebellion against his
parents’ traditionalism and his criticism of the old days, Milani’s exclusion of his
ancestor’s stories might indicate that he too has not made his peace with Iran’s past.
In contrast to the first generation of Iranian-American autobiographers, the
younger writers appear to record their ancestors’ stories more sympathetically and in
more detail. I argue that they thus anchor themselves in family history, portray
themselves as legitimate Iranians and construct a personal story of origin, a cathartic
process for many. Iran Davar Ardalan, for instance, fashions her memoir as a
narrative that incorporates both her and her ancestors’ life stories. Constructing a red
line weaving through generations of her family, Ardalan sees herself as intimately
connected to those before her, a perfect combination of her grandmother’s American
“pioneering spirit”1296 and “love of knowledge,”1297 her grandfather Abol’s penchant
for storytelling1298 and his belief in man’s free will,1299 her father’s creativity and her
mother’s spirituality. What is more, Ardalan makes a conscious and elaborate effort to
narrate her family’s stories to parallel her own life. She focuses first on her
grandfather Abol, who migrated to the USA to get an education. His story takes up
more than six pages.1300 Not only does his life (in contrast to her other grandfather,
who is largely excluded from the memoir) mirror her eventual decision to live in
America, but also her own belief in self-determination. Similarly important seems her
grandmother Helen’s story, which she tells in three pages, 1301 going on to tell their
story as a couple in a further four. 1302 While Ardalan notes the parallels between her
mother’s and her grandmother’s lives,1303 she also sees them as a blueprint for her
own: Helen’s move to Iran echoes Ardalan’s; her divorce from Abol mirrors her
mother’s and Ardalan’s own two divorces. Ardalan describes how after getting
divorced, they “pulled themselves together and continued to struggle for values they
had always believed in,”1304 thus casting a role for herself to fill out. The same goes
1296 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 26
Iran Davar 38
1298 Ardalan, Iran Davar 22
1299 Ardalan, Iran Davar 107
1300 Ardalan, Iran Davar 26-32
1301 Ardalan, Iran Davar 33-35
1302 Ardalan, Iran Davar 35-38
1303 Ardalan, Iran Davar 125
1304 Ardalan, Iran Davar 125
1297 Ardalan,
238
for their fascination with Iranian heritage like Sufism and Shahnameh 1305-storytelling
— Ardalan emulates these with her own broad and Americanized spirituality and her
journalistic storytelling. She concludes that her life in between countries closely
resembles that of both her mother and grandmother:
In the span of our lives, my grandmother, mother, and I had circled back and forth between Iran
and America. In our personal journeys, whenever we found the possibilities in Iran limiting, we
chose to invest in the other culture where our roots might take and actually blossom into
fruit.1306
Ardalan’s description of her mother’s youth in Iran and America1307 and her father’s
childhood in Iran and studies in the USA 1308 swiftly leads to their meeting and
marrying there.1309 Yet they also wish to reconnect with their ‘Eastern’ heritage and
move to Iran. Twice removed from ‘pure’ Iranianness, Ardalan narrates how her inbetweenness begins with the life stories of her grandparents and parents.
Nevertheless, she also talks at length about her father’s ancestry and childhood in
Iran, 1310 as if to make the point that the family is legitimately Iranian with a native
history. Much the same goes for her palpable pride to stand in a line with “thirty
generations”1311 of her father’s ancestors on the Ardalan family tree. Ardalan even ‘rediscovers’ her politician great-grandfather, unearths his story and incorporates it into
her narrative and self-construction, as she feels a personal connection to him — not
least because she had been named for him:
I knew then that I had to be the one to tell this story. I was to pursue a story that no one had
ever considered as a way of speaking for my great-grandfather. In fact, Davar’s life was
never talked about in the family, I presumed because of the way he had died. He had
committed suicide. 1312
After researching, she narrates his story as a patriot who fought for democracy in
Iran. Tellingly, she mentions how her status as his descendant impresses even famous
human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi1313 and thus fashions herself as carrying on her
forebear’s work for the homeland. It is her American education and her profession as
a journalist that enables her to uncover his story — in her construction, it is her
American side that has helped her deepen her roots. Ardalan then seeks to anchor
herself in the stories of her (especially female) ancestors, to see her life in line with
theirs, and thus also to portray herself as a legitimate descendant to both her
American and Iranian forebears. As she puts it herself, her life story only seems
“organic” to her, “because it related to [her] ancestors’ experiences.”1314
1305 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 19
Iran Davar 193
1307 Ardalan, Iran Davar 57-59
1308 Ardalan, Iran Davar 62f.
1309 Ardalan, Iran Davar 63, 75
1310 Ardalan, Iran Davar 59f.
1311 Ardalan, Iran Davar 242
1312 Ardalan, Iran Davar 266
1313 Ardalan, Iran Davar 278
1314 Ardalan, Iran Davar 295
1306 Ardalan,
239
Tara Bahrampour, while quickly glossing over her mother’s American youth,
describes at length her father’s Iranian childhood. Re-narrating the stories she has
heard from him about the family’s huge property and how he was treated with utmost
respect, even having been given honorifics, there is a distinct feel of nostalgia — and
a twinge of pride — to her words.1315 Indeed, Bahrampour seems to long for this
place and time she has never been to.1316 Bahrampour then expounds the story of her
father’s family, and finds a lot to identify with in her ancestors, narrating them to be
progressive, mostly secular, and in pursuit of happiness. For instance, while her
grandfather is deeply religious, he is also tolerant and progressive.1317 Her father is
the family’s renegade and “did not pay much attention to religion.”1318 She also
describes her grandmother to be very modern for her times, dressing European-style
and being “a firm believer in a secular, preferably foreign, education for her sons.”1319
Bahrampour thinks she has detected the origin of a family characteristic when she
narrates how the family had to endure a series of disasters and how father and aunt
“came away with an almost rebellious determination to preserve their happiness
through any catastrophe.”1320 Through constructed connections like these, she links
herself to her Iranian family.
However, when she watches her relative define herself in relation to her
family tree, she has found a far more rewarding way to anchor herself in her Iranian
ancestry:
‘I,’ she says slowly and distinctly, ‘am the child of that Haj Abdollah-khan. Haj Morad-Ali-khan
was my brother. I am that very daughter who went to America.’ ‘Ehhhhhh?’ And she gets what
she wanted — the man’s face slowly opens, his eyebrows rise as if he’s seen a mythical spirit,
his hand goes to his heart in respect. 1321
So later, meeting strangers in the village where her father used to live, she too
describes herself relative to her forebears: “‘I am the older daughter of the youngest
brother of Abdollah-khan.’”1322 She is amazed and moved to see how this triggers
“tears of recognition”1323 although the women had never seen her before. Bahrampour
then sees herself rooted in her ancestry through her father’s nostalgic stories of the
past that she re-narrates herself. She is looking for characteristics that run in the
family in order to link herself to her Iranian ancestors, and eventually delights in
describing herself in terms of her family tree.
While the first generation struggles to come to terms with their forebears, as
their stories reflect Iran’s traditionalist past, the younger generations are further
removed from these negative connotations and approach their ancestry with the
1315
Bahrampour 13f.
Bahrampour 14
1317 Bahrampour 15
1318 Bahrampour 16
1319 Bahrampour 17
1320 Bahrampour 18
1321 Bahrampour 334
1322 Bahrampour 340
1323 Bahrampour 341
1316
240
longing to reconnect. They detail their ancestors’ stories in order to find personal
characteristics or life trajectories mirroring their own or to prove to themselves and
the world that they are legitimately Iranian although born and/or raised on foreign
ground. Both first and younger generations, through referencing those who came
before them, attempt to mend their variously fractured identities as Iranian in between
Iran and America. Putting oneself in relation to one’s ancestors thus in diaspora
becomes a self-therapeutic endeavor, a finding that also contradicts James Clifford to
some extent, who has claimed that ‘routes’ substitute ‘roots,’ and that “practices of
displacement” are increasingly emerging as constitutive of cultural meaning. 1324
6.1.2 Others’ Stories, Collective Memory and Countermemory
There is not only a personal, individual aspect to the relationality of IranianAmerican life writing: I argue in this chapter that through the writing of others’
stories, Iranian Americans, much as Davis has argued for Asian-American writers,
“very consciously interpellate an audience”1325 and thus contribute to the formation
and continuous transformation of a collective memory and, eventually, diasporic
identity. The diaspora’s collected memory that is being produced in their
autobiographies can become collective memory through consumption.1326 Conversely,
the individual is always already influenced by and “piggybacks on the social and
cultural practices of memory” that his society has developed.1327
The concept of collective memory has introduced to cultural studies especially
through the work of Maurice Halbwachs, whose followers understand collective
memory as collectively shared representations of the past.1328 His notion that
“individual memories often, and perhaps always, have a social component”1329
resonates with my argument. Individual experiences are reinforced and validated by
peers and later generations, a process very much at work in published
autobiographical works. Collectively retained memories serve as the source both for a
group’s social identity and the individual’s notion of self.”1330 Ethnic autobiographical
texts function, according to Costantino and Egan, like a museum that preserves the
past. The author can select what is represented in the museum and can explain their
1324
Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA.:
Harvard UP, 1997. 3.
1325 Davis, Rocío 2011:11
1326 Kansteiner 186, who refers to Jeffrey Olick (“Collective Memory: The Two Cultures.” In Memory
and Power in Post-war Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past. Ed. by Jan-Werner Müller.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2002.)
I can only offer an analysis of the texts here and not their reception although this has been called for in
memory studies (Kansteiner 194).
1327 Schudson, Michael. “Dynamics of Distortion in Collective Memory.” In Memory Distortion: How
Minds, Brains and Societies Reconstruct the Past. Ed. by Daniel L. Schacter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1997. 345-364. 346f.
1328 Kansteiner 181
1329 Poole 152
1330 Cf. Halbwachs
241
significance to his reader. This becomes access to their own identification and to a
usable past for their community. 1331
While the Iranian-American diaspora’s collective memory is certainly being
fashioned in their personal memories, it is, I argue, especially their relative life
writing,1332 their stories of others, that is central to this communal memory (and
identity) formation. As Rocío Davis explains, it is “[f]amily memoirs [that] can
nourish and sustain communities by providing stories that explain the past and
heighten connections between generations.”1333 Through narrating and consuming
their own stories that span the generations, the Iranian-American diaspora thus is
slowly constructing a collective identity.
Yet the collective memory built through relative autobiographical writing is
more than social glue; having arisen out of individual memory rather than history
books, it is also a memory that contradicts dominant narratives in powerfully personal
ways. 1334
Evaluating and interpreting the past of their family and others,
autobiographers “reframe the present by bringing in into alignment of meaning with
the past.”1335 In this way, Iranian Americans are appropriating discourse about their
diaspora’s past (to some extent) and inscribe their own version of history, a
countermemory that stands against, questions and provides alternatives to dominant
narratives in the American public. George Lipsitz defines the term ‘countermemory’
as
a way of remembering and forgetting that starts with the local, the immediate, the personal.
Unlike historical narratives that begin with the totality of human existence and then locate
specific actions within that totality, counter-memory starts with the particular and the specific
and then builds toward a total story. Counter-memory looks to the past for the hidden histories
excluded from dominant narratives. (…) [It] forces revision of existing histories by supplying
new perspectives about the past.”1336
Iranian-American life writing then provides narratives of the history of the diaspora
alternative to the by tendency one-sided and hostile depictions of American
mainstream society that are a source of alienation rather than identification. For, as
Davis writes, “What it means to be Asian in the United States (…) depends largely on
what people choose to remember about the heritage country and their attitudes
towards those memories” [my emphasis]1337 — and much the same goes for other
ethnicities. Family memoirs are powerful in reframing the past, as the autobiographer
1331
Costantino et al. 108ff.
Needless to say, relational and personal life narrative closely intersect.
1333 Davis, Rocío 2011:25
1334 Hirsch 1997:22; also cf. chapter 5, section “Ethnic Journalism and Personal Experience”
1335 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, eds. “Introduction.” In Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of
Autobiography. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. 1-24. 14.
1336 Lipsitz, George. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota P, 1990. 212f.
1337 Davis, Rocío 2011:24
1332
242
who is not witness himself, but is a relative of the witness, is granted a similar
authority as receiver and preserver of his family stories. 1338
Relational Countermemories of Iran
While Iranian-American authors also provide other countermemories (for
example of the process of migration and adaptation in the USA), I want to focus on
relative representations of revolutionary Iran here, as the topic is especially fraught.
The dominant narratives of US society are challenged by nuanced narratives that add
additional layers and contrasting perspectives to the authors’ own through the stories
of others. It is mostly non-related people’s stories that are included and their identities
are often further obscured — not surprisingly, considering that living in and traveling
to Iran can be risky for those whose lives are deemed anti-revolutionary by the
government.
Abbas Milani, for instance, includes a variety stories of people who, like him,
had supported the revolution. Most of them eventually are disillusioned, like his
wife’s aunt Ameh who is, contrary to himself, “a devout Muslim.”1339 Others, like the
devout student Ali, remain loyal to the cause even after losing a limb in the war with
Iraq. Milani narrates how Ali had gone to prison under the Shah’s regime and had
served in the war against Iraq, and while they do not agree on political issues, he
admires his “civility, his compassion, his desire for knowledge, his openness to new
ideas.” 1340 Milani also touches on others’ stories briefly, such as that of the new dean
of his faculty who expels him for not being revolutionary enough: although he
becomes powerful and successful, in the end, he finally seems to get the punishment
he deserves. 1341 Fatimeh’s story is open-ended: an outstanding student, one day she is
targeted by the university’s cosmetic cops and resolves to leave Iran. Milani,
however, leaves as well, and he never finds out what has happened to her. 1342 And
then there is Majid, an opportunist “who had mastered the art of political camouflage,
who feigned faith for financial gains.”1343 Years after the revolution, he is a firm part
of the system, yet still pretends to be radical. Through this procession of mini-stories,
Milani presents to his readers a multitude of different shades of revolutionary
Iranians. These types each could stand for many, and are types that many of his
Iranian readers remember as well, thus reinforcing the diaspora’s collective memory.
At the same time, he provides a nuanced treatment of the supporters of the revolution,
and with that contradicts the oft-held American view of the fanatic revolutionary.
Instead, Milani offers a countermemory of Iranians as ordinary people.
1338
Davis, Rocío 2011:19
Milani, Abbas 233
1340 Milani, Abbas 240
1341 Milani, Abbas 243
1342 Milani, Abbas 245f.
1343 Milani, Abbas 246
1339
243
Although Jewish, Roya Hakakian tells large parts of her personal story of the
revolution through her Muslim friend Zaynab (or ‘Z’) and her sister Bibi and uncle’s
stories. Z’s household being very religious, it is through spending time with her that
Hakakian gets to know beautiful Bibi and the sisters’ old, gentle and devout uncle.
The uncle to Hakakian represents traditional, private Islam’s peacefulness and
passiveness; he is nothing to be afraid of, is “benign and irrelevant”1344 and ordered
about by the mother. Yet there is also Bibi, Z’s eldest sister. She is Hakakian’s idol
and when she starts visiting the religious uncle, listening to Khomeini’s speeches and
explains the ayatollah to Hakakian and Z as a sort of savior, Hakakian too starts to get
excited about revolutionary change:
I had yet to know who [Khomeini] was, or how he was going to make so much history, or what
Bibi’s revolution meant. But I was for it. In spite of all the ambiguity, I felt the certainty of an
irrevocable change. While Bibi spoke of her angel’s coming, she had become a heaven to me. 1345
The revolution remains intricately tied up to these two for Hakakian, as Bibi
continues to explain the political situation to her. 1346 Heading for the roof to call out
for justice as Khomeini had ordered, the uncle continues to represent religion itself as
it rises to power in Iran: “It was a beatific ascension: the holy man had emerged from
the forgotten crevices of the house and was aiming for the roof.”1347 Hakakian
remembers passionately feeling part of the movement,1348 but it is others who have
led her to this moment, to the revolution, she writes — “Javid’s words urging me to
think, Albert’s departure, (…) [the uncle’s and Bibi’s] tape recorder furtively playing
in a basement.”1349 Hakakian does not stay enamored with Khomeini, especially in
post-revolutionary Iran with its many restrictions. It is not, however, until she visits
Zaynab’s family again years after her own family had left the neighborhood, that she
realizes the implications the revolution and the ensuing war with Iraq had on many
Iranians: “In four years, Z had lost an uncle to grief, a brother to war, a sister to
prison, and a mother to insanity. And there I was, a helpless pet, cooing to her to
explain the inexplicable.” 1350
Hakakian then again narrates her experience of
revolutionary Iran through her Muslim friend and her family. Importantly, she does
not unequivocally condemn Iranians’ revolutionary sentiments, but traces the slow
evolvement of feelings not only through herself, but also through others — a
traditional Muslim family being as ‘other’ as it can get to a progressive Jewish one.
Her narrative is empathic and multifaceted, thus providing a chance for many a reader
to identify — who once may have felt similarly pro-revolution and afterwards
severely disappointed. She is thus contributing to diasporic collective memory and, as
it belies American dominant narratives, countermemory.
1344
Hakakian 99
Hakakian 108
1346 Hakakian 110
1347 Hakakian 111
1348 Hakakian 113
1349 Hakakian 145
1350 Hakakian 220
1345
244
It is important to note that the production of countermemory remains a thorny
and contentious issue. This becomes particularly clear with Azar Nafisi’s
autobiography which has been attacked by many critics especially of the diaspora for
reinforcing dominant narratives of Iran as uniformly repressive.1351 Narrating her life
to a good part through her students’ stories, at first glance, Nafisi describes girls of
very different walks of life: more and less religious, with more or less financial
means, of more and less traditional families, and with diverse moral attitudes.
