Download or read book The Literature of the Iranian Diaspora written by Sanaz Fotouhi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-03 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1979 Revolution in Iran caused the migration of millions of Iranians, many of whom wrote, and are still writing, of their experiences. Formed at the junctions of Iranian culture, English language and Western cultures, this body of work has not only formed a unique literary space, offering an insightful reflection of Iranian diasporic experiences and its shifting nature, but it has also been making a unique and understudied contribution to World Literatures in English as significant as Indian, African and Asian writing in English. Sanaz Fotouhi here traces the origins of the emerging body of diasporic Iranian literature in English, and uses these origins to examine the socio-political position and historical context from which they have emerged. Fotouhi brings together, introduces and analyses, for the first time, a significant range of diasporic Iranian writers alongside each other and alongside other diasporic literatures in English. While situating this body of work through existing theories such as postcolonialism, Fotouhi sheds new light on the role of Iranian literature and culture in Western literature by showing that these writings distinctively reflect experiences unique to the Iranian diaspora. Analysing the relationship between Iranians and their new surroundings, by drawing on theories of migration, narration and identity, Fotouhi examines how the literature borne out of the Iranian diaspora reconstructs, maintains and negotiates their Individual and communal identities and reflects today's socio-political realities. This book will be vital for researchers of Middle Eastern literature and its relationship with writings from the West, as well as those interested in the cultural history of the Middle East.
Download or read book Let Me Tell You Where I ve Been written by Persis M. Karim and published by . This book was released on 2006-05 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently, Iranian literature has overwhelmingly been the domain of men. But the new hybrid culture of diaspora Iranians has produced a prolific literature by women that reflects a unique perspective and voice. Let Me Tell You Where I've Been is an extensive collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by women whose lives have been shaped and influenced by Iran's recent history, exile, immigration and the formation of new cultural identities in the United States and Europe. These writings represent an emerging and multi-cultural female sensibility. Unlike many flat media portrayals of Iranian women—as veiled, silenced—these writers offer a complex literary view of Iranian culture and its influences. These writers interrogate, challenge, and re-define notions of home and language and their work offers readers an experience of Iranian diaspora culture. Featuring over one hundred selections (two-thirds of which have never been published before) by more than fifty contributors--including such well-known writers as Gelareh Asayesh, Tara Bahrampour, Firoozeh Dumas, Roya Hakakian and Mimi Khalvati--the collection represents a substantial diversity of voices in this multicultural community. Divided into six sections, the book's themes of exile, family, culture resistance, and love, create a rich and textured view of the Iranian diaspora. The poems, short stories, and essays are suggestive of an important conversation about Iran, Iranian culture, the Persian and English languages, and the dual identities of many of its authors. This powerful collection is a tribute to the wisdom, insight, and sensitivity of women attempting to invent and articulate a literature of in-betweenness.
Download or read book Women Art and Literature in the Iranian Diaspora written by Mehraneh Ebrahimi and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the study of aesthetics have tangible effects in the real world? Does examining the work of diaspora writers and artists change our view of “the Other”? In this thoughtful book, Ebrahimi argues that an education in the humanities is as essential as one in politics and ethics, critically training the imagination toward greater empathy. Despite the surge in Iranian memoirs, their contributions to debunking an abstract idea of terror and their role in encouraging democratic thinking remain understudied. In examining creative work by women of Iranian descent, Ebrahimi argues that Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, and Parsua Bashi make the Other familiar and break a cycle of reactionary xenophobia. These authors, instead of relying on indignation, build imaginative bridges in their work that make it impossible to blame one evil, external enemy. Ebrahimi explores both classic and hybrid art forms, including graphic novels and photo-poetry, to advocate for the importance of aesthetics to inform and influence a global community. Drawing on the theories of Rancière, Butler, Arendt, and Levinas, Ebrahimi identifies the ways in which these works give a human face to the Other, creating the space and language to imagine a new political and ethical landscape.
