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Family (secrets), Politics, and Nation: Filiations and Affiliations in the Literature of the Iranian Diaspora

This panel concerns itself with an investigation into the complex affiliations and filiations explored by writers of the Iranian diaspora in a number of recent texts published in Europe and the United States . By interrogating writings by hyphenated Iranian subjects from Europe and the United States, the work of the scholars on this panel aims to understand the ways that these writers explore and occupy what Homi Bhahba calls the "third space" on the borderline between cultures and nation states. In both the memoirs and fiction by Iranian diaspora writers, that third space has been conceived of as both problematic and potentially liberating. For those who seek to retain their ethnic or national identities without being "integrated" into the national discourse of one country, that third space can enable the narration of oneself as insider/outsider--offering the ability to emphasize certain aspects of one's identity over another; to critique aspects of both one's cultural heritage and one's specific national location. The emerging literature of Iranian diaspora is, in part, an attempt at representing the complex filiations of family and affiliations of politics that have been the inevitable outcome of the Iranian revolution and its large diaspora communities. This panel further explores the specific representations of Iranian immigrant sensiblity in both first and second generation writers, and the ways that their narratives undermine a singular narrative of diaspora "Iranianness." Panelists further explore how fiction and memoir and the aesthetic choices they engender have been deployed differently to narrate the complex filliative and affilitive associations that are unique to the Iranian diaspora experience. (Panel convenor Persis Karim, San Jose State University)