However, ultimately, they all exemplify her own experiences and negative assessment
of the Islamic Republic. She herself confesses how others’ memories become her
own, how by going back to these stories, she re-creates them.1352 This becomes quite
explicit when Nafisi describes one of her students whose “face slowly fades and is
transformed into the image of another girl, also young, in Norman, Oklahoma”1353 —
her own. In another instance, she narrates another student’s marriage, only to go on
and write about herself.1354
Her students remain silhouettes of Nafisi’s own life
narrative and she admits to not having known any of her students outside her home in
real life, only through their stories.1355 These stories of the students are in her
portrayal typical of the the repressive atmosphere of the Islamic Republic.1356 Her
girls’ trials and tribulations in their everyday lives mirror her own and with it, so it
seems to the reader, those of Iranian women in general. Also stories of people outside
her secret circle underlie this mechanism of vicarious representation, as Nafisi for
example voices her contempt for the IRI through the story of a martyred student
supporter of the revolution. Yet despite precisely remembering the stories related to
him,1357 she can only think of him as a de-individualized type. So while Nafisi
engages in relational self-narrative and includes the stories of many others, her work
has lent itself to neoconservative narratives of Iran as a rogue state and orientalist
ideas of the Middle Eastern woman suffering and remaining without agency under
traditionalism. Her work certainly employs relative writing and thus starts with the
personal, but one might dispute its status as countermemory.1358
To sum up, stories of others are used to supplement the authors’ writing about
themselves and most often contribute to a more nuanced understanding of
revolutionary Iran. Readers thus are faced with a different way of remembering the
past, contradicting or relativizing dominant American narratives of (post-)
revolutionary Iran. These countermemories eventually serve as a collective memory
with which the diasporic community can identify, especially if they accommodate
1351
amongst others: Dabashi 2006a and 2006b; DePaul; Marandi; Rastegar; Rowe;
Nafisi Reading 74
1353 Nafisi Reading 113
1354 Nafisi Reading 260f.
1355 Nafisi Reading 58
1356 Nafisi Reading 72
1357 Nafisi Reading 252
1358 At least concerning dominant American narratives, for it might be considered a countermemory to
official Iranian narratives.
1352
245
once pro-revolutionary sentiments. Yet not all relative autobiographical writing serves
the development of countermemory; some appears to rather contribute to dominant
one-sided narratives.
Hi/stories of the Jewish Community
While the Iranian-American community is in the process of developing a
collective memory (and thus identity), the same is happening on smaller scales for the
different ethnic groups within the diaspora. This can be observed in autobiographical
writing for Jewish Iranian Americans, who make up for a considerable number of the
diaspora and have brought forth several authors, including autobiographers Farideh
Goldin and Roya Hakakian. These writers do not only contribute to the larger group’s
collective memory, but also write their personal narratives as ‘histories’ of Iranian
Jewry. As Goldin describes her agenda:
This book chronicles my childhood, my family’s lives, and the lives of women who went
unnoticed in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz. I yearn to acquaint my readers with the essence
of Jewish life in the shadow of Islam, the magnetism of Western freedoms, culture, and
technology against the lulling effect of Persian thoughts, customs, and ethics. This is my
story.1359
The importance of linking others’ lives to her personal narrative becomes quite clear
in this quote. It is not only her own story that she records, but her writing is relational
in order to arrive at a portrayal of Jewish life as it does not exist any more: A
collective identity that needs to be preserved through the narration and re-iteration of
personal stories, the creation of collective memory. While there are also public
histories of the Iranian Jewish community, such writers “position family stories as
authoritative within the histories of different communities and nations, thus disturbing
traditional hierarchies of knowledge”1360 and helping attain a sense of group identity.
In this fashion, Hakakian too traces Jewish life and especially discrimination
in Iran through her family’s stories. Her father, for instance, had experienced antiSemitism as a boy, but years later, in pre-revolutionary times, believes it to be extinct.
Her Uncle Ardi’s career seems to be a case in point — yet this proves to be a thin
veneer of Jewish safety when he has to flee the country in fear of a biased trial. On
the onset of the revolution, her father has to finally realize that anti-Jewish sentiments
are far from gone,1361 but it takes him a further few years to accept the inevitable:
emigration.1362 Hakakian narrates the Jewish community’s slow development from
optimism to departure through her family’s stories of integration and discrimination.
She thus arrives at a tale of how there was no choice but to leave, a narrative that
offers identification for the Jewish group from Iran that feels distinctly Iranian: an
1359
Goldin 4
Costantino et al. 109f.
1361 Hakakian 135
1362 Hakakian 227
1360
246
apologetic collective memory, much as I have described in chapter 1 “Explaining
Departure.”
Also Goldin in her autobiographical writing places a lot of stress on
describing her family’s lives, as already the title of her first chapter “Blood Lines”
shows. She details both her parents’ stories,1363
and her great-grandmother’s
sorrowful tale, 1364 but it is her mother who is most important to her. Goldin describes
in detail how she had suffered under the Jewish ghetto’s particular brand of
traditionalism all her life, having been sent away for marriage by her mother, who in
turn had endured the same by her own mother. The suffering inflicted by one’s own
family then is a tradition that needs to be broken. Goldin makes that clear when she
remembers how her mother narrates her wedding story to her when she is a young
girl: “Sweat covered my back. Suddenly, I understood her point. She could do the
same to me.”1365 Oppression then is carried on through stories, Goldin argues, and
laments that her mother’s story still burns painfully in her mind. She seems to be
trying to change this through telling her own story of leaving Iran.
Yet familial storytelling does not only serve the continuation of oppressive
traditions, Goldin admits; there is also the aspect of community cohesion. Her
grandmother, for instance, would tell her stories of the family’s past to keep her
connected, so that she “would become another branch on the family tree.”1366
Goldin’s autobiographical writing is not directed at her daughters, but reminds the
‘family’ of Jewish Iranians in America of the common past and fosters collective
memory and community cohesion. The community’s stories of migration are, argues
Goldin, eventually redemptive of its past: “I couldn’t be bitter. (…) [W]e had all
gathered with our own unique stories. What a long journey this had been for us all,
filled with biblical-like tales of our wanderings from Iran.”1367 Their common painful
lot, another exodus — this time from Iran to the promised land America — has
superseded old misgivings for Goldin. She seems to regard it as her task now to raise
her voice, so that the past will not be forgotten, so that the spirit of the ancestors (like
her grandmother that she feels hovering over all of them) will continue to hold them
together as a group.1368 For, as Goldin intimates, America felt like a safe haven when
the Jewish Iranians arrived — but then came 9/11 and now again, the group needs
each other.
Both Hakakian and Goldin then write not only their personal stories, but,
through them, trace the history of the Jewish minority in Iran. They offer narratives
that Jewish Iranian Americans can identify with, as they explain how there was no
1363
her mother’s story: 10-12 and 16-20; her father’s and grandparents’ stories: 12-16
Goldin 174f.
1365 Goldin 19
1366 Goldin 172
1367 Goldin 199
1368 Goldin 198
1364
247
choice but to leave discrimination and traditionalism behind, and how the migration
to America offers a new beginning for the group.
Relative Narratives of Diasporic Identity
As I have shown above, relative writing in Iranian-American life narratives
serves as a source of collective memory to the diaspora, which eventually contributes
to the emergence and negotiation of a diasporic group identity. Here, I want to show
specifically how these writers consciously or unconsciously use relative narratives to
narrate immigration and the shaping of the Iranian-American community. 1369 I want
to focus on narratives of the creation and early days of the diaspora, diasporic
Iranians’ relationship to the homeland and how autobiographers put the diasporic
condition into images. In all these aspects, relative histories and identities again figure
large, resulting in the construction of a diasporic identity that rests decidedly on the
relationality of the Iranian-American individual — Shahab Nahvi is especially
outspoken about this subject, claiming that “[t]o understand what it means to be
Iranian, one has to understand (…) what it means to be part of a group.”1370
Azadeh Moaveni for instance traces her family’s process of arrival en détail:
Having travelled back and forth between Iran and the USA since the 1970s, they do
not feel like immigrants, yet it is only with the revolution that they eventually relocate
to America.1371 Like others, they “would re-establish their social networks, assimilate,
and rebuild their lives, with a constant eye at how their co-exiles were faring.”1372
Alas, her family does not deal with the new circumstances as well as their relatives,
which causes them great grief. Moaveni remembers her family’s typical “mantra of
regret: if only my grandmother had brought her money over when the toman was
strong against the dollar.” 1373 She narrates how the situation had been particularly
hard on people like her youngest aunt, who “held out hope until doing so became
foolish”1374 and who had to bear that others in the diaspora and even in the own
family “had the nerve to proclaim the revolution a good thing.”1375 The internal
tensions of the early diaspora thus become visible in her relative narrative.
Throughout the eighties and nineties, the diaspora slowly settles in and gets used to
the new cultural atmosphere, a process that Gelareh Asayesh describes through
snippets of stories about her family:
Piece by piece, we started letting go of the old and embracing the new. I bought a pair of rustcolored corduroys. My sister acquired, amid great family tension, a boyfriend. Homajoon started
1369
Davis claims much the same for Asian-American autobiographers (Davis, Rocío 2011:17).
Nahvi 272
1371 Moaveni Lipstick 7
1372 Moaveni Lipstick 11
1373 Moaveni Lipstick 12
1374 Moaveni Lipstick 12
1375 Moaveni Lipstick 13
1370
248
cultivating African violets. Baba unbent enough to venture outdoors in flipflops instead of
proper shoes. 1376
Autobiographers like Moaveni and Asayesh re-enact immigration and the shaping of
the Iranian-American community through their family narratives. They offer tales that
many in the diaspora, having had similar experiences, can identify with, and that
make the past understandable to the younger generations. As a result, these relative
narratives bind the diaspora closer together and can be seen as a source of group
identity.
With the diaspora’s settling in, however, also its outlook on life, its habits and
self-concept change — and with it, the relationship to the homeland. By the time
Iranian Americans of the 1.5th and 2nd generations like Moaveni and Tara Bahrampour
venture on return journeys to Iran, the cultures of diasporic and homeland Iranians
have disconnected to such a point that the authors have to get used to a country that is
virtually foreign to them. Moaveni narrates her fate alongside her aunt’s and cousin’s
when she writes, “All of us, Khaleh Zahra, Kimia, and I, had arrived in Tehran as
Iranians of the imagination. (…) we could not navigate the Tehran of today, or share
in the collective consciousness of the Iranians who never left.”1377 Again, it is through
family stories (Khaleh Zahra’s mores, Kimia’s teenager life) that Moaveni narrates
how diasporic Iranians are trying to reconnect, are negotiating their different cultural
influences. Yet as her stay wears on and as she understands Iranians better, Moaveni
narrates her life in Iran more and more through the stories of young homeland
Iranians: “This generation taught me how to unlock the mystery of Iran (…). That is
why I cannot write about them without writing about myself. That is why this is both
their story, and my own.”1378 While Moaveni comes to see herself as not Iranian, but
Iranian-American, it is only in its relation (and otherness) to homeland Iranians and
their stories that diasporic identity can only be told and understood.
The writing of Iranian-American autobiographers then, while continuous in
its relative narrativity, eventually establishes a distinctively diasporic identity. This
new diasporic identity in a way exemplifies what Françoise Lionnet has claimed for
her concept of métissage: that it allows to articulate “new visions of ourselves, new
concepts that will allow us to think otherwise”1379 [emphasis original]. For while
Iranian-American autobiographers still narrate diasporic identity to rely on relational
and interconnected individuals, they introduce new images to describe this condition.
Such images are derived from other areas that traditionally provide identification for
Iranians and Iranians in diaspora, especially mythology and gardens, which I have
described more in detail in chapters 2 “A Usable Past” and 7 “Metaphors of Diasporic
Desire.” Jasmin Darznik, for instance, traces in her memoir especially her mother’s
1376 Asayesh
105
Moaveni Lipstick 86
1378 Moaveni Lipstick ix
1379 Lionnet 6
1377
249
background, arrival and assimilation in the States. This relative narrative lays base to
Darznik’s own existence as a diasporic Iranian. What is more, when the author,
towards the end of her memoir, describes her mother’s gardening activities, they
become a metaphor for the emergence of the diaspora:
All along the garden wall she’d planted vines for herself. Morning glory and honeysuckle,
nasturtium and jasmine. She hadn’t bothered with pots. No, my mother Lili still had too much
faith in her for that. The vines would soon outgrow the pots — she’d been absolutely certain of
it — and so she’d just planted the seeds straight into the ground, from one end of the garden to
the other. And she’d been right. The roots had taken well, all of them. It wasn’t quite summer,
but already the sun had coaxed blooms from the vines and sent their beauty tumbling clear over
the garden wall. 1380
It is the first generation who have planted the seeds of the diaspora by coming to the
USA. While taking root had not been easy, the diaspora is beginning to feel at home,
to be successful. Darznik narrates the history of the diaspora — and eventually this
metaphor — through her mother’s life, characterizing her own and diasporic Iranian
identity as based on the generation(s) before.
Individual loyalties and identities are entangled1381 and intertwined1382 to
Darznik, reminding again of vines, and we find similar images in several other
autobiographies. While Bahrampour uses vines to describe a relationality that she
wishes to find in America,1383 Goldin tells of her siblings’ “hands laced around each
other’s waists”1384 when she talks about the rare occasions her diasporic family finds
together. And Azadeh Moaveni too writes the intimate touching between diasporic
bodies to be a focus of group identification: “I felt the weight of my mother’s arm
around my shoulders, as she introduced me to a distant cousin, who smiled kindly.
Iran existed here, in the interior intimacy and rhythm of our lives.”1385 There remains,
however, a kind of longing in all these images: It is not yet summer in Darznik’s
mother’s garden, Bahrampour misses a close-knit family, and both Goldin and
Moaveni narrate how the diaspora feels as a group all too rarely. But the diaspora is
coming into itself, as Moaveni points out how sometimes there are moments in which
“we lived, collectively and wholly, in the present, an unfamiliar place we seldom met
alone, even more rarely together.”1386
Maybe it is thus that Moaveni eventually describes Iranian-American group
identity to exist simultaneously to individually different histories and characteristics.
She refers to a mythical story from Persian classical literature, in which many birds
go on a quest to find the fabled king Simorgh (literally si, thirty and morgh, bird), but
only thirty prevail and eventually understand that they themselves are the Simorgh.
1380
Darznik 322
Darznik 324
1382 Darznik 82
1383 Bahrampour 166
1384 Goldin 195
1385 Moaveni Lipstick 243
1386 Moaveni Lipstick 242
1381
250
Comparing the diaspora to the Simorgh,1387 she implies that they might not know yet
what they are searching for, but that in the end they will find themselves. It is in its
relationality, in the coming-together as a community that Iranian diasporic identity
becomes real: “Iran had been disfigured, and we carried its scraps in our pockets, and
when we assembled, we laid them out, and were home.”1388
As we have seen, the Iranian-American diaspora is still very much in the
process of coming into itself, and autobiographers capture this in their relative
narratives. While they describe through their families’ stories how social positioning
in the USA and the diaspora’s relationship to the homeland are being negotiated, they
also suggest images that picture the group’s eventual taking root, growing more
entangled and finding its identity in community — even if this still seems to be more
a wish than a reality. They thus give a sense of cohesion and closure to their own and
to their relatives’ lives in their relational memoirs, often consciously contributing to
ethnic discourse and thus to diaspora identity.1389
In summary, relationality figures large in Iranian-American self-narrative, be
it on the individual level of constructing personal identity through proximate others
and anchoring one’s ethnic identity in ancestral stories, or on the communal level of
narrating family stories as collective and countermemories, and tracing and founding
an emerging diasporic consciousness. Iranian-American authors see themselves as
relational and narrate themselves relational to others. Now, however, I will turn to the
convolutions of relationality to Iranians: the Iranian-American diaspora’s precarious
position between its infatuation with Western independence and its nostalgia for
Iranian interdependence — and its constant exposure to the allure of the other.
6.2 Between Independence and Interdependence:1390 The Allure of the Other
The self becomes relational to a large extent through its body as it becomes
close to other bodies and touches them, or establishes a physical distance. In a way
then, the following subchapter could also have been part of chapter 4 “Bodies in
Between.” Yet in the self’s Möbius strip that is the interplay of body and mind, it
seems to me that the body is decisively inscribed by its cultural environment. In this
assessment, I concur with de Certeau:
[T]he subject is marked as a series of (potential) messages or inscriptions from or of the social
(Other). Its flesh is transformed into a body organized, and hierarchized according to the
requirements of a particular social and familial nexus. The body becomes a “text” and is
fictionalized and positioned within myths and belief systems that form a culture’s social
narratives and self-representations. 1391
1387
Moaveni Lipstick 245
Moaveni Lipstick 246
1389 Davis, Rocío 2011:140
1390 Wang, Qi and Jens Brockmeier. “Autobiographical Remembering as Cultural Practice:
Understanding the Interplay between Memory, Self and Culture.” Culture & Psychology 8:1 (2002):
45-64. 49.
1391 Grosz 119.
1388
251
My point here is that a culture’s social narratives that condition the body also involve
narratives of relationality particular to that culture. And just as much as culture is in
flux — especially for migrating subjects — relationality is prone to change as well.
Its extent and forms depend not only on culture’s evolving mainstream narratives, but
also on those that are emerging out of contact with other cultures. For this reason, it
seemed advisable to include an analysis of Iranian-American relationality in this
chapter, while its links to the body will still be visible.
I argue that Iranian-American autobiographers construct themselves to exist
between opposing cultural forces that either pull them towards individuality or
relationality — which might be seen as part of the larger tug of war in Iran between
sonat (tradition) and tajadud (modernity).1392 They recount having been fascinated
previous to migration with what they perceive as Western individuality, with being a
single body — yet post-migration, Iranian emigrants experience nostalgia regarding
closeness between bodies, which they find wanting in America.
6.2.1 The Fascination of the Single Self: Being ‘West-Struck’
Gharbzadegi is a concept that is most commonly translated with
‘Weststruckness’ or ‘Westoxication.’1393 It had been the intellectual Jalal Al-e Ahmad
in the years leading up to the revolution against the West-leaning Shah that had
invented this fitting label for what he and many others had seen as a Westernizing
disease in Iran, corrupting homegrown culture.1394 Up until today, gharbzadegi is a
derogative readily used in Iran as well as in American diaspora for those overly
fascinated with the West and belittling everything native. It is used for those who fail
to adhere to Iranian tradition, exhibiting habits that are perceived as Western —
particularly ‘selfish’ individualism at the expense of the communal good. Abbas
Milani describes gharbzadegi especially well in his autobiography:
Disdaining everything Iranian was another fad. For many, Persian had become synonymous with
all that was abject, deceitful, and retrograde, and they distanced themselves from the very
culture they were born into and now felt superior to. For them, Western culture was irresistibly
alluring. Today much of this group lives in exile. Now they yearn for the very things they so
recently despised. Around them a whole nostalgia industry has grown, creating, packaging, and
reproducing the sounds, smells, and tastes of Iran. 1395
While rejecting communalism in favor of ‘Western’ individualism is part of this, as I
will show in the following paragraphs, Milani also makes a point in this quote that I
will only address in the next subchapter: the re-orientation of diasporic Iranians to the
values of a close-knit community.