Download or read book Iranian Diaspora Identities written by Ziba Shirazi and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iranian Diaspora Identities: Stories and Songs combines oral history, storytelling, theories of communication, and performance studies into a unique study of an immigrant community. This book is the result of collaborative work between two Iranian-American immigrants, one a musician and artist and the other a professor. Using ethnographic, dramatistic, and oral history approaches, Ziba Shirazi gathered these stories of diaspora journeys of Iranians living in California and Toronto in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The editors transcribed these stories and developed them into short performance pieces that include lyrics and songs and were performed in the United States and Canada to thousands of people in theater venues and libraries. These stories constitute a unique archive of the history of contemporary Iranian diaspora experiences. They are autobiographic vignettes that have helped constitute an artistic vision of Iranian exiles’ own sense of community and their migratory experiences that inform the transformations they experienced in family, gender, and spiritual beliefs. In addition to providing an archive of experiences, the book uses social drama and storytelling to advocate for a new methodology for documenting Iranian diaspora accounts. It constitutes a new contribution to the existing literature on Iranian diaspora and furthers an exciting contribution to scholarship in qualitative research in communication studies.
Download or read book Iranian Diaspora Literature of Women written by Leila Samadi Rendy and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-08-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "Iranian Diaspora Literature of Women".
Download or read book Essential Voices Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora written by Christopher Nelson and published by Green Linden Press. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Essential Voices series intends to bridge English-language readers to cultures misunderstood and under- or misrepresented. It has at its heart the ancient idea that poetry can reveal our shared humanity. The anthology features 130 poets and translators from ten countries, including Garous Abdolmalekian, Kaveh Akbar, Kazim Ali, Reza Baraheni, Kaveh Bassiri, Simin Behbahani, Mark S. Burrows, Athena Farrokhzad, Forugh Farrokhzad, Persis Karim, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Sara Khalili, Mimi Khalvati, Esmail Khoi, Abbas Kiarostami, Fayre Makeig, Anis Mojgani, Yadollah Royai, Amir Safi, SAID, H.E. Sayeh, Roger Sedarat, Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamlu, Solmaz Sharif, Niloufar Talebi, Jean Valentine, Stephen Watts, Sholeh Wolpé, Nima Yushij, and many others. Praise Between arm-flexing states, the U.S. and Iran, the past burns and the future is held hostage. In a twilight present tense, the poets emerge, sure-footed and graceful, imagining another way, another vision of being. The range of these Iranian poets is prodigious and dizzying. Sometimes they "consider the saga of a bee / humming over minefields / in pursuit of a flower," sometimes they "bring your lips near / and pour your voice / into my mouth." Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora is a place where heartbreak and hope gather. At the shores of language, drink this bracing, slaking music. —Philip Metres, author of Shrapnel Maps Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora takes the extraordinary position that poetic arts from the homeland and diaspora should be read alongside each other. This vital book invites English-language readers to step into a lineage and tradition where poems—from playful to elegiac, prosaic to ornate—are fundamental to everyday living. It is the kind of book that requires two copies: one to give to a beloved, and one to keep for oneself. —Neda Maghbouleh, author of The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora offers a profoundly satisfying journey into the poetic canon of my homeland—an anthology with an ambition, expanse, depth, and diversity that truly earns its essential tag. So many poets I was hoping would be in here are here, from contemporary icons to new luminaries, plus I got to explore several poets I had never before read. Everyone from students of poetry to masters of the form should take this ride through the soul and psyche of Iran, which endures no matter where the border, beyond whatever the boundary! —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity Iranians rely on poetry to give comfort, elevate the ordinary, and illuminate the darkness. Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora layers the work of the masters with fresh voices, using sensual imagery to piece together a society fractured by revolution, war, and exile. Let the poets lead you into an Iran beyond the news reports—a place where tenderness and humor and bitterness and melancholia balance together like birds on a wire, intricately connected and poised to take flight. —Tara Bahrampour, author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America
Download or read book Iranian and Diasporic Literature in the 21st Century written by Daniel Grassian and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most populous Islamic country in the Middle East, Iran is rife with contradictions, in many ways caught between the culture and governments of the Western--more dominant and arguably imperalist--world and the ideology of conservative fundamentalist Islam. This book explores the present-day writings of authors who explore these oppositional forces, often finding a middle course between the often brutal and demonizing rhetoric from both sides. To combat how the West has falsely generalized and stereotyped Iran, and how Iran has falsely generalized and stereotyped the West, Iranian and diasporic writers deconstruct Western caricatures of Iran and Iranian caricatures of the West. In so doing, they provide especially valuable insights into life in Iran today and into life in the West for diasporic Iranians.