Chair
name: 
Amy Motlagh
Institutional Affiliation : 
American University in Cairo
Academic Bio: 
Amy Motlagh is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include modern and classical Iranian and Persophone literature, the post-1979 Iranian diaspora, and intersections among the Arab, Turkish, and Persian literary traditions. Her most recent publications include “Towards a Theory of Iranian American Life Writing” (Multi Ethnic Literatures of the United States Summer 2008) and the short story “A Souvenir of Tehran” (Transit: Tehran, Garnet Press 2008). She is currently at work on a manuscript which explores the relationship between legal reform and the novel in twentieth-century Iran, as well as a series of short stories. Motlagh received her Ph.D. from Princeton University; she also holds an M.F.A. from New York University and a B.A. from Pomona College.
Discussant
Name: 
Babak Elahi
Institutional Affiliation : 
Rochester Institute of Technology
Academic Bio : 
Babak Elahi is an Associate Professof of English at Rochester Institute of Technology. He has written numberous articles on Iranian American literature including "Fake Farsi: Formulaic Flexibility in Iranian American Women's Memoirs, MELUS 33.2 (Summer, 2008). His book, The Fabric of American Literary Realism, McFarland Press will be published in 2009. He is currently working on The Iranian Condition: Illness as Metaphor in Moodern Iranian Literature and Film.
First Presenter
Name: 
Amena Moinfar
Institutional Affiliation : 
University of Texas at Austin
Academic Bio : 
Amena Moinfar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work explores the nexus between cultures and the particular experience of Iranian writers in exile. Her dissertation is an investigation into Iranian, French and Algerian women's writing.
Concise Paper Title : 
The Child in European Exile in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis achieved international recognition after it was translated from French into English and adapted into an award-winning animated film. Worldwide, the audience responded to enthusiasm and empathy to Satrapi’s story. Much has been written on Satrapi’s vision of Iran but I would like in this paper to examine how she depicts her experience as a young teenager in Europe. She was thirteen when her parents sent her away from the war raging in Iran to find a better and safer life in Austria. However, the Austrian experience turned out to be extremely unpleasant and Satrapi went back to Iran after what appeared to be a nervous breakdown. In this paper I would like to examine the growing pains of the young “Marji” in Austria. But to be more precise, I will emphasize the fact that Satrapi wrote her graphic novel in French, thus first catering to a French audience. Since her first audience was the French, Satrapi used- and/or avoided to use- many French references and framework of humor that contributed to its success. Interestingly, the novel stops with the year 1994 when Marjane decides to leave Iran for Strasbourg, France where she is going to pursue studies in art. It is interesting that this part of Satrapi’s experience does not occupy any literal space in her memoir, thus avoiding mentioning the probable problems of “integration” in France. However, France is present metaphorically, especially when thirteen-year-old Marjane attends the Lycée Français in Vienna where she does not meet any hostile, indifferent, ignorant French, but hostile, indifferent, ignorant Austrians. By focusing on the Austrians’ lack of understanding and not the French’s, Satrapi achieves a coup de maître, seducing her primary audience, the French, and not alienating them by reminding them of how difficult it could be to be an Iranian in France. I will focus on specific passages of Persepolis where I see semi-hidden and metaphorical reflections on France.
Second Presenter
Name: 
Manijeh Moradian
Institutional Affiliation : 
New York University
Academic Bio : 
Manijeh Moradian is a Ph.D. student at New York University in the program in American Studies. She has written numerous articles on Iranian American literature and identity and has written a memoir about growing up in a Iranian socialist household. She is co-director of the Association of Iranian American Writers (AIAW).
Concise Paper Title : 
Hyphenated by Politics: Memoirs by Children of Iranian Leftists
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Over the last decade, several memoirs by second generation Iranian Americansæwho were born in the US or immigrated as small childrenæhave explored the tensions and contradictions inherent in negotiating two national/ethnic identities that have been pitted against each other on the world stage. Authors such as Azadeh Moaveni and Tara Bahrampour have explored differing versions of what it means to occupy what Homi Bhabha has called a “third space” on the borderline between cultures and nation states. These writers have focused their discussions on the insider/outsider nature of their subjectivities in both societies as a result of their hybrid identities. Now, a previously unarticulated aspect of second generation Iranian American experience is emerging, which introduces a new element into the discussion of hybridity: that of political identity. Memoirs of children of Iranian leftists in America challenge dominant discourses within the Iranian exile community and mainstream American politics, as well as the official ideology of the Islamic Republic. Raised with an anti-Shah, anti-imperialist framework, taught to position themselves in solidarity with struggles of workers and the oppressed in the US and around the world, the consciousness of these authors undermines assumptions about the class and political allegiances of Iranians in America and further subverts the Iran vs. US binary maintained by both nation-states. In this paper, I examine the work of Said Sayrafiezadeh, whose memoir When Skateboards Will be Free (Dial Press 2009) describes his experience growing up with parents who were active members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) USA, an orthodox Trotskyist organization that viewed socialist revolution as imminent during the 1970s. Leaving aside the severe limitations of the political orientation of the SWP, I am concerned with the book’s representation of the particular difficulty involved in asserting a radical political perspective in American society, while simultaneously navigating the landscape of multi-cultural/multi-racial identity. Children of Iranian leftists had to grapple not only with notions of racial, national and cultural otherness, but also with the contradictions of holding capitalist and anti-capitalist ideas at the same time. As someone whose father is an Iranian revolutionary socialist, I draw from my memoir as another example of a Diasporic experience that is rooted as much in the class conflicts and McCarthy-ite legacy of America as it is in other aspects of Iranian American identity.
Thid Presenter
Name: 
Sanaz Raji
Institutional Affiliation : 
University of Leeds
Academic Bio : 
Sanaz Raji is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds, England. She works on media, literature and the Iranian diaspora experience. She also works on migration and media issues within the European Union.
Concise Paper Title : 
The Mystery of the Past: Gendered Responses to Family History in Jasmin Crowther's Saffron Kitchen and Porochista Khakpour's Sons and Other Flammable Objects
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
In the past several years, there has been a move away from memoir writing to explore identity issues in the diaspora to more fictional storytelling. This paper explores how both Jasmin Crowthers and Porochista Khakpour's in their respective novels posit Iran as a setting for a "mysterious past" the first generation characters hide from their children. In both these novels, the second generation protagonists unearth family secrets to shed light on their own place within the family and thus decipher their own hyphenated identities and thus find their own filial place. In my paper, I argue that the characters in these two novels take what initially appears as a family conflict and examine it more deeply to discover the family history, and in doing so, discover the family secrets that enable them to re-discover their Iranian identity.
Fourth Presenter
Name: 
Laetitia Nanquette
Academic Bio : 
Laetitia Nanquette is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Oriental and African Languages in London. Under the direction of Professor Nima Mina, she is exploring women's writing from Iran/Iranian diaspora.
Concise Paper Title : 
The Persian Novel in French: A Hybrid Genre
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Writers from Iranian origin who compose in French, have published a fair amount of novels in Paris since the beginning of the 1990s. My paper will analyze the genre specificity of novels by Franco-Iranian authors, and the challenges that the inevitable influence of the French novelistic tradition present to the authors of this Iranian diaspora. I will put the Persian novel in French into the context of the contemporary Persian literary system, and then close-read one novel to illustrate my point. I have chosen Sorour Kasmaï’s The Glass Cemetery (Le cimetière de verre, 2002) as representative of the trend. The analysis of this text, through its formal and content narrative features, will show that the use of the French as a language of writing imposes certain literary norms and helps to create a hybrid genre, which reflects the diasporic experience.

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