Virtually all Iranian-American autobiographers remember their fascination
with what they see as the promise of the West: being free of the constraints of family
1392
Khosravi, Shahram. Young and Defiant in Tehran. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. 162ff.
Tohidi 185
1394 Al-e Ahmad
1395 Milani, Abbas 128
1393
252
interests, being a ‘single’ body first and part of a communal body only second. 1396
Farideh Goldin, for instance, traces back her desire to break free from Iranian
communality to her family’s traditionalism that suppresses her as soon as her period
starts and she is considered a woman: “After the initial hurt, I was content,
determined to be different, to look inside myself rather than to their world for
answers.”1397 Goldin distinctly remembers when she turns her gaze to America.
Receiving a delicious gift of chocolate by American humanitarians, she becomes
convinced that her life would be better in the States: “At that moment, I knew that I
was going to leave and find a new home, my very own place in the world. I knew that
there was hope in my future. For the first time, I started to dream of America.”1398
Feeling oppressed by her family’s stifling community, Goldin is enchanted with the
possibility of living alone, making decisions for herself, and live her own life freely,
without the chains of both community and tradition. To her, this life style of freedom
and the idea of the West are intricately linked.
But it is not only herself; her whole cultural environment of pre-revolutionary
Iran seems to be living in limbo between the pull of traditional Iranian and “enticing”
Western life style.1399 The Western ideas that they are imbued with at university
consolidate her desire to leave, to choose individual freedom over patriarchal
community. 1400 Goldin narrates being increasingly appalled by the traditional “culture
of conformity”1401 of Iranian women and cannot accept customs — like plucking a
bride’s hair in front of all female relatives — as a show of support. Instead, she notes
how the communal cheering is drowning out the screams of the bride, i.e., to her, the
oppressed individual.
While she remembers seeing herself as “an oddity, a loner, a defiant girl”1402
already before her first stay in the USA, this desire for being a single body instead of
being part of a community seems only heightened afterwards. Having brought an
excerpt of one of Thoreau’s essays with her from America, she narrates how it gives
her life new meaning and hope: “[A]s an individual — a new and delicious concept in
my vocabulary — I had the right to my own life. (…) It was mine and only mine —
and yes, in many ways, it was a love poem, an ode to myself, celebrating self-reliance
and independence.”1403 Goldin then narrates how her life in Iran could not but lead
towards fleeing the strangling embrace of community, towards choosing a life as an
individual, possible only away from home, in that cradle of individualism: America.
1396
Mahmoud Sarram might be an exception; he narrates himself to having overcome very quickly most
of his Weststruckness and having remained faithfully family- and tradition-oriented.
1397 Goldin 9
1398 Goldin 144
1399 Goldin 43
1400 Goldin 156
1401 Goldin 153
1402 Goldin 154
1403 Goldin 171
253
Nahid Rachlin observes, similar to Goldin, how Iranian society is torn
between East and West,1404 but how, at the same time, the traditional separation
between men and women remains intact.1405 Like Goldin, Rachlin and her sister Pari
want to break free from oppressive traditionalism and project their desire onto
America. Both are infatuated with Hollywood movies, as they transport them to
another, freer way of life.1406 Also the sight of Americans that live in their city beyond
the river, Rachlin remembers, is dangling the promise of individual freedom in front
of their eyes: “[S]ometimes (…) [we] watched the activities on the other side —
American girls riding bicycles, considered improper for Iranian girls, boys and girls
walking together, holding hands.”1407 After falling in love with an American boy and
spending time on the American side of the river — without the knowledge of her
family, who later condemns her behavior as selfish because it damages their
reputation — Rachlin recounts feeling different, but in harmony with her self: “As I
sped home I caught glimpses of my reflection in store windows. My reflection
seemed unfamiliar. There was a glow on my face, as if something was about to open
up for me. I felt light, as if flying in unison with the tiny circular balloon designs on
my dress.”1408 While the friendship with the American does not last, Rachlin is
determined to re-gain this sort of happiness and achieve the freedom to live her own
decisions. With her relatives threatening to arrange a marriage for her and terrorizing
her in other ways, she constructs America as the only place where she can be herself.
Goldin and Rachlin are comparably vocal in their resentment of traditionalist
communality, but even autobiographers whose attitude is less clear-cut write about
their disenchantment with Iranian relationality. Roya Hakakian, for example,
remembers her Jewish family’s rejection of her uncle’s Muslim fiancée — and their
eventual success in averting their marriage: “I became wary of my family, its
lugubrious underlife, its lugubrious wrath, and the lugubrious practices that had come
so easily to them.”1409 Again, it is the traditional community of the family that
oppresses individual freedom.
This is also the case for the 1.5th generation in diaspora, as we can see with
Firoozeh Dumas. She writes that she needs distance from her relatives as a young
ethnic-American adult.1410 Iran Davar Ardalan too, comes to the conclusion that
family do not necessarily understand her, and that she is an independent person. 1411
Similarly Gelareh Asayesh, who returns to Iran to visit her family and is thus
reminded of the merits of being a single person: “To be alone is wonderful. To be
independent, briefly in charge of my own fate, is even better. To enjoy these blessings
1404
Rachlin 40
Rachlin 32
1406 Rachlin 52
1407 Rachlin 94f.
1408 Rachlin 119
1409 Hakakian 63
1410 Dumas Laughing 85f.
1411 Ardalan, Iran Davar 263
1405
254
in the bosom of my family in Iran is a miracle.”1412 Such return journeys often initiate
reflections regarding relationality and individuality. Tara Bahrampour for instance,
back in the homeland with her Iranian relatives, remembers being afraid that they will
perceive her as too American and individualistic as she needs to be by herself at times
— while Iranian girls, her uncle claims, do not go out alone. 1413 She is all too aware
that Iranians might consider her gharbzadeh, West-struck, but muses that her mixed
background might be to blame: “Maybe, with my half-American genes and my U.S.
birth certificate, I was always too Western to ever be called West-struck. Even in Iran
I was never really on the road to becoming an Iranian woman.”1414 Like Dumas,
Ardalan and Asayesh, she regards relationality as an Iranian characteristic, while
deviation from it, individuality, is seen as Western — and as disloyalty to Iranian
culture.
‘American’ individualism seems particularly hard on mother-daughter
relationships, as it disrupts the traditional community of women in a household.
While Dumas has the feeling to be a horrible daughter because she does not keep her
mother company, 1415 Azadeh Moaveni recalls many arguments with her mother who
reproaches her for having taken on the “decadent” and “corrupt ways”1416 of
American culture — like for example individualism, that “American selfishness.”1417
Moaveni defends herself passionately in her memoir and criticizes that diasporic
subjects cannot just accept some American values and reject others like
individualism:
When it served her purposes, Maman embraced America and lovingly recited all the
qualities that made it superior to our backward-looking Iranian culture. (…) It seemed
never to occur to her that values do not exist in a cultural vacuum but are knit into a
society’s fabric; they earn their place, derived from other related beliefs. Maman thought
values were like groceries; you’d cruise through the aisles, toss the ones you fancied into
your cart, and leave the unappealing ones on the shelf. 1418
Moaveni eventually concludes that gharbzadegi is used as a “convenient label for any
female behavior that defied oppressive tradition.”1419 Through her return journey, she
connects with contemporary Iran and the opposition Iranian relationality — Western
individualism gains nuance for her: While tendencies of highly relational living in the
midst of an extended family certainly still exist in nowadays Iran, there are, after all,
ways to have an individual life as well, such as her successful career in journalism,
her own apartment, and her hours in the gym.
1412 Asayesh
138
Bahrampour 235
1414 Bahrampour 195
1415 Dumas Laughing 135
1416 Moaveni Lipstick 21
1417 Moaveni Lipstick 195
1418 Moaveni Lipstick 20
1419 Moaveni Lipstick 200
1413
255
Jasmin Darznik has to find other ways to make her peace with her mother’s
demands for an obedient Iranian daughter close by her side. With the family’s move
to America, the relationship between the two changes dramatically, Darznik says:
“We’d been a world of our own once, my mother Lili and I, a constant, intimate
twosome beyond which I could imagine nothing, least of all myself. Then we came to
America and I started turning into an American girl.” 1420 Her mother then starts to
constantly compare her to ‘The Good Daughter,’ a perfect Iranian daughter. Darznik
interprets this as reproach for being gharbzadeh in her mother’s eyes, for wanting a
life separate from her mother. Still, she leaves home and with it her mother, “as girls
in this country always do and no true Iranian daughter ever would.”1421 It is not until
she recovers her mother’s life story, especially the secret about her first marriage that
Darznik seems to want to get closer to her again.
To sum up, many autobiographers recount their fascination with what they see
as Western-style individualism and their desire to break free of the constraints of the
communalism in their Iranian families. For this, however, they are being called selfish
and gharbzadeh, West-struck. This is not a one-way tendency, however, as I will
show in the next subchapter that Iranians in diaspora also nostalgically remember
communal living in Iran.
6.2.2 Nostalgia for the Communal Self: Being ‘Iran-Struck’
Iranian-American autobiographers that in diaspora have achieved — or are
born into — a state of existing as a single person, free to decide about their own lives,
but also less enveloped by a protecting and loving community, often become
nostalgic for the close-knit network the diaspora has left behind. They describe their
yearning for community and deplore American society’s distanced and lonely way of
life. On return journeys, they describe the joy of re-gaining a large family, but also
remark on the difficulty of truly becoming part of Iranian-style communality again.
Yet others are convinced that such a way of living can — and should — be re-created
in diaspora.
Farideh Goldin for instance feels disconnected from her maternal relatives,
due to her mother’s outsider status in the family and her own consequent emigration
to America.1422 When she is shown pictures of the family, she grows nostalgic for the
missed family gatherings, for the connection that is not there: “She showed me
pictures of cousins, aunts, and uncles whom I didn’t know. I touched their faces,
trying to recapture the weddings and family gatherings that I had missed. I felt like a
stranger.”1423 Goldin recounts her cousin’s words deploring the lack of family
communality away from the homeland and, through them, seems to express her own
1420
Darznik 2f.
Darznik 3
1422 Goldin 31
1423 Goldin 35
1421
256
feelings: “‘In Iran, family was always around. Here, we struggle. Who knew this
would be our fate, living in ghorbat [exile], away from home in our old age.’”1424 The
author later reminisces how Iranian women’s talking to each other helped them deal
with their problems: “[W]omen could dard-e-del, speak of the ache in their hearts,
(…) they could share their miseries and be comforted by the knowledge of the other
women’s hardships.”1425 Goldin, however, away from Iran and such close-knit
community, does not have this kind of pressure valve. She has to share her miseries in
other ways — and in a certain sense, her autobiography becomes an attempt at
diasporic dard-e-del, [lit. heartache], or rather trauma-writing, an aspect I have
analyzed in chapter 5 “Between Fiction and Fact.”
Similarly, Nahid Rachlin describes women’s closeness in Iran, 1426 and
bemoans her lonely existence as a newcomer in the USA. 1427 Iran Davar Ardalan’s
feels lonely to such an extent that she decides to return to Iran, longing to reconnect
not only with her mother,1428 but also to let herself be set up in an arranged marriage,
so she can “be part of an extended family.”1429 And Abbas Milani’s assessment of
Americans’ individualism is less than positive: “What I once prized as the mobility of
American life now seemed the source of its rootlessness. The friendliness of
Americans in their first encounters, their cheerful faces, now often seemed to hide
lives of loneliness.”1430 Iranian Americans’ loneliness, virtually inevitable in the early
years of the diaspora, thus quickly turns around or at least dampens the desire for a
‘Western,’ self-dependent life style, as Gelareh Asayesh admits: “When I was in Iran,
I couldn’t stand that the houses were never empty. Now I suffer from a surfeit of
emptiness. A great fear rises in my gorge. What am I doing here in this country with
its silent neighborhoods and disconnected families?”1431 The authors profess to miss
the ‘old’ communal ways, where, as Tara Bahrampour claims, not only would family
provide each other company 1432 and eventually grow close, 1433 but would also protect
the individual — like for instance her cousin who marries a swindler:
It never would have happened in Iran. There, they could not have met this man in a
void; relatives and friends would have checked up on him, found out who his family
was, and helped make the decision. (…) But in America you can meet someone out of
the blue and all you know is what he tells you.1434
1424
Goldin 35
Goldin 46
1426 Rachlin 17
1427 Rachlin 143
1428 Ardalan, Iran Davar 151
1429 Ardalan, Iran Davar 156
1430 Milani, Abbas 257ff.
1431 Asayesh 57
1432 Bahrampour 164
1433 Bahrampour 166
1434 Bahrampour 154
1425
257
Their nostalgia for a communal self leads the authors to dream of going back home,
as for example Azar Nafisi does.1435 Bahrampour, in her urge to return, even calls
herself “Iran-struck” 1436 — overly nostalgic for Iran and for the sense of completion
she hopes to find in the embrace of her relatives there.
Those who venture on home journeys, however, while remembering joy at
reconnecting with an Iranian communality, also have to acknowledge that they do not
feel part of the community completely, that, coming from America, they feel like
outsiders. So although Asayesh recalls her joy at being welcomed back into her
Iranian family with countless and unspecified “arms reaching to hold” her, 1437 she is
also not able to rid herself of the feeling that to be Iranian is to be inferior and is
overcome by shame for her “instinctive attempt to distance [herself] from [her] own
kind.”1438 Similarly, Bahrampour recounts her delight at the intimacy between her
Iranian relatives and juxtaposes it to what she regards as distance between American
family members:
I like the touching. (...) Once in America, I forgot the pleasure of casually entwined fingers, of
arms linked together in friendship. (...) Physicality became confined to romance, and it was
many years before I began to remember the comfort that comes with owning, and being owned
by, a large, affectionate clan. 1439
However, also she does not feel part of their community all the time. This becomes
obvious when she constantly feels the need to go out and explore on her own, or
when she sits in on a traditional Shi’ite mourning ceremony and she cannot cry like
everyone else: “I feel left out, as if a great release has taken place all around me but
passed me over, leaving me empty of sorrow and devoid of catharsis that is the
reward for giving oneself over to a common story.”1440 Writers like Asayesh and
Bahrampour remember not being able to give themselves completely to the
community, and thus partially always remaining outsiders.
Some autobiographers, however, narrate appreciating close bonds — and even
advise against too much individualism, like for example Shahab Nahvi.1441 Others
find ways of recreating a version of such communality in diaspora, even if it is only
for a short time like Ardalan, who reunites with her family in America for a family
gathering,1442 or Moaveni, who regularly meets her cousins after work and, walking
home, tries “to extend the intimacy that had risen up between [them], like an invisible
shield, another hour, another block”1443 by linking them together with her arms.
Dumas recalls with admiration how her father and his siblings visit each other often
1435
Nafisi Reading 81, 86
Bahrampour 196
1437 Asayesh 64
1438 Asayesh 175
1439 Bahrampour 341f.
1440 Bahrampour 295
1441 Nahvi 292
1442 Ardalan, Iran Davar 198
1443 Moaveni Lipstick 236
1436
258
and are linked by an “unbreakable bond.”1444 She misses to be surrounded by relatives
like during her youth in Iran,1445 but at the same time narrates how the ties between
her family in diaspora are equally close, even though they do not live together:
“Together, my relatives form an alliance that represents a genuine and enduring love
of family, one that sustains them through difficulties and gives them reasons to
celebrate during good times.”1446 She suggests that this Iranian closeness is a value to
uphold, as it makes the lives of especially women easier and more enjoyable. 1447
What is more, she writes, the individual — and especially the immigrant — would
“benefit emotionally from maintaining those ties.”1448 While for Dumas, the ties of
the diasporic community are very real, to Asayesh, it is more the idea of sharing one
culture that links her to her relatives, be they in Iran or abroad. In spite of the
“viscous fog”1449 of distance that threatens to break the bonds between the members
of a community, it is similarities in life style that connects individuals across time and
space — be it cooking1450 or praying. 1451
Iranian-American autobiographers, while often expressing nostalgia for being
part of a close-knit Iranian family network, have to experience on return journeys that
coming back is enjoyable, but that they cannot give themselves to the community
wholly. However, many are trying to re-create and strengthen community in diaspora,
whether they re-connect with their relatives or imagine a mental-cultural bond, a
community of culture.
6.3 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have tried to show the ways in which Iranian-American
autobiographical writing is relational — and the ways in which is not. Firstly, there is
a strong tendency to narrate proximate others’ stories in an attempt to come to terms
with the past. Secondly, most of the writers retrace their ancestors’ lives in order to
anchor their own fragile and floating identities in their ethnicity. Both of these
strategies should be seen as therapeutic, as a way of dealing with the disruptive
experience of migration and diaspora.
What is more, through narrating family’s or friends’ stories, these writers
create a dense web of memories for the diaspora. They thus contribute to the creation
and continuous transformation of a specifically diasporic Iranian-American collective
memory. This happens not only for the larger community, but also for the JewishIranian minority. Furthermore, this very personal collective memory provides the
1444
Dumas Funny 13
Dumas Funny 96
1446 Dumas Funny 103
1447 Dumas Laughing 108, 110
1448 Dumas Laughing 160
1449 Asayesh 193
1450 Asayesh 199
1451 Asayesh 181
1445
259
diaspora with narratives alternative to those of mainstream America. The
countermemories that Iranian-American autobiographies develop offer a source of
identification for the alienated diaspora.
However, the autobiographers do not only construct themselves as relational,
as many remember distinctly how their fascination with a less relational ‘Western’ life
style had been one of the main reasons for them to migrate to the USA. Living and
writing there, they cherish their freedom, unbound by the close-knit family networks
they were born into. Yet as the diaspora feels more and more disconnected from the
homeland in terms of culture, nostalgia for the ‘ways of yore’ grows, and with it the
longing for relationality, for inclusion in a large, enveloping clan. Especially the
younger generations hope to find a lost aspect of their identity and do enjoy meeting
their relatives on return journeys. They have to acknowledge however that they never
completely feel part of the community they encounter, that they feel unable to give up
their independence.