Download or read book The Internet and Formations of Iranian American ness written by Donya Alinejad and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the children of Iranian immigrants in the US utilize the internet and develop digital identities. Taking Los Angeles—the long-time media and cultural center of Iranian diaspora—as its ethnographic field site, it investigates how various web platforms are embedded within the everyday social, cultural, and political lives of second generation Iranian Americans. Donya Alinejad unpacks contemporary diasporic belonging through her discussion of the digital mediation of race, memory, and long-distance engagement in the historic Iranian Green Movement. The book argues that web media practices have become integral to Iranian American identity formation for this generation, and introduces the notion of second-generation “digital styles” to explain how specific web applications afford new stylings of diaspora culture.
Download or read book Secularism and Identity written by Dr Reza Gholami and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-03-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within western political, media and academic discourses, Muslim communities are predominantly seen through the prism of their Islamic religiosities, yet there exist within diasporic communities unique and complex secularisms. Drawing on detailed interview and ethnographic material gathered in the UK, this book examines the ways in which a form of secularism – ‘non-Islamiosity’ – amongst members of the Iranian diaspora shapes ideas and practices of diasporic community and identity, as well as wider social relations.
Download or read book The Iranian Diaspora written by Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 uprooted and globally dispersed an enormous number of Iranians from all walks of life. Bitter political relations between Iran and the West have since caused those immigrants to be stigmatized, marginalized, and politicized, which, in turn, has discredited and distorted Iranian migrants’ social identity; subjected them to various subtle and overt forms of prejudice, discrimination, and social injustice; and pushed them to the edges of their host societies. The Iranian Diaspora presents the first global overview of Iranian migrants’ experiences since the revolution, highlighting the similarities and differences in their experiences of adjustment and integration in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. Written by leading scholars of the Iranian diaspora, the original essays in this volume seek to understand and describe how Iranians in diaspora (re)define and maintain their ethno-national identity and (re)construct and preserve Iranian culture. They also explore the integration challenges the Iranian immigrants experience in a very negative context of reception. Combining theory and case studies, as well as a variety of methodological strategies and disciplinary perspectives, the essays offer needed insights into some of the most urgent and consequential issues and problem areas of immigration studies, including national, ethnic, and racial identity construction; dual citizenship and dual nationality maintenance; familial and religious transformation; politics of citizenship; integration; ethnic and cultural maintenance in diaspora; and the link between politics and the integration of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants.
Download or read book Iranian Literature After the Islamic Revolution written by Laetitia Nanquette and published by EUP. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyses contemporary Iranian literature in both Iran and its diaspora, in relation to the social, economic and political fields.
Download or read book My Shadow Is My Skin written by Katherine Whitney and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iranian revolution of 1979 launched a vast, global diaspora, with many Iranians establishing new lives in the United States. In the four decades since, the diaspora has expanded to include not only those who emigrated immediately after the revolution but also their American-born children, more recent immigrants, and people who married into Iranian families, all of whom carry their own stories of trauma, triumph, adversity, and belonging that reflect varied and nuanced perspectives on what it means to be Iranian or Iranian American. The essays in My Shadow Is My Skin are these stories. This collection brings together thirty-two authors, both established and emerging, whose writing captures the diversity of diasporic experiences. Reflecting on the Iranian American experience over the past forty years and shedding new light on themes of identity, duality, and alienation in twenty-first-century America, the authors present personal narratives of immigration, sexuality, marginalization, marriage, and religion that offer an antidote to the news media’s often superficial portrayals of Iran and the people who have a connection to it. My Shadow Is My Skin pulls back the curtain on a community that rarely gets to tell its own story.
Download or read book Women Write Iran written by Nima Naghibi and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women Write Iran is the first full-length study on life narratives by Iranian women in the diaspora. Nima Naghibi investigates auto/biographical narratives across genres—including memoirs, documentary films, prison testimonials, and graphic novels—and finds that they are tied together by the experience of the 1979 Iranian revolution as a traumatic event and by a powerful nostalgia for an idealized past. Naghibi is particularly interested in writing as both an expression of memory and an assertion of human rights. She discovers that writing life narratives contributes to the larger enterprise of righting historical injustices. By drawing on the empathy of the reader/spectator/witness, Naghibi contends, life narratives offer the possibilities of connecting to others and responding with an increased commitment to social justice. The book opens with an examination of how the widely circulated video footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan on the streets of Tehran in June 2009 triggered the articulation of life narratives by diasporic Iranians. It concludes with a discussion of the prominent place of the 1979 revolution in these narratives. Throughout, the focus is on works that have become popular in the West, such as Marjane Satrapi’s best-selling graphic novel Persepolis. Naghibi addresses the significant questions raised by these works: How do we engage with human rights and social justice as readers in the West? How do these narratives draw our attention and elicit our empathic reactions? And what is our responsibility as witnesses to trauma, atrocity, and human suffering?