While relationality is often portrayed as a central characteristic of Iranian
identifications, a close analysis of Iranian-American autobiographical writing reveals
that independence figures large in diasporic writing as well, be it as a remembered
occidentalist fascination with ‘Western’ individuality, or as part of the selfidentifications of diasporic subjects in opposition to a perceived Iranian relationality.
Independence and interdependence interlink and both become distinctive features in
different situations: Independence and individuality can differentiate diasporic
subjects from homeland Iranians, while interdependence and relationality help them
to demarcate themselves from Americans. As Dumas has it: “Without my relatives, I
am but a thread; together, we form a colorful and elaborate Persian carpet”1452 — and
a carpet is much more visible than a thread.
1452
Dumas Funny 103
260
7. Imagining ‘Home:’ Between Persian Paradise and American
Arcadia
That spiritual garden accompanies them everywhere.
-Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi 1453
In this chapter, I want to explore the ways diasporic Iranians use the image of
the (paradise) garden to talk about notions of ‘home’ and the transplantation of home.
Through this image, they negotiate their fraught relationship with Iran and
conceptualize the emergence of a diasporic community. This image is not only central
in their narratives because of its connotations of safety and unity of being in Iranian
thought and spirituality, but also because it echoes with the tradition of framing
America herself as an Arcadia welcoming immigrants. What is more, presenting Iran
as a prerevolutionary paradise and as a postrevolutionary fallen Eden caters to
American Orientalist views of Iran as intriguing and sensual on the one hand and
irrational and dangerous on the other.
7.1 The Image of the Garden Between Iran and America
7.1.1 The Paradise Garden
With a history ranging back at least to Achaemenid Persia, the paradise garden
has been at the heart of Persian cultures for more than 2,500 years. 1454 Featuring
prominently in age-old crafts and poetry, 1455 the paradise garden has evolved into a
powerful metaphor evoking feelings of harmony, safety, abundance, spiritual balance
and mystical oneness of self. 1456
David Stronach places the beginnings of gardening in Persia in the sixth
millennium B.C., when irrigation agriculture first began to be adopted in arid central
and southern Mesopotamia. He assumes that the walled garden came to epitomize
fertility and pleasure and became a complement to the temple, a place for the gods on
earth.1457 Later, in Neo-Assyrian times, the royal garden developed into a symbol of
1453
Rumi, Jalal ad-Din. Masnavi e Ma’navi. Book IV. Trans. and abridged by E.H. Whinfield, 1898.
<http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/masnavi/msn04.htm> (last retrieved January 31, 2011).
1454 Stronach, David. “The Garden as a Political Statement in Some Case Studies From the Near East in
the First Millennium B.C.” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 4 (1990): 171-180. 176ff.
1455 Moore, Charles W., William J. Mitchell, William Turnbull, Jr. The Poetics of Gardens. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT, 1993. 13.; Lohlker, Rüdiger, and Andrea Nowak. “Das islamische Paradies als
Zeichen: Zwischen Märtyrerkult und Garten.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 99
(2009): 199-225.; Khansari, Mehdi, and M. Reza Moghtader and Minouch Yavari. The Persian Garden:
Echoes of Paradise. Washington, DC: Mage, 1998. 149.; Ellis, Charles Grant. “Garden Carpets and
their Relation to Safavid Gardens.” Hali: Carpet, Textile and Islamic Art 5.1 (1982): 11-17. 11.
1456 Moynihan, Elizabeth B. Paradise as a Garden In Persia and Mughal India. London, Scolar Press,
1982. 2, 68.; Lohlker/Nowak 217; Ardalan, Nader. “‘Simultaneous Perplexity:’ The Paradise Garden as
the Quintessential Visual Paradigm of Islamic Architecture and Beyond.” Understanding Islamic
Architecture. Ed. by Attilio Petruccioli and Khalil K. Pirani. New York: Routledge, 2002. 10.; Hanaway,
William L. “BĀĠ.” Encyclopedia Iranica. <http://www.iranica.com/articles/bag-iii> (last retrieved
December 13, 2010)
1457 Stronach 171
261
foreign conquest and thus, political propaganda.1458
Achaemenid Persia saw
landscaped gardens, especially mountainous ones, that were certainly an expression
of wealth and power, as we can see in the reconstruction of the gardens at Cyrus the
Great’s Pasargadae. Its gardening is characterized by a new type of chahar bagh, i.e.
a symmetrical design with water channels dividing the garden into four quarters, most
probably referring to the four rivers of paradise.1459 Although the fourfold garden
came to be viewed as its most characteristic form, there is no simple definition for the
‘Persian paradise,’ as it came to be called by Classical authors: it “corresponds to
different forms, surfaces, and various functions, from a private garden or orchard to a
walled or not walled large park, a hunting ground or a zoo.”1460 Etymologically, the
word ‘paradise’ has been reconstructed from Achaemenid writing, from the Old
Persian paridaida, deriving from Old Iranian *pari-daiza (most probably from the
Persian-Avestan roots pairi (around) and diz (to mold or form)1461 that refer to the
wall around the garden, the hortus conclusus). The Greek word paradeisos was
clearly taken from the Old Iranian. 1462
The principal characteristics of the
Achaemenid palatial garden were preserved (at least in Iran) for many centuries.
The Iranian garden scheme should become a successful model: Such
enclosed, symmetrical gardens have been built not only in the whole Persian cultural
sphere, in Moghul India, but also by the Arabs who had adapted it after their seventhcentury invasion of Iran. They distributed the paradise garden anywhere they went,
and eventually brought it all the way to Moorish Spain. Spanish settlers in turn built
their own version of the walled, geometric garden along with their missions in the
American Southwest — the advent of the paradise garden to the U.S. should precede
the Iranian diaspora’s by more than two centuries.1463
Although the paradise garden is described in the Koran, and its adaptation in
many countries has been rightly connected to Islam, it would be wrong to speak of an
‘Islamic’ garden scheme. Lohlker and Nowak have no doubts that its roots go back to
pre-Islamic times and that also under the Muslim government of the Timurids chahar
baghs did not draw directly on Koranic ideas, but constituted a perfection of the old
Persian garden. At best, the old Persian scheme and Islamic influence can be regarded
as dialectic, but the assumption of an Islamic ‘Leitkultur’ is, in their opinion, a dated
essentialization.1464 It is, however, important to note that “[a]fter the Arab conquest,
1458
Stronach 171
Stronach 174
1460 Boucharlat, Rémy. “The ‘Paradise’ of Cyrus at Pasargadae, the Core of the Royal Ostentation.”
Bau-und Gartenkultur zwischen ‘Orient’ und ‘Okzident’: Fragen zu Herkunft, Identität und
Legitimation. Beiträge zur Architektur- und Kulturgeschichte Leibniz Universität Hannover 3. Ed. by
Joachim Ganzert and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. München, Germany: Martin Meidenbauer, 2009.
47-64. 47.
1461 Deckard, Sharae. Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden. New York:
Routledge, 2010. 4.
1462 Boucharlat 50. The matter remains debated among specialists, yet this etymology seems the most
likely.
1463 Moore et al. 207f., compare also Moynihan
1464 Lohlker/Nowak 212f.
1459
262
Islamic mystical tradition, much of it Persian, replaced Mazdian beliefs”1465 and that
in Persian language poetry the garden, the earthly image of paradise, becomes a
metaphor for Muslim spirituality, for the pleasures waiting at the end of the Sufi path.
The secular dimension of poetry, Lohlker and Nowak maintain, coexists. 1466
In any case, picturing paradisiacal nature in perfect symmetry can be seen as a
desire for an Arcadian paradise in which all movement has come to a standstill. 1467
Moore, Mitchell and Turnbull describe vividly the model of this orderly Persian
paradise:
It has a wall around it to exclude the messy world. In its center is a garden source, from
which channels carrying the water go north, east, south, and west, dividing the garden into
quarters. Each quarter is similarly divided into quarters, and, if the garden is large enough,
each of these sixteen squares is divided again (…) into another four squares, little paradises
nestled inside the bigger ones. Groves of trees or pavilions provide shade from the blazing
sun; spouting of falling water cools the summer air; flowers are chosen for their colors and
scents and to attract the birds whose plumage will vie with the flowers and whose songs
will counterpoint the splash of water. 1468
The confining wall or courtyard facade holds everything in balance1469 and the
gardens’ geometric patterns “express some vision of order—of symmetry (…) or of
regular, repetitive rhythm. [They] have affinities with verse, in which meter and
rhyme create patterns of sound.”1470
Moore et al. are right in claiming this
relationship of garden and verse, as the garden has, at least since the 13th century,
played a major role in Persian poetry, concrete in meaning and, at the same time, rich
in allusion.1471 It is important to note that this imagery of the paradise garden does not
lose any of its significance in modern Iranian literature.1472 Indeed, Khansari et al.
underline that
[i]n the Persian imagination, the garden is an all-pervasive image, so central to inner vision for
so many centuries that it is a kind of cultural memory. Shaped by landscape, by the
circumstances of history, by religion, and especially by a deep rooted tradition of mystic thought
and poetry, aspects of this inner garden appear on every side and at every level of life. Gardens
are a kind of language of the soul, universally understood, a swift reference to the state of mind
and spirit. 1473
Even — or, rather, especially — in diaspora, the paradise garden retains its
importance. Indeed, it even appears to be augmented through the process of dispersal,
and both secular and religious traditions seem to contribute to the construction of the
garden as a place of relief from diasporic existence, as a way of reconnecting with the
homeland, but also of firmly taking root in this new soil — and thus as a place of
1465
Khansari et al. 69
Lohlker/Nowak 217f.
1467 Lohlker/Nowak 223
1468 Moore et al. 13
1469 Khansari et al. 70
1470 Moore et al. 49
1471 Khansari et al. 149
1472 Lohlker/Nowak 115
1473 Khansari et al. 147
1466
263
identity negotiation. As Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn has observed: “When dealing
with gardens in general, (…) one deals with unspoken questions of identity.”1474
Nader Ardalan, interested like many others 1475 in the intimate connection of
the garden and Sufi thought, calls paradise “the place from whence [one] was plucked
and to which [one] yearns to return.”1476 Thus, the appeal of this idea to the nostalgia
of the diaspora immediately becomes all too understandable: for they, too, have been
plucked from Iran and they, too, yearn to return.
The significance of Sufi thought for the Iranian paradise garden holds true
even in the diaspora which has, to a considerable extent, turned away from Islam.
Firstly, the secular and the spiritual seem to be intimately entangled in many aspects
of Iranian cultures, such as in poetry, relationship to nature and especially to the
garden — and thus not easily shed.1477 Secondly, disenchanted with institutionalized
Shi’ism like under Iran’s theocracy, those in the diaspora who retain their faith have
often become interested in the much more private practice and thought of Sufi
mysticism — a school of thought that even appeals to many areligious Iranian
Americans, as I have pointed out in chapter 2 “A Usable Past.” And thirdly, as already
mentioned above, the secular tradition of the garden as metaphor is equally strong and
can be found on many levels of Iranian everyday life, as Khansari, Moghtader and
Yavari stress:
It is here rather than in houses that Persian life is fully lived. Few people cherish gardens more;
in few cultures are its images so pervasive. From the beginning, its water and trees, its flowers
and birds informed Persian religion, imagination, language, and arts, and this was so no matter
who the ruler or what the belief. It is as if a great flowering vine stretched back through the
millennia; blossom, leaf, and tendril unbroken by the swings of a turbulent and often tragic
history. 1478
The branches of this vine even stretch all the way out to the Iranian diaspora, but,
shone on by another sun, bear fruit that is different in appearance and taste: the
meanings of gardens change with the experience of migration, exile, diaspora, and
double loyalties.
Having left the homeland, diaspora subjects experience an often painful
fragmentation between Iranian and American identities and long for re-unification,
for the harmonious and undivided state of being that is to be found in paradise.
“Paradise is (…) symbolic of the serenity and peace of heart and mind that the soul
yearns for” 1479 writes Emma Clark, and for the diaspora, ‘paradise’ lies back in the
1474
Wolschke-Bulmahn, Joachim. “Introduction.” Places of Commemoration: Search for Identity and
Landscape Design. Ed. by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection, 2001. 1.
1475 among those: Lohlker/Nowak 217f.; Schimmel, Annemarie. “The Celestial Garden in Islam.” The
Islamic Garden. Ed. by Richard Ettinghausen and E.B. MacDougall. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton
Oaks Trustees for Harvard University, 1976. 13-39. 26
1476 Ardalan, Nader 10
1477 Clark, Emma. Underneath Which Rivers Flow: The Symbolism of the Islamic Garden. London: The
Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture, 1996. 30
1478 Khansari et al. 17
1479 Clark 11
264
homeland, but is also (re-)constructed in gardens. This comes as no surprise, as the
“garden is viewed as a defined space encompassing within itself a total reflection of
the cosmos. This concept (…) seeks to foster order and harmony in the beholder.”1480
Parallel to this Sufi interpretation, there is also the secular tradition, as Khansari et al.
describe the calming effect of the garden in Iranian cultures:
To allow that blossoming [of the withered heart] is perhaps the role of Persian gardens. That
is why they are treasured, why people make them in palaces and courtyards, even with one
tree for shade and a pot of geraniums for color, why people lay flowered carpets under trees
to define the space for their picnics. (…) Persians make gardens to give their hearts ease. 1481
Both secular and Sufi tradition construct the garden as a haven of peace, harmony and
a feeling of being at one with oneself — a veritable paradise for many in the IranianAmerican diaspora who experience not only the tug of several cultures and identities,
but also discrimination and hostility in their everyday American lives.
According to Rolf Blakstad, the garden can even be regarded as an “exterior
representation of an interior mutual state.”1482 Bearing this in mind, Iranian-American
gardeners seem to express not only their nostalgia for the lost paradise Iran — both
idea and actual soil — but also their wish for an existence in harmony with their new
environment, for their ‘transplantation’ to be successful and for their lives to flower
and bear fruit again. As such, diasporic horticulture stands well within the “ancient
tradition of transforming the desert into a garden,”1483 as it transforms at least a small
patch of the not-always-so-friendly USA into an embracing paradise, into home.
When there is no planted garden available, crafted gardens in art forms such as carpet,
tapestry, miniature and even poetry can take its place in offering a connection to the
homeland, a ‘place’ to feel at home in diaspora, or even a way of bridging the gap
between Iran and America.
7.1.2 Pastoralism, the Agrarian Ideal and America as Promised Land
But there is also a tradition of the garden image in America. (Or are they two
branches of the same tradition?) Pastoral writing has a tradition going as far back as
classical Greek and Roman literature, notably to Theocrit in the third century B.C.
and Virgil with his Eclogues in 37 B.C.1484 Not only is the objective of the pastoral
writer to “put the complex into the simple,”1485 but also to record his awareness of
displacement “from an integral, or cosmic, existence.”1486 This idea of returning to a
1480 Ardalan,
Nader 10
Khansari et al. 152
1482 Blakstad, Rolf. “Comments.” Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design
Research Centre 2. Rome, Italy: Carucci, 1986. 74-75. 75.
1483 Abdelhalim, Abdelhalim I. “Rethinking Paradise.” Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic
Environmental Design Research Centre 2. Rome, Italy: Carucci, 1986. 68-73. 68.
1484 Simpson, Lewis P. The Brazen Face of History: Studies in the Literary Consciousness in America.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana UP, 1980. 115.
1485 Empson, William. Some Versions of Pastoral. New York: New Directions, 1974. 22.
1486 Simpson 115
1481
265
primordial life in harmony with nature echoes with an Iranian-tradition longing for
divine unity in the paradise garden.
The pastoral ideal had come with the English to America, who, as Leo Marx
puts it, regarded it as a bucolic paradise or locus amoenus. 1487 Settling this new area
was seen as an “explicit recovery of Arcadia,”1488 and, as Leo Marx emphasizes, this
pastoral vision becomes the basis for “various utopian schemes for making America
the site of a new beginning for Western society.”1489 In New England, there is the
Puritans’ messianic pastoralism envisioning a ‘Kingdom of God,’ claiming an ‘errand
into the wilderness’ in order to create a divine garden. Later, we find a transcendent
adaptation of this motif for example in Thoreau’s Walden. The South however
approached the Arcadian image in a decidedly secular way, focusing on an
agricultural ideal.1490 Robert Beverley in his History and Present State of Virginia
(1705), for instance, casts Virginia in her abundance as one of the ‘Gardens of the
World’1491 — a literary image that should be turned to ideological uses by 1785, when
Jefferson issued his Notes on Virginia.1492
Thomas Jefferson built his Jeffersonian Democracy on the ideal of the selfsufficient yeoman farmer (in opposition to manufactures), declaring: “Those who
labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people,
whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”1493
This “tribute to rural virtue as the moral center of a democratic society”1494 still takes
the simple life, the return to a cosmological unity with nature, as its ideal and regards
the ‘garden’ America as the place where one can come closest to it in reality. Like the
shepherd who knows not of the complexities and immoralities of the city, the farmer
turns his back on economic growth, only producing for his family. Thus, he is free of
the tyranny of the market and, in this static existence, finds balance and peace — like
the shepherd does in Arcadia and the searcher of divine unity does in the garden. As
Henry Nash Smith reminds us, “[t]he master symbol of the garden embraced a cluster
of metaphors expressing fecundity, growth, increase, and blissful labor in the earth”
— in short, it would come to stand for “the promise of American life.”1495 Ironically,
in the South, the well-ordered ‘paradise’ would come to be seen, as Sharae Deckard
observes, especially in “the artificial, rational product of human mastery: the
plantation colony.”1496
1487
Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York:
Oxford UP, 1964. 3.
1488 Simpson 117
1489 Marx 3
1490 Simpson 118f.
1491 Marx 85
1492 Marx 73
1493 Jefferson, Thomas. 1785. Notes on Virginia. Query XIX “Manufactures.”
1494 Marx 123
1495 Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1950. 123.
1496 Deckard 8
266
It is exactly the garden America — the new continent’s wealth of nature —
that is the source for the regeneration that Europeans are said to experience in the
New World. As Marx has it:
They become new, better, happier men — they are reborn. In most versions the regenerative
power is located in the natural terrain: access to undefiled, bountiful, sublime Nature is what
accounts for the virtue and special good fortune of Americans. It enables them to design a
community in the image of a garden. 1497
Nature then is the magic ‘ingredient’ that changes immigrants to America, it
Americanizes them and washes away all the negative characteristics of human life in
general and European life specifically, until man has returned to a better, primordial
state of harmony:
The soaring faith of the American romantic affirmed the ability of the average citizen to rise
above his personal weaknesses and the traditions and institutions of his European ancestors
because, in the United States, every individual was in close contact with nature; the West was a
limitless national reservoir of spiritual strength. (…) The human condition of mankind, is [was]
proclaimed, has given way to an earthly millennium of perfect harmony in the New World
Eden.”1498
The American, tapping into the vast power of mother earth, in spiritual communion
with Nature, becomes the New Adam. Influenced by such thought, for example
Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 argued that the experience of the American frontier
changed people’s outlook on their culture of origin and Americanized them. 1499
Arguably, this idea of the garden America as an asylum for all people that had
been suffering in Europe, in conditions far removed from man’s ‘natural’ existence,
was later disconnected from the garden image. ‘The Promised Land,’ as it had been
known in Puritan typology all along, should become the haven for the “huddled
masses”1500 of immigrants from all over the world. America also should become a
refuge for Iranians fleeing revolution, persecution, the war with Iraq, limited personal
rights, censorship and economic difficulties. Having lost their home, and with it, both
their metaphoric and real gardens, they have come looking for an opportunity to
rebuild, as I will explore below. Their narratives thus refer to gardens of a different
tradition, but meet and merge with America’s garden image of herself. Iranians’ lost
paradise is regained in a country that has traditionally defined itself as a paradise for
every newcomer, a multicultural nation made by immigrants for immigrants. By
staking their claims to small patches of the ‘Garden America,’ Iranians become part of
this narrative.
1497
Marx 228
Noble, David W. The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden: The Central Myth in the American
Novel since 1830. New York: Braziller, 1968. 4f.
1499 Jackson Turner, Frederick. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In The Frontier
in American History. New York: Henry Holt, 1921. 1-38. Kindle Edition: location 98.
1500 Lazarus, Emma. “The New Colossus.” 1883. Inscription of the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor.
1498
267
7.1.3 The Market Dynamics of Longing for Paradise
However, one should also not forget harsh market reality next to these
theoretical-mythical concepts, notwithstanding their potency. For Americans’ interest
in Iranian-American memoirs can also be regarded as a — more or less conscious —
orientalist-exoticist longing for a primordial naturalness that they perceive themselves
to have lost. Deckard traces the desire for an exotic paradise in the history of
imperialism, as it “heightened in response to fifteenth-century European expansion,
increasingly produced by and veiling the material exploitation of Europe’s newly
acquired colonies in the Americas, and (…) served to register the nostalgia and
anxiety produced by the emergence of modernity.”1501 It is this modernist exoticism
that is also at work in representations of a sensual Orient, and in the commodification
of Arabic and Persian narratives (like Antoine Galland’s 1001 Arabian Nights) for
Western literary markets.1502 The desire for ‘authentic’ narratives of the other is rather
conventional, as Sonia Kurtzer remarks, as it creates a controllable difference and
thus confirms hegemonic culture.1503 With postrevolutionary Iran having become a
‘rogue’ state (or rather, having been portrayed as such by Western media1504 ), this
exoticism is joined by a curiosity about the hostile foreign, the anti-paradise or ‘fallen
Eden’ 1505 — a mixture that accelerates the dynamics of literary marketing, for
consumers’ voyeurism about Islamic countries is piqued even more. In any case, the
literatures/cultures of the Orient are being fetishized as they “allow metropolitan
readers to exercise fantasies of unrestricted movement and free will”1506 and calm
their feelings of low-level guilt at living in a first-world country by endorsing
multiculturalism and literature resisting oppressive regimes. Ethnic literatures, such
as Iranian-American writing, thus become highly profitable goods. At the same time,
however, we should not forget that to gauge exoticism is a highly complex enterprise.
Readers are not a homogeneous group, and a myriad of competing interests of
authors, publishers, audiences, and not least politics are at stake.1507 It is especially in
ethnic autobiography that the ‘postcolonial exotic,’ as Graham Huggan puts it, is
being appropriated and marketed, as it “signal[s] the possibility of indirect access to
‘exotic’ cultures.”1508 This is particularly true for autobiographical writing of Iranian(American) women, for they represent the ‘innocent’ female that is still being
associated with an exotic, paradisiacal Orient — brown women that white readers,
1501
Deckard 7
Deckard 13
1503 Kurtzer, Sonia. “Wandering Girl: Who Defines ‘Authenticity’ in Aboriginal Literature?” Southerly
58:2 (1998): 20-29. 20.
1504 Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of
the World. New York: Pantheon, 1981. “The Iran Story.” 74-125.
1505 Deckard 9
1506 Huggan 10
1507 Huggan 154
1508 Huggan 155
1502
268
riffing on Spivak’s famous quote, want to save from brown Islamist men. But also
male autobiographers grant a look behind the walls of the paradise garden.
Therefore, when Iranian-American authors construct prerevolutionary Iran as
a veritable Garden Eden, their descriptions of a strange but non-threatening Orient,
complete with enticing spices, vibrant colors and close-knit families, cater to
American exoticism — be it consciously or not. Furthermore, also their explanations
of a primordial, paradisiacal state of being that Iranian gardens appeal to American
readers, as many associate it with an unspoiled ‘naturalness’ of ‘Eastern’
spirituality.1509
Yet Iranian-American authors should not be unilaterally seen as subservient to
Western markets. Their nostalgia for the Iran of their past, influenced by the long
tradition of the paradise image in Iranian cultures, plays an equally central role here.
Particularly the gardens that autobiographers remember from their childhoods are
reconstructed as veritable Arcadias and acquire almost magical characteristics. They
stand for the divine oneness of being that Iranian Americans feel having lost, as they
narrate their identities to be hyphenated, fractured, even shattered, by migration and
living in diaspora. Paradisiacal Persia is lost with the revolution, however; Iran
becomes an anti-paradise and a paradise lost in the descriptions of autobiographers.
On return journeys, especially the younger generations hope to regain a oneness of
being, but have to acknowledge that Iran and they themselves have changed in
fundamental ways. Importantly, however, Iranians in America have taken to creating
new gardens, new paradises on American ground, and are thus very literally ‘taking
root’ in diaspora.
7.2 The Paradise Garden in Iranian-American Writing
7.2.1 Constructions of a Persian Paradise
I want to argue here that Iranian-American autobiographers construct
prerevolutionary Iran as a paradise. This might happen primarily out of diasporic
nostalgia, but significantly also responds to the more desirable part of many American
readers’ schizophrenic conceptions of the Middle East: not the image of Iran as a
hostile and oppressive society, but as the exotic Orient. Writers thus also highlight an
ostensible dramatic change of their home country through the revolution, a veritable
‘fall of Eden‘ — especially in some writers’ victimicy narratives, as I have pointed
out in chapter 1.
Firstly, the paradise garden is of great significance to the diaspora when
authors try to conjure an image of their home country and culture for their readers.
Emblematic of fertile soil and abundance, of generous climate and lush vegetation,
the garden serves as the antidote to prejudiced views of Iran as a country
1509
Huggan 158
269
characterized by deserts and instead helps construct an Oriental Arcadia. Writers like
Firoozeh Dumas, among many, point out the “abundant gardens”1510 to be found in
Iran. Aria Minu-Sepehr characterizes Iran’s gardens as “tree-stippled and verdant”1511
and explains that “[h]arnessing the earth’s potential was no small matter [and] stirred
the Iranian soul.”1512 The harmonious character of this Persian Eden thus not only
encompasses bucolic landscape, but also the Iranian people, who are a part of it.
Azadeh Moaveni describes a peaceful paradise when she writes how
[t]rees, flowers, the garden courtyard occupy a hallowed space in Iranian culture. Just look
through the photo albums of an old Iranian family. You’ll find faded images of parents seated
outside on a raised divan covered with Persian rugs, with children playing by a fountain, or
amidst a grove of trees, in the background. 1513
Gelareh Asayesh describes Iranian gardens in similar words, writing of her laughing
family on a Persian carpet in a sunlit garden 1514 and of sleeping to “the rustling of the
wind in the apricot trees, secure in the knowledge that almost everyone [she] loved
was gathered around [her] in that garden.”1515 And also Angella Nazarian remembers
her family’s orchard in her poem “Nectar of Life” that is embedded in her
autobiography. 1516 Moaveni’s, Asayesh’s and Nazarian’s presentations of Iranian
families in their inner sanctum, the garden courtyard, with children peacefully playing
and sleeping away, harmonious and tranquil pictures in which one cannot find a trace
of the hostility that Americans so often link with Iranians. Instead, it seems to be a
construction of the ‘Persian paradise’ before its fall: the revolution.
What is more, autobiographers like to point out that the ‘historical’ paradise
had been on ‘Iranian’ ground: “Some archaeologists even believe Iran is the location
of the Garden of Eden,” explains Dumas,1517 and Tara Bahrampour recounts an
Iranian man telling her: “‘Iran was the original spot where Paradise was supposed to
be (…). It says so in the Bible. The scholars have figured out that it was in northern
Iran, in the Alborz Mountains, to be exact.’ (...) ‘Paradise is an Iranian word. Even the
English is directly related to the Farsi. Pardis — Paradise, see?’”1518 This positioning
of the biblical paradise garden establishes a certain ‘historic’ kinship of Iranians to
Europeans 1519 — a link that I have explored in chapter 2. More importantly, it
collaborates with constructions of pre-revolutionary Iran as a paradise.
Autobiographers like Moaveni, Dumas, Bahrampour and Ardalan thus cater to the
diaspora’s nostalgia for the lost home country — but also to American audiences’
1510 Dumas
Laughing 165
Minu-Sepehr, location 131
1512 Minu-Sepehr, location 569
1513 Moaveni Lipstick 13
1514 Asayesh 87
1515 Asayesh 89
1516 Nazarian 82
1517 Dumas Funny 165
1518 Bahrampour 212
1519 Arvidsson, Stefan. Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science. Trans. by Sonia
Wichmann. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. 13; 53.
1511
270
Orientalist expectations. As I have mentioned above, the ‘Western’ imagination
concerning Iran is somewhat schizophrenic: While often seen as a place of oppression
and irrationality, it is also thought of as part of an exotic and sensuous Orient,
referencing a primordial state of being. It is the latter that descriptions of Iran as a
lush and peaceful paradise play on.
Significant especially to diasporic subjects is the narrative of paradise (and
thus the paradise garden) as a place of a universal oneness, a place one desires to
return to. 1520 This idea has traditionally had both mystical and secular importance for
Iranians. However, it gains even more momentum for the displaced diasporic subject
that pictures Iran as said paradise which it has had to leave. The implied promise of
oneness of self understandably adds to the metaphor’s appeal, as so many hyphenated
Americans experience an essential fragmentation of identity. Not only is the abstract
idea of paradise (as a state, not a place with specific characteristics) associated with
feelings of wholeness, but also the image of the walled paradise garden (with its
describable counterparts in real life) can be regarded as a simile for the self in a
harmonious, undivided state. Ardalan explains: “The wall acts as the container and
the garden or courtyard as that which is contained. (…) [M]etaphorically you can see
the container as the self, and the contained as the soul.” At the same time, the
experience of one’s self is intimately linked to the experience of the orchard’s
beautiful flora and fauna: “Looking inward, one reflects on the inner beauty created
by the Divine, looking outward, on the earthly beauty of nature.”1521
Thus, the garden signifies the wholesome self unfazed by threats from the
outside (such as divergent cultural experiences), a safe space protected and well
hidden by walls. As such, the garden metaphor can be situated within the one field of
meaning so significant to Iranian cultures: the opposition of outside and inside, public
and private or zaher and baten.1522 Only what is inside is safe — the outer sphere is
characterized as being potentially dangerous, uncertain and threatening, often in an
inexplicable, intangible way. Deceit, crime and pollutions of all kinds lurk beyond the
garden gates, the walls of the house, the family sphere. All the more paradisiacal
seems the safe orchard when entering it, as the hidden becomes revealed. Entering the
garden — often a contemplative place — can be regarded as getting in touch with
one’s self, or, as Clark explains, “[i]t is in the nature of Paradise to be hidden and
secret since it corresponds to the interior world, the innermost soul — al-jannah
[Arabic] meaning ‘concealment’ as well as garden.”1523
However, such spiritual connotations of paradise also cater to American
audiences’ Orientalist notions of an allegedly more ‘original’ Eastern spirituality. The
1520 Ardalan,
Nader 10
Iran Davar 91
1522 Ardalan, Nader and Laleh Bakhtiar. The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1973. 13.
1523 Clark 27
1521 Ardalan,
271
paradise metaphor in Iranian-American autobiography thus always oscillates between
possible receptions of other Iranian Americans and a more mainstream American
audience. Both however shed light on the self-constructions of autobiographers: With
the portrayal of prerevolutionary Iran as a paradise, they
nurture the diaspora’s
nostalgic self-positioning and engage in self-Orientalization towards Americans
society at the same time.
7.2.2 Paradise Lost 1524
Anti-Paradise: “What was now a prison had once been an orchard”
In the imagination of the diaspora, Iran — or rather, Iran before the revolution
— is constructed as an Edenic place with idyllic landscapes in the mountains and
countryside as well as peaceful domesticated gardens. These spaces are then shown to
be destroyed, taken away or otherwise changed through the revolution or the
following change in society. Such narratives of Iran as a fallen paradise answer to
both the diaspora’s self-distancing from the Islamic Republic and to American
audiences’ expectations. Yet the destruction of nature and the resulting feelings of loss
are at times countered by the hope to regain the lost paradise.
Afschineh Latifi for instance narrates a characteristic expression of loss by her
mother, who reminisces about her lost garden — a garden which she tellingly links
with the lost harmony of the family’s old life:
‘Do you remember our beautiful garden? Baba and I planted that garden together. I thought I
would see my children married in that garden. I thought Baba and I would grow old together in
that house. I thought we would be there for the rest of our lives.’ 1525
Latifi recounts how the intimate sphere of their house and garden are invaded by
revolutionary guards and after the execution of their father taken away forcibly by an
ill-meaning family member.1526 During a journey back, her own feelings of loss flood
back to her: “I went through the creaky gate and noticed that the fruit trees were gone.
All the apple and cherry trees, gone. The vegetable garden — also gone. But what had
I expected? That life would stand still? (…) I couldn’t stop crying. This was where
my family had been torn apart. This was where my life had been interrupted.”1527
Latifi’s Iranian paradise is irreplaceably destroyed and lost — both the garden and the
family’s happy existence before the onset of the revolution.
Rüdiger Lohlker explains how closely linked Iranian gardens, music and
poetry are 1528 and his argument is nicely exemplified by Ardalan’s grandfather
reciting a poem full of longing:
1524 A reference
to Milton’s work — which, fittingly, can be described as a pastoral epic.
Latifi 282
1526 Latifi 66, 81
1527 Latifi 302
1528 Lohlker, Rüdiger. “‘Garten’ als strukturelles Element des Imaginären im Iran.” Bau- und
Gartenkultur zwischen ‘Orient’ und ‘Okzident’: Fragen zu Herkunft, Identität und Legitimation. Ed. by
Joachim Ganzert and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. München, Germany: Martin Meidenbauer, 2009.
113-123.
1525
272
I long for the Garden of Paradise from whence I have come. Even though I have had a very full
life, the reason why I was rewarded with the companionship of Truth in my old age was because
of the patience I had in this world — the House of Sorrow.1529
The poem is ambiguous — characteristic for Persian poetry — and can be interpreted
to express longing for both the lost earthly paradise Iran that he had to leave in order
to lead a sorrowful life in diaspora and for a heavenly paradise, leaving back the pain
of old age and the world in general.
Those of the Iranian-American diaspora who embark on a return journey to
the assumed paradise Iran describe a decisive change in landscape, like Abbas Milani
who in his autobiography remembers a bucolic pre-revolutionary Iran replete with
gardens:
Evin was once an idyllic little village perched on the footsteps of a towering mountain renowned
for its crisp mountain air, fresh berries, and old walnut trees. A beautiful river carved its way
through gigantic rocks, skirting the village and its lush orchards. 1530
However, the new regime and its need to discipline its subjects seem, in Milani’s
eyes, to have taken over even Iran’s lush gardens and to have produced an ugly new
landscape, signified, fittingly, by the most notorious of Iranian prisons, Evin: “What
was now a prison had once been an orchard. (…) The giant prison, modern, multileveled, with a red brick facade, sat ominously in the corner of that yard.”1531 To
Milani, paradise has been compromised and the Eden of pre-revolutionary Persia has
been replaced by a hostile, oppressive environment — exactly, maybe, as many of his
readers expect it, as those of the diaspora disidentify with the powers that forced them
into exile, and as those of the American mainstream readership often foster an
exoticist view of Iran as a fallen paradise.
Thus, even the very act of returning home seems to change and destroy the
exile’s imagined paradise, as reality takes over and home does not resemble one’s
memories any more. This can be observed for example when Azar Nafisi writes:
Home was constantly changing before my eyes. I had a feeling that day that I was losing
something, that I was mourning a death that had not yet occurred. I felt as if all things
personal were being crushed like small wildflowers to make way for a more ornate garden,
where everything would be tame and organized. I had never felt this sense of loss when I
was a student in the States. In all those years, my yearning was tied to the certainty that
home was mine for the having, that I could go back anytime I wished. It was not until I had
reached home that I realized the true meaning of exile. As I walked those dearly beloved,
dearly remembered streets, I felt I was squashing the memories that lay underfoot.1532
In Nafisi’s simile it is not the domesticated garden that signifies paradisiacal
existence, but, reminding of pastoralism, wild nature. With living a life in Iran again,
she gains an ornate garden of reality — just as maybe she had hoped she would — yet
when she notices that in its place the mental image of the past paradise will be
1529 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 111
Milani, Abbas 156
1531 Milani, Abbas 157
1532 Nafisi Reading 145
1530
273
overwritten, she regrets having returned. Rather, Nafisi constructs post-revolutionary
Iranian reality as a fallen paradise which she rejects in favor of her ‘wildflower’
memories. This very clearly shows the priorities of a considerable part of the
diaspora, as they nurture their nostalgia in their autobiographical writing — but at the
same time cater to American preconceptions about Iran.