Download or read book The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement in the Indian Diaspora written by Alan Williams and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-09-24 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Qesse-ye Sanjān is the sole surviving account of the emigration of Zoroastrians from Iran to India to form the Parsi (‘Persian’) community. Written in Persian couplets in India in 1599 by a Zoroastrian priest, it is a work many know of, but few have actually read, let alone studied in depth. This book provides a romanised transcription from the oldest manuscripts, an elegant metrical translation, detailed commentary and, most importantly, a radical new theory of how such a text should be “read”, i.e. not as a historical chronical but as a charter of Zoroastrian identity, foundation myth and justification of the Parsi presence in India. The book fills a lacuna that has been acutely felt for a long time.
Download or read book Tehrangeles Dreaming written by Farzaneh Hemmasi and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-10 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles, called Tehrangeles because it is home to the largest concentration of Iranians outside of Iran, is the birthplace of a distinctive form of postrevolutionary pop music. Created by professional musicians and media producers fleeing Iran's revolutionary-era ban on “immoral” popular music, Tehrangeles pop has been a part of daily life for Iranians at home and abroad for decades. In Tehrangeles Dreaming Farzaneh Hemmasi draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles and musical and textual analysis to examine how the songs, music videos, and television made in Tehrangeles express modes of Iranianness not possible in Iran. Exploring Tehrangeles pop producers' complex commercial and political positioning and the histories, sensations, and fantasies their music makes available to global Iranian audiences, Hemmasi shows how unquestionably Iranian forms of Tehrangeles popular culture exemplify the manner in which culture, media, and diaspora combine to respond to the Iranian state and its political transformations. The transnational circulation of Tehrangeles culture, she contends, transgresses Iran's geographical, legal, and moral boundaries while allowing all Iranians the ability to imagine new forms of identity and belonging.
Download or read book Familiar and Foreign written by Manijeh Mannani and published by Athabasca University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: he current political climate of confrontation between Islamist regimes and Western governments has resulted in the proliferation of essentialist perceptions of Iran and Iranians in the West. Such perceptions do not reflect the complex evolution of Iranian identity that occurred in the years following the Constitutional Revolution (1906–11) and the anti-imperialist Islamic Revolution of 1979. Despite the Iranian government’s determined pursuance of anti-Western policies and strict conformity to religious principles, the film and literature of Iran reflect the clash between a nostalgic pride in Persian tradition and an apparent infatuation with a more Eurocentric modernity. In Familiar and Foreign, Mannani and Thompson set out to explore the tensions surrounding the ongoing formulation of Iranian identity by bringing together essays on poetry, novels, memoir, and films. These include both canonical and less widely theorized texts, as well as works of literature written in English by authors living in diaspora. Challenging neocolonialist stereotypes, these critical excursions into Iranian literature and film reveal the limitations of collective identity as it has been configured within and outside of Iran. Through the examination of works by, among others, the iconic female poet Forugh Farrokhzad, the expatriate author Goli Taraqqi, the controversial memoirist Azar Nafisi, and the graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, this volume engages with the complex and contested discourses of religion, patriarchy, and politics that are the contemporary product of Iran’s long and revolutionary history.
Download or read book Iranian Culture written by Nasrin Rahimieh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout modern Iranian history, culture has served as a means of imposing unity and cohesion onto society. The Pahlavi monarchs used it to project an image of Iran as an ancient civilisation, re-emerging as an equal to Western nations, while the revolutionaries deployed it to remake the country into an Islamic nation. Just as Iranian culture has been continually re-interpreted, the representations and avocations of Iranian identity vary amongst Iranians across the world. Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity demonstrates these fissures and the incompatibilities that refuse to be written out of national culture, analysing works of literature, popular music, graphic art and film, as well as oral narratives. Using works produced before and after the 1979 revolution, created both inside and outside of Iran, this study reveals neglected complexities and contradictions in the field of Iranian cultural production. It considers how contested claims to culture, whether they originated in Iran or the Iranian diaspora, shape our understanding of this culture and what spaces they create for new articulations of it, and in doing so offers an important re-examination of our collective concept of culture. This book would be an excellent resource for students and scholars of Middle East Studies and Iranian Studies, specifically Iranian culture including film and contemporary literature and the Iranian diaspora.