Childhood Gardens
Iranian Americans of the 1.5th generation, i. e. those who were born in Iran
but had to leave at a young age, nurture their own romanticized memories of the
gardens of their childhoods. These gardens are re-constructed as Edenic spaces of
magic and mysticism in which one experienced absolute happiness, joy and beauty to
an extent that can not normally be found. With their protective walls, they signify a
safety from all things threatening, be it from external physical forces or from the
more subtle intrusions of a new culture, language and thus identity. Therefore, they
are to be seen as symbols of home, of oneness of self, of rootedness in a most
proverbial sense. The lost paradise gardens of childhood equal the lost warm and
fuzzy feeling of a ‘wholesome’ identity. And yet, at times the image cracks and we get
an inkling that this is just a construction, that the author’s home is not the nostalgic
memory of the paradise garden after all.
Descriptions of happy garden memories abound in Iranian-American
autobiographical writing: Rachlin, for example, recalls her foster mother’s peaceful
and welcoming traditional courtyard1533 and how the “air was filled with the fragrance
of flowers.”1534 Gelareh Asayesh longingly describes the garden of her childhood as
an abundant paradise, as “a green jewel set in the dry hillside.”1535 She still harbors
many joyful and vivid sensual memories of it, olfactory (“jasmine scented the
twilight”1536), auditory (“rustling in the breeze”), haptic (“feeling [the] smooth
texture”), visual (“drinking in the sight”), and gustatory (“It tasted of dust. It tasted of
summer. It tasted of joy.”1537). She loves the garden and feels loved in the garden, or
even by the garden, as she explains: “The trees were as important to my world as my
friends.”1538 According to her description, one can almost imagine her as a part of the
garden, as a fruit of the tree: “There I would sit (…), my fingers questing greedily
through the dusty leaves, my hands and mouth sticky with the sweet red fruit.”1539
Wistfully, she admits: “I dreamed about that garden for years after we left”1540 . Even
though these authors have only experienced their childhood gardens at a young age
1533
Rachlin 4f
Rachlin 17
1535 Asayesh 70
1536 Asayesh 70
1537 Asayesh 71
1538 Asayesh 71
1539 Asayesh 71
1540 Asayesh 70f.
1534
274
— or maybe exactly because of this reason — they reminisce about them in a very
nostalgic fashion and construct them to be places where their lives had been perfectly
happy.
Furthermore, the gardens of childhood are described to be protected, as they
are surrounded by walls. Inside, nothing can happen to its inhabitants — an oasis of
safety in an otherwise dangerous world, as Tara Bahrampour explains in her chapter
“The Soft Garden:”
In Iran, everything is behind high walls. (…) You never know what’s inside. Our garden has a
tiled driveway, a family of cats, a canopy of sour-grape vines, and a small wading pool with a
hose to water the trees and cool the hot tiles; but from the street all you see are a few branches
hanging over the top of the bricks. It’s only when we go in or out of the garden gate that
someone outside (…) might catch a glimpse of our lives. (…) Just on the other side of the wall
(…) lurk ‘kidnappers, thieves, dogs, and other bad things.’ 1541
Being so protected and shut-off, the gardens develop a magical quality, a mystical
aura for those inside and even more resemble a veritable earthly paradise. For young
Dumas, this is linked first of all to the natural wonders, the plants growing and fruit
ripening in the orchard: “For as long as I could remember, I started each day in the
garden (…) I witnessed firsthand the magic that happened every night as I slept.”1542
After her family moves to Tehran, they do not have an own garden any more, but
Dumas still remembers the wonderful garden of her cousin: “Their garden, like other
private gardens in Tehran, was surrounded by a high wall, thus giving the whole place
a magical quality for those of us lucky enough to be on the inside.”1543 Obviously,
being isolated from the more mundane world outside, Persian gardens are
remembered to be places of a particular and exciting quality. Hakakian describes both
her family and her childhood garden in superlative terms and relates how they
believed that they “owed everything to the junipers.”1544 Even more to the point,
Moaveni remembers that “[t]o [her] five-year-old suburban American sensibilities,
exposed to nothing more mystical than the Smurfs, Iran was suffused with drama and
magic,”1545 stressing especially the family’s magical and carefree life inside “The
Secret Garden,” as the chapter is entitled: lunching with the extended family, being
close to loved ones, sleeping soundly (and even more safely) under romantic
mosquito netting, eating mouth-watering dates and baklava. A paradisiacal garden
indeed, and she recounts: “To me, it was like a fairy tale.”1546
Moaveni also remembers the “cool and quiet” orchard of her family and how
“[r]iveted by the abundance” she was. In that garden, Iranian culture has came alive
for her, a child of the diaspora, not only in terms of eating fresh mulberries instead of
1541
Bahrampour 54f.
Dumas 11
1543 Dumas 23
1544 Hakakian 21
1545 Moaveni 4f.
1546 Moaveni 5
1542
275
dried ones,1547 but also in finally understanding the diaspora’s nostalgia for the lost
Eden: “It was only once we arrived in Iran that the mystery of our life in California
began to make sense. I finally saw the world that had been left behind, and the world
our existence in California was dedicated to recapturing.”1548 Therefore, the paradise
garden, together with the rest of her joyful childhood experiences of Iran, provides
her with a sense of identity that had not been there before. Leaving that garden behind
and with it “a newfound sense of wholeness”1549 breaks her heart; she can only take
with her the memories of those few months which will color the rest of her life, as she
says.1550
Things are similar for Asayesh, who, years later in the USA, quits her job and
stays at her suburban home for a summer — a coincidence that unexpectedly takes
her back to her childhood paradise:
I had achieved, purely by chance, a reincarnation of past happiness. I lived a dream of childhood
days in Iran, when activity ceased in the heat of the afternoon sun, and the neighborhood
slumbered in silence, and my grandfather’s garden filled with the sound of the wind in the
apricot trees. The sun dazzled my eyes. The wind sang to me. The essence of my beginnings
rose like sap, infusing my here-and-now with the scents of a childhood Eden. Suspended in
illusion, I saw my past melding with my present. The boundaries of space and time were erased.
My life felt whole. 1551
Tricked by her senses, Asayesh experiences the wonderful feeling of being back in the
paradisiacal Iran of her happy childhood memories. Moreover, the sensual similarity
of her present with her imagined past gives her the feeling that her life is not
piecemeal any more, that it is whole. Thus it is the image of the paradise garden that
gives Asayesh a sense of identity and unity of self.
Also Farideh Goldin seems to harbor good memories of her childhood garden:
“In our large garden, I looked at the long rows of orange, tangerine, sweet lemon,
pomelo, and sour orange trees lined up against the two walls. (…) A delicate wind
swirled around the tree-lined courtyard, mixing the fragrances of orange blossoms
and roses.” And yet her garden experience seems to be not as embracing and
welcoming as others,’ as she remembers: “I chose the tallest sour orange tree, stood in
front of it, and wished to be as strong as it was, to stand as erect as it did, not bending
to the whim of others. I wished to be like its fruit, adding flavor to life, yet tasting so
pungent that no one would dare to bite into me.”1552 While Goldin apparently finds
comfort in the garden and derives a sense of identity from it, her desperate wish
mirrors a not-so-paradisiacal childhood and signifies a certain break with the
metaphor of the sorrow-free paradise garden.
1547
Moaveni 3
Moaveni 5
1549 Moaveni 6
1550 Moaveni 6
1551 Asayesh x
1552 Goldin 9
1548
276
Similarly, Tara Bahrampour feels safe in her family’s garden, but when we
look at her sense of rootedness closely, it seems shaky. A good example is her trip to
the countryside, where she is allowed to weave a garden carpet with Iranian village
girls: “It took me a few tries to loop it in evenly, and the girls waited as I did three or
fours strands. Then one of them pushed down hard on my looped yarns, and my little
row became part of the plush flowerscape. (...) I wished that day that I could be one
of those rug girls.”1553 The picture is clear: Becoming part of the ‘flowerscape,’ i.e.
fitting into Iranian society, does not come naturally to her, but requires a certain
effort. She wishes to be one of the rug girls, but seems to know that this is not
possible, that she is not one of them. The fact that Bahrampour chooses to record this
specific memory in this specific way in her autobiography makes it significant — all
the more so as it features the metaphor of the paradise garden, woven into a carpet.
The garden carpet thus stands for a sense of Iranian identity, an identity in which
Bahrampour feels she does not partake in completely. This comes as no surprise, as
the family does live in Iran for a few years but never really settles and ‘puts down
roots.’ Before that can happen, the revolution starts, their new house (including a
garden) is never finished and eventually, the Bahrampours move to the U.S.
In summary, a number of 1.5th-generation autobiographers locate a sense of
wholeness in the memories of their childhood gardens. Living in diaspora, they have
lost these gardens and, with it, a feeling of unity of identity. At the same time,
however, especially the sensual, mystic and ‘magic’ qualities that they associate with
these Iranian paradises might not only express their nostalgic desire for the lost past,
but also a more or less conscious writing for Orientalist expectations.
Return to Iran, Return to Paradise?
Many Iranian-American authors feel deracinated and never completely at
home in the United States. The experience of discrimination especially after the
hostage crisis joins forces with nostalgia for a life left behind and thus, there often is
the wish to return to Iran, a place imagined to be Edenic or garden-like. The craving
for a place to feel rooted in and to enjoy a harmony not found in the USA seems to be
satisfied for some of the authors — at least at first. Some others though have to face
the fact that the longed-for ‘paradise’ of pre-revolutionary Iran does not exist any
more — or maybe has been an imagination of the diaspora all along. Still others
experience that they simply cannot ‘take root’ there, that Iran for them is not a
paradisiacal place to feel a oneness of self, as their American sides want to be tended
to as well. Their lives resemble grafted trees, as Nasrin Rahimieh has rightly
observed. 1554
1553
1554
Bahrampour 79
Rahimieh 1992
277
The wish for the lost paradise figures prominently in Bahrampour’s memoir,
as she states: “I don’t want to be a traveler anymore. What I really want is to go back
to my old backyard (...) as the cool evening awakens the garden.”1555 The link Iran/
old life/paradisiacal garden becomes especially visible when we consider that the
whole second part of her book, in which she remembers her return journey, is entitled
‘The Garden Again.’ We find a similar theme in Moaveni’s book in which she
indulges her need to reconnect to her family’s roots and, at the same time, to savor the
fruit of the rediscovered paradise: “[G]enerations of my ancestors had eaten this
precise sort of apple, exactly these peaches.” 1556
For some Iranian-American authors, Iranian paradise gardens seem to provide
them with a feeling of comfort and rootedness — Bahrampour, for example, tells us
of her return journey: “Walking alone in Tehran for the first time in fifteen years, I
feel as if I’ve been given the key to a locked garden.” 1557 Yet mostly, IranianAmerican authors come to discover that their paradises only existed in their
imaginations and memories, when they are faced with Iranian realities instead of
idyllic gardens. Among them is Azadeh Moaveni, who analyzes the image that she
had of Iran before her return journey: “Where were the orchards, the old houses filled
with evocative scents and closely knit clans who spent their days cooking together
and puzzling the meaning of life over tea? Not only did this world not exist any more,
it had been replaced by something cynical and alien (...). Iran (...) had been wiped
away, replaced by the Islamic Republic.”1558 Similarly, Afschineh Latifi recounts her
despair when she re-visits her old family home and finally has to acknowledge that
her old garden — and thus her old life — is irretrievably lost: “I went through the
creaky gate and noticed that the fruit trees were gone. All the apple and cherry trees,
gone. The vegetable garden — also gone. But what had I expected? That life would
stand still? (…) I couldn’t stop crying. This was where my family had been torn apart.
This was where my life had been interrupted.”1559 For Iranian-American authors, the
lost garden becomes the image that captures a whole life lost.
Also for Gelareh Asayesh, the paradise her past seems to be lost at first, as she
is faced with the derelict state of her grandfather’s garden:
I bend my head to pass under the old doorway, walking through the dim corridor and into the
courtyard. My eyes are momentarily blinded by the sun. When I can see again, I stand still for
long moments, taking in the ruin of my grandfather’s garden. I came to Iran thinking I could
change the course of decline and diaspora and distance. Now I see, all around me, the full
evidence of the relentlessness of time. My American illusions (anything is possible) crumble
under the blue Iranian sky. 1560
1555
Bahrampour 255
Moaveni 46
1557 Bahrampour 234
1558 Moaveni 44
1559 Latifi 302
1560 Asayesh 43
1556
278
On another return journey, however, she arrives at a different conclusion, as the
paradise garden of Chehel Sotoon in Esfahan appears to be a place even where she
can help foster contact between Iranians at home and in diaspora, a place of serene
beauty where the ruptures of her life are not as jarring as she is used to:
Chehel Sotoon means ‘Forty Columns.’ We have come to the long rectangular pool that reflects
and doubles the mansion’s twenty columns, giving it the name. Our guide takes pictures of Neil
and me standing there. I offer to take a letter for him to America and ask him to pose for a
picture. I promise to send the photo with his letter, a letter from Isfahan by way of Silver Spring,
Maryland. He almost smiles. He takes his place in front of the palace, standing very still as if to
occupy a minimum of space. Water pours from a sculpted lion’s head into the pool, creating
circles that spread ever outward. Water falls from the sky onto his face. He looks into the camera
as if he is looking into his children’s eyes. 1561
The passage is ripe with doubling and metaphor: Not only are the twenty columns in
Chehel Sotoon doubled by the water’s reflection, the Silver Spring of Asayesh’s new
life seems to be mirrored by the silvery Esfahanian fountain. The doubling of the
columns in turn signifies the doubling in Asayesh’s life, her two existences, her two
cultures. Moreover, the American couple and the Iranian guide take pictures of each
other in front of the doubling garden fountain, connecting Asayesh closer with Iran
and the Iranian guide closer with his children in the American diaspora. Even the
diaspora seems to be in the picture: The lion, symbol of Iran at least since Safavid
times, spouts water which, like Iranians in diaspora, creates “circles that spread ever
outward.”1562 The water, notwithstanding its outward tendency, is not lost. It is safe in
the pool, reflecting the steadfast columns of the paradise garden mansion — a
necessary part of the picture, without which the ‘Forty Columns’ would not exist.
Similarly, the diaspora is part of Asayesh’s conception of ‘Iran.’
Especially the younger, American-raised authors eventually often reach the
conclusion that ‘taking root’ in Iran does not work for them, as their American sides
want to be accommodated, too. Bahrampour, for instance, muses about her Iranian
father and his close connection to land and gardens — yet at the same time, she
implicitly seems to write about her own feelings as well: “I have a feeling that Baba
wouldn’t build a house here despite the vegetable garden and the birds singing all
around. Baba wants his own land, separate from the family that loops around and
around itself, never letting anyone be alone. Maybe, in that way, he is a bit of an
American.”1563 Iran, for Bahrampour, does resemble an eternally Arcadian place, but,
like her father, she would not want to settle down in this paradise.1564 So she plans to
become an
old lady who might live far from Iran but would bring her grandchildren back here to discover
the places from their past that don’t change no matter who comes or goes. Fifty years from now,
they would find the same cool river and the same smell of mountain grass. They would find a
1561 Asayesh
159
159
1563 Bahrampour 312
1564 Bahrampour 342
1562 Asayesh
279
row of white poplars glowing in the sunset; and a husband and wife who laughed as they
grabbed at each other under the cows; and, inside the house, a fire in the grate, a table laden with
fresh cutlets and yoghurt, and a basketful of mint from a rained-on garden. 1565
The memory of an idyllic and garden-like Iran thus may not provide a place to take
root in, but, at least, a feeling of rootedness and identity. Also Iran Davar Ardalan
harbors similar thoughts, as she had tried to return to Iran for good, but never felt
completely at home. For her, though, this is something that connects her to her female
ancestors: “In the span of our live, my grandmother, mother, and I had circled back
and forth between Iran and America. In our personal journeys, whenever we found
the possibilities in Iran limiting, we chose to invest in the other culture where our
roots might take and actually blossom into fruit.”1566 Eventually it is the American
garden, the paradise for immigrants, that becomes home for Ardalan.
So while all authors that describe their return journeys are looking for the
oneness of identity that the Iranian paradise garden promises, most find their
expectations, built on nostalgic memories and imaginations, disappointed. Therefore,
some follow the first generation in regarding Iran as a fallen Eden. Others eventually
come to see a paradisiacal Iran as a memory or image that provides a sense of origin
and distinctive identity, while they take root in ‘Garden America.’
7.2.3 Paradise Rebuilt
The Iranian paradise garden can be regarded as an image for absolute
harmony. Such harmony, however, has been decisively interrupted and disturbed for
Iranian-American authors by the events of the revolution and/or migration. Thus, it
comes as no surprise that many want to re-create this space out of nostalgia, as it
helps them reduce the jarring distance between remembered past and being in
harmony with one’s new home. 1567 One could postulate that the re-creation of a
garden helps recreation in the sense of relaxation or relief. Undoubtedly, though, it
also means adapting the old to new circumstances. And in this sense, the re-creation
of a garden always also has the “potential for memory to be made, unmade,
remade,”1568 the potential for creating new meanings and, maybe, a new home.
So while we almost always find Iranian-American authors suffering under the
absence of gardens, most are also trying with a lot of effort to plant new ones
resembling the old — to establish a connection to a life lost, but also to plant
themselves firmly into the new garden called America. Often, the newly planted
gardens eventually signify a home from home and garden carpets become portable
1565
Bahrampour 342
Iran Davar 192f.
1567 Dennis, Simone and Megan Warin. “Domestic Temporalities: Sensual Patterning in Persian
Migratory Landscapes.” Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology 7.2 (2007): 4. <https://dspacesub.anu.edu.au:8443/jspui/bitstream/10440/490/1/Dennis_Domestic2007.pdf> (last retrieved November
9, 2010)
1568 Dennis et al. 6
1566 Ardalan,
280
home spaces. Still: the location of paradise (Iran? America? both, neither, in
between?) remains ambiguous in Iranian-American literature.
Looking for the Lost
Nostalgia figures large in the Iranian-American diaspora, and as gardens are
such a vital part in Iranian life, many miss them dearly. The lost garden becomes an
image for a whole life spent in the safe and treasured private sphere of the Iranian
home that had to be left behind. Farideh Goldin for instance recalls her father’s grief
at having lost his garden:
My father lost just about everything he had worked for all his life, the farm, the house, his status,
his dignity, and prestige. In his first years in exile, still hoping to return to Iran, he spoke
constantly of his apricot trees—little Persian apricots, the kind that simply melted in the mouth.
Now with the apricot orchard gone, along with the poultry farm, the house, the car, he couldn’t
bear to talk about them. (…) But I could always tell when he missed his orchard. He had known
every stone that had to be cleared, every piece of dirt dug out of his well to water the land.
Thinking of his apricot trees, his wrinkles deepened. He put his balding head between his two
hands, hiding tears.”1569
Also Sonia Bijan recalls her father missing his gardens, and Azadeh Moaveni, grown
up in the diaspora,1570 describes how hard the absence of gardens had been on
everyone around her: “The trauma of dislocation varied, of course, by generation and
gender. (...) But the loss everyone felt together, among the most acute, was the loss of
gardens. Trees, flowers, the garden courtyard occupy a hallowed space in Iranian
culture.”1571 The re-creation of such a paradisiacal garden with its familiar Iranian
plants becomes an obsession not only for Moaveni’s grandfather and father,1572 but
also Gelareh Asayesh’s whole family: “After we moved to the United States, my
mother and sister and I spent years searching unsuccessfully for jasmine like the
plants that bloomed on our porch in Iran, white blossoms with a dizzying
fragrance.”1573
The importance of these gardens on new ground lies not only in the
experience of harmony and general spiritual balance any more, but its promise of
unity 1574 takes on a whole new dimension for the exiled diaspora: the re-unification
with a lost Iranian past. Therefore, reminders of the past are the most priced feature,
and much effort is put into collecting and cultivating the ‘original’ plants, as Firoozeh
Dumas observes:
Outside the window, he could see the fruit trees he and my aunt Sedigeh had planted to remind
them of Iran. Their green thumbs had defied space limitations. In their tiny yard they had not
only an enormous fig tree but also a sweet lemon tree (a naranj, which is a cross between an
1569
Goldin 195
Bijan 80
1571 Moaveni 13
1572 Moaveni 14
1573 Asayesh 71
1574 see Ardalan, Nader
1570
281
orange and a lemon), a pomegranate tree, and a row of cypresses that resembled the backdrops
in Persian miniatures. 1575
The trees have special significance in the Iranian garden, as Clark mentions: “While
the cypress represented Eternity and the male principle to both the Persians and the
Mughals, the flowering tree represented spring, the female principle and the renewal
of life.”1576 The (almost literal) transplantation of this idea onto diasporic soil
signifies that tradition is unbroken and that the memory of the homeland is, so to say,
eternally alive. Moreover, for Dumas the garden even bears resemblance to Persian
miniature painting. Linking the diasporic creation to a time-honored and ancient art of
Iran, she seems to esteem the garden even more as it is, in a sense, not only a
reminder of a lost past, but also a way of tying the present closely to that past and of
imagining a certain unity.
Similarly, when Afschineh Latifi buys a house to settle down in, it has to be
one with a garden. She especially orders roses for her mother from a Persian
greenhouse in Los Angeles which remind her of the roses in the family’s old garden:
“We planted them in early spring, and one weekend in June we arrived at the house to
find that some of the roses had bloomed in our absence. Mom had tears in her eyes. It
took her a long time to pull herself together.”1577 In the Iranian garden, the rose
traditionally represents the beloved;1578 it seems that to the Latifis, the rose is equally
central and stands for the beloved memory, the home back in Iran, the past. The
garden reminds everybody, but especially the mother, of the happy old times back in
the home country — and brings back some of that happiness,1579 reconciliating past
and present at least to some extent.
New Roots and Portable Homes
As Gelareh Asayesh poignantly remarks, the USA are indeed an Arcadia for
immigrants: “That is why most of us come to America, I think; the grass is greener
and we want to grow fat and happy.”1580 Therefore, Iranian Americans create new
gardens not only gazing back into the past, but also with the intention to settle down,
to plant oneself firmly into the new place. Through gardening, they build a space to
feel at home in, they most literally stake a claim to America and start to take root.
Carpets and tapestries depicting gardens become portable homes that answer to the
diasporic condition — which often entails staying mobile and moving repeatedly.
They are part of a larger trend of locating ‘home’ within diaspora — in its community
and mobility.
1575
Dumas 153
Clark 42
1577 Latifi 317
1578 Blakstad 75
1579 Latifi 317
1580 Asayesh 108
1576
282
The recreation of very physical gardens is important for instance for Firoozeh
Dumas, who notes of her own new home: “The high point of the house was its
garden.”1581 Yet, unlike Iranian gardens, it is not surrounded by a wall. Thus, her
humorous story of an intruding dog defiling this sanctity has a quite serious
dimension: the gardens on new, American ground not always resemble the safe spaces
of the old land, they are precarious paradises that need protection and care so that the
re-created magic does not vanish, so that they remain a home from home in which
Iranian Americans can grow. The house and garden that Afschineh Latifi buys for her
family certainly is such a space, a safe sphere where they can be at home and feel at
unity with both past and present. Especially her mother loves this new garden:
She planted vegetables that first summer, as well as all sorts of herbs. She can spend hours on
her hands and knees in the dirt, digging, clearing, and pruning. She loves the feel of the cold,
damp earth between her fingers; it reminds her of the old days. On weekends, she and Baba Joon
would spend hours in the garden, planting, digging, and marveling at the earth’s bounty, and she
remembers those days as some of the happiest of her life. 1582
Latifi describes her mother almost as if she wanted her to literally take root herself,
with her hands in the soil — a displaced, but intact ‘family tree,’ a tree that once had
been firmly rooted in the paradise garden Iran, but which has been deracinated and of
which branches have been chopped off. Yet the tree is not dead: it has found new soil
and while the old wounds will always be visible, with good nurturing, it will continue
to grow. The physical garden thus becomes an image for the diasporic subject taking
root.
The same imagery can be observed when Jasmin Darznik describes her
mother’s optimism in creating a new garden for herself in California. Planting vines,
she is certain that they would soon outgrow their pots, and so she plants them straight
into the ground. Nature proves her right and soon the vines are blooming.1583 Darznik
here creates a metaphor for the diaspora’s taking root in America: Having been
abruptly transplanted, without ‘pots,’ taking roots had not been easy, but it had been
worth it, as the vines of the Iranian-American diaspora are now blooming in the
‘Garden America.’ Mahmoud Sarram expresses much the same, also using the image
of the garden: “You are like a tree that has been pulled up from an orchard in Iran and
transplanted in an oasis. You will grow here and bear fruit. The fruits will fall down
and leave their seeds in the ground, and other trees will grow. As time passes — and it
will pass quickly — someday you’ll have another orchard in the United States.”1584
America is an oasis in Sarram’s interpretation and Iranian Americans need only to put
down their roots and become a community.
However, gardens are not always available to Iranian Americans, nor are they
always the most fitting metaphor for their existence in between Iran and America and
1581
Dumas 144
Latifi 317
1583 Darznik 322
1584 Sarram xiii
1582
283
often moving between different places in diaspora. While the garden continues to be
the focal point, it is the garden carpet that takes its place, yet adds an aspect of
mobility. Iran Davar Ardalan, for example, looking for a way to feel unity as an
Iranian American, observes: “My uncle moved often in America, but wherever he
went, he would place his Persian carpet next to his bed so that when he stepped on it
on rising in the morning, it became his bridge between East and West. (…) I came to
much the same conclusion about the carpet being a bridge between East and
West.”1585 So for her and her uncle, the carpet, artistic rendition of the paradise
garden, unifies past and present, Iran and America. It becomes a portable piece of
home. The same is true for Darznik’s mother, as it is her carpet that signifies home:
“We wouldn’t stay long (...), but it was here that she unfurled her best carpet, a
pistachio green Tabriz (…), and hung it from the wall like a tapestry.”1586 And also
Bahrampour, when she narrates how an Iranian family slowly moves their belongings
and, above all, their carpets to the USA, seems to comment on the family’s concept of
home as not necessarily stationary: “[T]hey have been switching homes slowly,
transporting their possessions in large suitcases each time they fly to America. (…)
[S]pots of floor tile [have been] left exposed when the carpets were carted away.”1587
The deserted spaces of tiled floor show quite clearly: for this family, Iran is no longer
a paradise and they are leaving for what is in their imagination a new Garden of Eden
— a place to grow and to be happy. Again, the carpet becomes a metaphor for a new,
diasporic condition of ‘mobile rootedness,’ at home both in Iran and in America.
For others, ‘roots’ are even more intangible and fleeting. Moaveni for instance
eventually comes to locate the notion of home in the community of Iranians,
wherever they are:
We were all displaced, whether internally, on the streets of Tehran, captives in living rooms,
strangers in our own country, or externally, in exile, sitting in this New York bar, foreigners in a
foreign country, at home together. (…) we would remain adrift. But the bridge between Iran and
the past, Iran and the future, between exile and homeland, existed at these tables — in kitchens,
in bars, in Tehran or Manhattan — where we forgot about the world outside. Iran had been
disfigured, and we carried its scraps in our pockets, and when we assembled, we laid them out,
and were home.”1588
It is the ‘scraps’ of Iran that can be found in fellow Iranian Americans that make up
‘Iran’ and ethnic rootedness for her. Only in community, perennially mobile or
‘adrift,’ does Moaveni find a place to call home. Tara Bahrampour experiences a
similar ambiguousness about where she belongs and expresses it most vividly at the
very end of her book, when she describes a game that she remembers from her Iranian
childhood:
1585 Ardalan,
Iran Davar 285
Darznik 273
1587 Bahrampour 221
1588 Moaveni Lipstick 246
1586
284
It calls for four people to stand beside four trees in a wide-open square of grass. The fifth one
stands in the center, and at a signal we run, trying to switch trees without the middle person
getting there before us. The pattern is circular and endless. After each run, someone is always
left floating in the middle of the lawn. The floater cries out and the rest of us pick a direction and
run blindly until we hit a tree and whip our arms around it. We stop with a jerk, breathless,
relieved to be holding on to the solid trunk. And then we look around to see where we are. 1589
The garden of diasporic existence is not a peaceful place to take root for Bahrampour;
rather, it has become an open space where people float and run. Running blindly in
between trees, everything is in limbo and the players are in danger of losing hold.
Only every once in a while, a tree gives a feeling of relief — before the game starts
anew. For these authors, Iranian-American identity has to be just as mobile as they
narrate themselves. Azar Nafisi maybe puts it best, when she writes: “And I know
now that my world (…) will be forever a ‘portable world.’ I left Iran, but Iran did not
leave me.”1590 ‘Home’ thus increasingly seems to become mobile to diasporic
Iranians, moving from the image of the garden to the garden carpet and even more
abstract terms such as community and eternal floating.
7.3 Conclusion
Traditionally of mystical and secular importance for Iranians, the narrative of
the paradise garden becomes central for Iranian Americans as it comes to stand not
only for cosmological harmony and oneness of self — bliss for fractured diasporic
identities — but also for the very notion of ‘home.’ Iran thus is constructed as a
paradise in the narrative of the diaspora, a place of eternal tranquility and serene
stand-still to which the individual wants to return in order to become one again with
her innermost self. Yet this garden-like Iran is subsequently presented as a lost and
fallen Eden, as it is shown to be destroyed, taken away or otherwise changed through
the revolution. Both of these narratives respond to exoticist notions of Iran as part of
an allegedly primordial Orient — paradisiacal and sensual on the one hand, irrational
and threatening on the other.
Suffering under the absence of both the paradise gardens of the past as well as
the oneness of identity that they are related to, Iranian-American diasporic writers
have taken not only to reminiscing about lost gardens in their autobiographies, but
also to narrating how they and their families build new ones on American ground.
These new gardens serve several purposes: they are reconstructions of the Iranian
past, but, at the same time, refer to an American present — and future. Thus, Iranian
Americans literally claim a part of the ‘Garden America,’ the purported paradise of
the immigrant, as their own, plant themselves onto a new continent and become part
of the jungle of cultures and identities that is America.
1589
1590
Bahrampour 357
Nafisi Reading 341
285
Yet the garden as a metaphor for home also has to adapt to the diaspora’s
increased mobility: It is at times reincarnated in the portable garden carpet, or
replaced by even more ‘unlocalized’ metaphors, mirroring how, as I have pointed out
in 0.4 “Theory and Methodology,” individual identities become more and more fluid
in a globalized world, and how diasporic subjects are increasingly deterritorialized.
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8. Conclusion
In the previous chapters, I have explored some of the most predominant
strategies that Iranian-American autobiographers employ in constructing their
identities. My research was guided by the question of how these writers narrate
themselves as they are so precariously suspended between cultures: The first
generation on the one hand feel estranged from Iran, which has changed dramatically
since the revolution. On the other hand, they now live in the United States, whose
cultures they regard to be substantially different from Iranian cultures and where they
rarely feel completely at ease. Iranian-Americans of the younger generations are
confronted with the difficult task of coming to terms with the diaspora’s nostalgia for
a place that no longer exists and, especially in the face of their American
socialization, with its politically fraught heritage. All of them have to respond to the
question, ‘How can one be Iranian-American?’ — particularly after discrimination
against Middle Eastern people has soared to new heights in the aftermath of
September 11, 2001.
Their answers to this question, however, are of irreducible complexity. How
can one provide a coherent synthesis of a field that is more diverse than any other —
individual identity? An analysis that does not want to oversimplify and engage in
reductionist generalizations always needs to allow for inconsistencies and
contradictions, for divergent narratives and a multiplicity of possible identifications.
While I will not be able to detail the diversity of self-constructions in this conclusion,
I have given ample space to them in the analysis chapters. Here, I will mainly
summarize tendencies of identification that I have found to transcend single
autobiographers.
In order to gain insight into the self-constructions of Iranian Americans, I
have examined a core corpus of thirteen autobiographies and have included additional
material from a wider corpus of ten autobiographies. Regarding selves and their
narratives as constructed and fluid, I have read these Iranian-American
autobiographies not as information about the author’s past experience, but as
subjective memory, and thus as information about the self’s current constitution and
situation. Autobiographical narratives as a performance of identity are also always
fraught with politics and intentions. This is why I have argued that one should not
forget that the construction and negotiation of identity rarely, if ever, happens in
isolation: Autobiographers always have specific audiences in mind — their own
group, the public at large, those interested in human/women’s rights, et cetera. Also,
they are influenced by publishers, who try to anticipate what will sell on the market.
Consequently, the likely effects of others’ expectations (the Iranian diaspora, the book
markets and publishers) have to be kept in mind when studying these
autobiographies.
287
In my analysis, I have first explored how these autobiographers narrate their
past, both the more immediate events of the revolution and the distant, mythical past
which they regard their culture to be rooted in. As I have delineated, all of them
decidedly dissociate themselves from the Islamic Republic, evoking themselves as
victims and in danger of losing their ‘real’ identity. The religious fundamentalism of
(post)revolutionary Iran is traced back to an underlying oppressive traditionalism that
the writers — particularly women and Jews — narrate having had to flee in order to
remain true to themselves. Therefore, Islam is constructed as a gloomy and alienating
presence, and as a religion that the autobiographers never really believed in, or only
in private. Consequently, the authors distance ‘authentic’ Iranian cultural identity
from Islam and Arab influence and stress a Persian, Zoroastrian past. Whereas
institutionalized, political Islam is generally condemned, some writers seek to frame
their own take on Islam as a very private, tolerant belief. These re-narrations clearly
show that memory and identity are closely linked: As religious identity is rendered
inaccessible by the events and effects of the revolution, Iranian-American authors
develop a new identity based on memories of victimhood and an alternative myth of
origin. Ethnic autobiographers thus have to be seen as protagonists in the creation of a
new diasporic collective memory and identity. Also, the writers try to influence the
attitudes of their new compatriots, thus carving out a niche for the diaspora within
American society.
In part two, I have explored how the writers narrate the ‘physical’ realities of
language (in)ability and the visibility of otherness in their bodies. They remember
both to be stubborn and more resistant to change than they want them to be. Here, in
contrast to part one, I have found that the self-constructions of the first generation
differ from those of younger generations, as the former, hoping to return to Iran
eventually, tended to emphasize that they had remained ‘authentic’ Iranians, while the
latter tend to identify with American language and body cultures. This showcases how
ethnic identities are always fluid and contested.
So while many of the first generation show themselves to acquire English
quickly, they insist that this is a decidedly Iranian trait. In contrast to that, the 1.5th
generation narrate their alienation with their parents’ deficient English skills, but they
eventually construct themselves to have found a truce with their Iranian heritage.
Different still, the second generation struggle with the schizophrenia of bilingualism,
feeling like two persons in one body, but deficient in at least one language. Although
they evoke a decidedly hybrid or diasporic self-conceptualization in the end, their
narratives of painful in-between-ness make clear that positive conceptions of
hybridity, such as Bhabha’s Third Space, remain mostly meaningless to such
fragmented identities. Regardless of generation, however, most of them construct
themselves as Iranian-American — even if in very different ways. This is also true for
less self-inquisitive autobiographers: Fashioning themselves as proficient in both
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languages, they attempt to be bridge builders, cultural brokers and native informers to
their American audience. Their self-constructions as ‘perfect in-betweens’ constitute
performances of an authoritative Iranian-American identity. They assume such
positions of authority both in response to the preferences of American audiences and
also in order gain agency as ethnic subjects.
Clothing the body and corporeality are two further contentious topics: In
terms of body culture, members of the first generation have a tendency to present
themselves as uncompromised Iranians to their readers, probably as they were still
harboring hopes of returning to Iran at the time of writing. In contrast to that, the
younger authors narrate wanting to adapt to American dress and corporeality — even
if this is not always easy for them — and being alienated by Islamic regulations upon
return journeys. Thus constructing themselves as rather American, they underline that
they want to be seen as integrated members of society by their mainstream audience
and appeal to their Iranian-American readers’ similar sentiments of wanting to fit in.
Regarding these self-constructions as Iranian or as Iranian-American, it may be
surprising that many writers narrate having sought ethnic ambiguity in order to avoid
discrimination. Yet there are also some younger autobiographers who encourage
readers not to hide being Iranian, who call for pride in Iranians’ ethnic-looking
bodies, and for claiming Iranians’ rightful place within American society. These
differences in dealing with the topic of ‘the body’ show once more how collective
identity construction is highly contested within an ethnic group.
In the third part of this dissertation, I have traced how Iranian-American
autobiographers narrate Iranian cultures in between tradition and diasporic
transformation. Here, I have argued that autobiographers especially of the first
generation employ strategies of framing self-narratives as fictional, which arguably
stands in a certain Iranian tradition. Authors especially of the younger generations
cast their autobiographical narratives as factual, which may be seen as a result of
market pressure, but also aids the diaspora deal with its trauma of the revolution, as
the focus on facts helps to work through the past. What is more, such factual writing
should be regarded as an important contribution to the diaspora’s collective memory
and identity. We see from these results of the analysis how close autobiography can
be to fiction — but also, judging from the now predominantly factual mode of
Iranian-American memoir, how fluid ethnic strategies of life writing are.
Furthermore, I have analyzed Iranian-American self-writing in its shifting and
nuanced relationality, as for example autobiographers write themselves in relation to
proximate others and narrate others’ life stories not only to root themselves in their
ethnic ancestry, but also to write the history of the diaspora against the grain of
American preconceptions of Iran. While the former motivation is more directed at an
Iranian identification, or at maintaining the Iranian in ‘Iranian-American,’ the latter
serves the construction and negotiation of a specifically diasporic memory and
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identity, both individual and collective. As I have shown in 0.4 “Theory and
Methodology,” ethnic memory and identity often stand in tension with national
narratives; Iranian-American relational countermemory exemplifies just that.
Moreover, I have pointed out how Iranian-American self-construction is not only
relational, but how authors are fascinated with both interdependence and
independence. Generalizations about non-Western selves as unilaterally relational
thus have to be refuted.
Lastly, I have focused on changing metaphors of ‘home’ in Iranian-American
autobiography as they continually move in the force field of Iranian and American
conceptions of ‘paradise.’ Iran is often seen as a paradise that becomes lost or has
fallen through the revolution, not only by the first, but also by the 1.5th generation.
While this expresses the diaspora’s nostalgia, it certainly also responds to an
American readership’s preconceptions about an ‘oriental’ (and thus sensual, but also
irrational) Iran. Yet there is also the oft-invoked rebuilding of gardens on American
ground, which should be seen to stand for the diaspora’s taking root. What is more,
new metaphors are adopted as well: while carpets and tapestries still riff on the
Iranian garden image with their designs, they are portable and thus answer to the
mobility of diasporic subjects. Even less ‘localized’ are metaphors such as the
mythical bird Simorgh (representing ‘home’) that consists of birds (representing both
homeland Iranians and diaspora Iranians) — meaning that ‘home’ is where
community is. Such imagery testifies to how fragmentary and deterritorialized of
(diasporic) identities in a globalized world tend to be and shows how IranianAmerican autobiographers have adapted to the situation of diasporic existence in the
USA — thus creating a specifically diasporic culture.
In summary, I have provided a multitude of aspects regarding IranianAmerican self-construction, starting from how Iranian-American autobiographers
deal with their past, to how they incorporate the ‘realities’ of language and body into
their self-narratives, and eventually to how they present their cultures to both persist
and transform in diaspora.
However, my findings also highlight frequently neglected aspects of the
cultural contact zone ‘diaspora,’ of diasporic identity construction and the web of
(power) relations it is influenced by. What is generally accepted is that
autobiographers of young diasporas often feel the need to negotiate their inherited and
new cultures in order to arrive at an identity that incorporates both to some extent. Yet
what often remains overlooked (and what my communication and text pragmatics
approach allows me to focus on additionally) is the important role of the authors’
imagined audiences: Analyzing Iranian-American autobiographies, it becomes
obvious that ethnic self-construction rarely, if ever, happens in isolation. On the one
hand, Iranian Americans’ autobiographical writing is directed at their own diasporic
group, intended to contribute to the creation of a new collective memory, as I have
290
shown particularly in chapters 1 and 2, and negotiate such contested issues of ethnic
identity like language and body, as I have discussed in chapters 3 and 4.
Yet Iranian-American autobiographies are also geared towards an American
readership — informed, as Joan Nagel has pointed out,1591 by a diversity of agendas.
Socially, Iranian Americans’ disidentification with revolutionary Iran and
political Islam helps them to shape an identity distinct from homeland Iranian and
thus to find acceptance within American society. Paradoxically, they also create
countermemories that refute dominant narratives of Iran, as I have shown in chapter
6, thus slowly changing public perceptions of their past.
Economically, their autobiographical portrayals of Iran as a prerevolutionary
paradise and postrevolutionary fallen Eden coincide with orientalist expectations.
What is more, strategies like the often assumed fact-oriented, almost journalistic
writing mode cater to American readerships’ demand for ethnic authority and
authenticity. All of these boost sales, a factor that is probably not unimportant for
most authors. But it is not only the authors’ agendas that are important influences on
their self-constructions:1592 As I have argued particularly in chapter 5, publishing
houses anticipate audiences’ desires and push authors to write for the market, even
prompt them to re-write autobiographical fiction as autobiography proper. The
preferences of publishers become especially obvious when looking at the unbalanced
ratio of published female and male Iranian-American autobiographers: Among other
reasons, the female oriental author is perceived to be more hidden, thus more
interesting to American mainstream audiences, and therefore more lucrative than the
male author.
Politically, Iranian Americans demand to be heard through their
autobiographies (and other writings). Although autobiographers do respond to what
their audiences expect of them, they also construct their individual positions in
between Iran and America. Therefore, these self-constructions exemplify distinctly
Iranian-American identities and increasingly assert Iranian Americans’ status as an
American minority. They acquire a voice in American literature, mirroring their
efforts to organize themselves and be given their say as an ethnic minority.
With my study I have thus shown that in the situation of cultural encounter,
ethnic self-construction has to be seen within a complex web of agendas of authors,
readerships and publishers. Yet writing autobiographically also has the potential of
providing agency to Iranian Americans and other ethnicities, as it gives them the
space and voice to narrate their own version of their past and identity, to imagine their
future as part of American society and therefore to inscribe themselves into American
literatures and cultures.
1591 Nagel
1592 As
I have pointed out above, it has been argued that also neo-conservative politics has supported
negative characterization of Iran (for example in the case of Azar Nafisi). This may or may not be true.
291
Having analyzed how Iranian Americans negotiate, manage and construct
their conflicting identities, it was my goal to make a substantial contribution to the
study of one of the newest (and psychologically most marginalized) ethnic groups in
the USA and its autobiographical self-construction. At the same time, I have
attempted to contribute to the long overdue expansion of the canon towards Middle
Eastern-American literature and thus to the transnationalization of American Studies.
A number of studies in this direction have already been published, such as
Gillian Whitlock’s Soft Weapons,1593 Waïl S. Hassan’s Immigrant Narratives1594 or
Amal Talaat Abdelrazek’s Contemporary Arab American Women Writers,1595 but
much work remains to be done. In the field of Iranian(-American) literature on
American markets, this pertains especially to ‘prison memoirs’ by politically active
Iranians who have experienced torture and imprisonment during the regime of the
Shah, the revolution or in the Islamic Republic. Although they are mostly written in
Iran and translated later, or written with the strong presence of ghost writers, they are
conceptualized specifically with a critical American and international readership in
mind. But also Iranian-American fiction and poetry are quickly gaining more
attention of both diaspora and American middlebrow audiences these days and are in
need of in-depth research by Americanists, for they, too, exemplify how the IranianAmerican minority is making a home in the USA and inscribes itself into this new
society and culture. After all, Iranian Americans increasingly perceive and present
themselves as distinct from homeland Iranians, and in their writings, they explicitly
and implicitly assert: “But I’m from here now.”1596
1593 Whitlock
2007
Waïl S. Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and
Arab British Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 2011.
1595 Abdelrazek, Amal Talaat. Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities and
Border Crossings. Youngstown, NY: Cambria, 2007.
1596 Bahrampour 339
1594 Hassan,
292
293
294
9. Addenda
9.1 Main Corpus
All memoirs are, unless indicated, by authors from a Muslim background.
Ardalan, Iran Davar
Author of the 2007 book My Name is Iran: A Memoir,
she is the daughter of two Iranian Americans, one of Muslim heritage, one converted
to Islam from Christianity. Ardalan both narrates her ancestors’ lives and her own.
Having spent her childhood mostly in Iran, as an adolescent, she moves to live with
her now divorced father in the USA and lives the life of an American teenager. Yet, in
search for a feeling of rootedness, she returns to revolutionary Iran and agrees to an
arranged marriage. Later, she moves her family to America, gets a divorce there, and
eventually finds fulfillment in her profession and as an Iranian American. The book
has been criticized for its sometimes poor editing, but is particularly interesting for its
part Christian, part Sufi influences.
Asayesh, Gelareh
A Muslim Iranian American who immigrated at a young age
and who, as an married adult journalist with children, finds herself mourning the loss
of her ‘Iranianness.’ In her 1999 memoir Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and
America, she chronicles her life in between her two home countries as a series of
journeys to recuperate the presence of Iran in her and her family’s life. Jumping
between past and present, her style alternates between a reminiscing narrative and
diary-like snippets of the present.
Bahrampour, Tara
Spent most of her childhood in Iran with her Iranian father and
American mother, but came to the USA with her family at the onset of the 1979
revolution. In her 2000 To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America, she traces
her past in Iran, her teenage and early adult years struggling to negotiate her
conflicting cultural values, and her return journey to Iran in order to reconnect with a
country that has become foreign to her.
Darznik, Jasmin
Second-generation author who has published The Good
Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life, an autobiographical narrative that
frames a biography of the author’s mother, in 2011. Darznik thus defines herself very
much through her mother. She tries to write the truth about her mother’s past, to find
a connection to her heritage and thus to establish an identity as Iranian American.
Dumas, Firoozeh
Her 2004 memoir Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up
Iranian in America traces the author’s early years in Iran, her childhood, coming-of295
age and life as an Iranian in the USA in short, witty vignettes. Dumas successfully
manages to make light of her difficult existence as an Iranian in the United States,
dealing with ignorance and racism and with her own negotiation of Iranian and
American values. Hugely popular as high school reading and with book clubs, her
memoir was followed by her 2008 book Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of
an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad.
Goldin, Farideh
Jewish autobiographer whose Wedding Song: Memoirs of an
Iranian Jewish Woman has come out in 2003 and narrates female Jewish workingclass life in pre-revolutionary Iran. Goldin both writes about Iranian society’s and
especially Jewish-Iranian patriarchy and traditionalism and about growing antiSemitism in the Iran leading up to the revolution. Though mainly set in Iran, Goldin’s
narrative is directed at her emigration to the USA in 1975 and, eventually, at her
making peace with her background.
Hakakian, Roya
Jewish autobiographer who, in her 2004 Journey From the
Land of No: A Girlhood in Revolutionary Iran, concentrates solely on her childhood
in Iran, but is from the beginning clearly a trajectory towards emigration. This aspect
also sets her narrative apart from the Iran-focus of prison memoirs which I have
chosen not to include. Although Hakakian, contrary to Goldin, describes herself
feeling very much at home in Iran, the growing anti-Semitism and patriarchy also
prompts her and her family to leave post-revolutionary Iran.
Latifi, Afschineh
Lawyer who has published her memoir Even After All This
Time: A Story of Love, Revolution, and Leaving Iran in collaboration with Pablo F.
Fenjves in 2005. Her tale is one of a young, privileged girl that during the Iranian
revolution has to experience the imprisonment and eventual execution of her father, a
high-ranking military officer under the shah. After lonely years spent first at an
Austrian boarding school and then with relatives in the USA, Latifi and her sister
overcome culture shock, awkward attempts of fitting in, are re-united with their
mother and brothers and build up a new life as Iranians in America.
Milani, Abbas
Like Azar Nafisi, he had been a student in the USA before
returning to teach at university and contribute to the fight against the shah as a
Marxist. In his 2006 Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir, he chronicles his Iranian
childhood, his early encounter with the USA, his return to Iran and imprisonment and
eventually his emigration to America in 1986. All through his narrative, the
negotiation of Iranian and Western values and the comparison of cultural standards
are important topics.
296
Minu-Sepehr, Aria
His 2012 We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran
narrates the author’s privileged childhood as son of a general in royal Iran, but also
the falling-apart of this sheltered world during the revolution. With a consistent focus
on the father and his loyalty to the values of pre-revolutionary Iran, the autobiography
goes on to tell the family’s flight to London and eventual settling in California.
Moaveni, Azadeh
Her 2006 memoir Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up
Iranian in America And American in Iran is, next to Nafisi’s and Dumas’ works, one
of the most successful memoirs of Iranian Americans on the market. Like Molavi, she
is an Iranian American who has returned to Iran for work and to get re-connected with
the country of her ethnic heritage. Her narrative, while social and political
commentary are important, is more personal than Molavi’s and intimately traces her
adolescent and adult attempts at negotiating her two identities. Moaveni has published
another memoir called Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran
in 2009.
Nafisi, Azar
Her 2003 Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is probably
the most well-known and controversial Iranian-American autobiography. Born into an
upper-class and politically invested family, Nafisi had spent her teenage and student
years in between Iran, European boarding schools and American universities, before
deciding to return to Iran at the eve of the revolution. She describes the difficulties
she had to encounter as a West-leaning professor of English literature, her suspension
from teaching and her consequent decision to leave for the U.S. again in 1997. Her
narrative of her life and of women’s situation in Iran is woven into an account of her
teaching a private class of girls and is divided up into four section, each devoted to an
author or literary figure: Lolita, Gatsby, James and Austen. Nafisi has been accused
by many Iranians of painting an overly pessimistic picture of Iran and Iranian
women’s rights and thus of catering to neo-conservative politics. She has followed up
her memoir’s considerable success with her 2009 memoir Things I’ve Been Silent
About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter that focuses on her relationship with her
prominent parents.
Rachlin, Nahid
An acclaimed novelist who in 2006 has published a memoir
called Persian Girls: A Memoir. She narrates her childhood in an Iran suspended
between traditionalist and modernist forces and her increasing feelings of suffocation
in an atmosphere of patriarchy. While Rachlin manages to go abroad and finds
freedom in New York, her sister (and alter ego) Pari remains under the influence of
their controlling father and her abusive husband and eventually commits suicide.
297
9.2 Additional Corpus
The following autobiographies fall within the wider corpus. However, there are a
number of further autobiographies, by both men and women, that I could not include
for matters of sheer manageability.
Bijan, Donia. Maman’s Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen.
Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2011.
Dumas, Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American,
at Home and Abroad. New York: Random House, 2008.
Molavi, Afshin. Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran. New York: W.W. Norton,
2002.
Nafisi, Azar. Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter. New
York: Random House, 2009.
Nahvi, Shahab. Ingrained Way of Living. Los Angeles: Narengestan, 2006. (Kindle
Edition)
Nazarian, Angella M. Life as a Visitor. New York: Assouline, 2009.
Sadeghian, F. Fero M.D. They Call Me Fero: Reflections, Recollections of an IranianAmerican Doctor. CreateSpace, 2010. (Kindle Edition)
Sarram, Mahmood. Transplanted: A Memoir of Faith and Vision for American
Muslims. Beltsville, Maryland: Amana, 2008.
Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Monir. A Mirror Garden: A Memoir. With Zara
Houshmand. New York: Random House, 2007.
Varjavand, Reza. From Misery Alley to Missouri Valley: My Life Stories and More.
Xlibris, 2009.
298
9.3 Transliteration of Persian Words
The Persian language originally is written in Persian alphabet which does not mark
short vowels and contains vowels and consonants not existent as such in English.
Therefore, English transliterations of Persian words are subject to individual
interpretation of differing pronunciations and vary widely.
Several unofficial forms of ‘Penglish’ or ‘Fingilish’ — Persian written in
Roman alphabet — exist, like for example UniPers and Eurofarsi, yet I have applied a
simplified version of Penglish here. Citations and standardized words are given
without change, but for reasons of consistency, Persian words outside of citations are
always transliterated in one style that shall be shortly explained here.
- No distinction is being made between /ɒ:/ and /æ/ which are both transliterated
as “a,” although they may appear in quotes as “aa,” “a” or even “o” (long
vowel) and “a” or “e” (short vowel)
- /o/ is transliterated as “o,” yet may appear in quotes also as a diphthong “ow”
- /i:/ is transliterated as “i,” but may appear as “ee” or “y”
- /u:/ is transliterated as “oo,” in quotes also as “u” or “ou”
- Glottal stop remains untransliterated, but may appear in quotes as “ ‘ “
- /ɣ/ is transliterated as “gh,” although in quotes it may also appear as “q” or as
“g”
- /x/ is transliterated as “kh”
- /z/ is transliterated as “z”
- /ʒ/ is transliterated as “zh,” but may appear as “j”
Also, a note on the use of the terms ‘Persian’ vs. ‘Farsi:’ Both denote the same
language, and many Iranians in the USA use the term ‘Farsi.’ However, I have used
‘Persian,’ as it is the original English translation. Speaking of ‘Farsi’ amounts to as
much as using the term ‘Español’ for ‘Spanish.’
299
10. Works Cited
10.1 Primary Sources
Ardalan, Iran Davar. My Name is Iran: A Memoir. New York: Henry Holt, 2007.
Asayesh, Gelareh. Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America. Boston: Beacon,
1999.
Bahrampour, Tara. To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America. Berkeley: U of
California P, 2000.
Bijan, Donia. Maman’s Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen.
Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2011.
Darznik, Jasmin. The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life. New
York: Grand Central, 2011.
Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America.
New York: Random House, 2004.
Dumas, Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American,
at Home and Abroad. New York: Random House, 2008.
Goldin, Farideh. Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman. Lebanon,
NH: Brandeis UP, 2003.
Hakakian, Roya. Journey From the Land of No: A Girlhood in Revolutionary Iran.
New York: Crown, 2004.
Latifi, Afschineh. Even After All This Time: A Story of Love, Revolution, and Leaving
Iran. With Pablo F. Fenjves. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Milani, Abbas. Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir. Washington, DC: Mage, 2006.
Minu-Sepehr, Aria. We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran. Free Press, 2012.
Moaveni, Azadeh. Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And
American in Iran. New York: Public Affairs, 2006.
Molavi, Afshin. Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran. New York: W.W. Norton,
2002.
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. 2003. New York:
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Nafisi, Azar. Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter. New
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300
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