Fotouhi’s work, The Literature of the Iranian Diaspora, is an inspired scholarly contribution to the field of Iranian Studies as well as Diaspora Studies. It examines over 200 samples of the literature of the Iranian diaspora in English, including fiction, memoirs and poetry, and is one of the first book-length academic publications on this topic. The book emerged in response to different historical silences that have resulted in erasures and formulaic representations of Iranians and their experiences within the global context. In this sense, the samples of the literature of the Iranian diaspora in this book are studied both in relation to the silencing sociopolitical discriminations of the left-behind homeland, especially after the revolution of 1978/79, and the contradictory popular western notions that simplify, perceive and reflect Iranian identities within the limited logic of exotic/fanatic. Drawing upon works by Elleke Boehmer and Homi Bhabha, Fotouhi situates her arguments within a hybrid post-colonial theoretical framework, where the term “colonial” stands for any kind of oppressive authority and the prefix “post” indicates the possibilities of a movement beyond, as a form of continuous discursive resistance against “holistic forms of social expression” (p. 15).
The Literature of the Iranian Diaspora is an enjoyable read for general and academic audiences alike. Every chapter of the book opens with an anecdotal passage relating the first-hand experiences of the author, both as a member of the English-speaking Iranian diasporic community and as one of the writers of this kind of literature. Every anecdote leads to and merges smoothly with the core discussions of each section. The book consists of five main chapters and an appended comprehensive bibliography of the literature of the Iranian diaspora in English.
Chapter 1 explores the significance of history in the narrative accounts produced by the Iranian diaspora in English. Here, the engagement with the concept of history, as a common characteristic of Iranian diasporic writings, is developed further than a recurrent textual theme to encompass different modes of retrospective narration ranging from memoirs and personal recollections to alternative historical narratives giving voice to silenced and marginalized subjects of the past. Drawing upon Stuart Hall’s concept of “historicization” and Bill Ashcroft’s strategy of “appropriation and interpolation” of historical grand narratives, Fotouhi embeds her arguments within a convincing theoretical framework. Through engagement with history, in its variety of forms, the writers of the Iranian diaspora take part in a dual process of identity construction. Not only do they try to negotiate and maintain a sense of collective identity by historicizing themselves, that is, by writing the self as a historical subject within a shared and collective narrative, but they also challenge, reframe and interpolate “the very discourse of history both in Iran and abroad” through creating narratives that are “reflective of the multiplicity of their experiences” (p. 36). This the writers achieve by appropriating the English language with its new expressive possibilities and range of reception and by recounting underrepresented narratives of ethnic, political, religious and gender minorities. Other than a way to understand and negotiate past and present identities, historical narration, in this chapter, is also regarded as a way to negotiate future identities. By focusing on some return memoirs of second-generation Iranian-Americans, Fotouhi elaborates on this latter issue. In Gelareh Asayesh’s Saffron Sky (1999) and Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad (2005), for example, the narrative of return journeys to Iran is treated as a strategy to “negotiate a new vision of the future in response to historical representation” of the writers’ both “host and home countries” (p. 51).
In its theoretical approach and argumentation, the second chapter of the book is an extension of chapter 1. Here, Fotouhi argues that Persian poetry, as a conspicuous element of Iranian culture, is historicized (in Hall’s sense) within the writings of the Iranian diaspora and is often perceived as a point of reference for collective identification. The author observes further that the diasporic Iranian literature in English can be read as a hybrid space of negotiation between modes of literary expression in Persian classical poetry and English literary traditions. By focusing on Persian Sufi poetry, as the site of the union between Islamic thought and the cadence of the Persian language, this chapter fuses the Sufi concept of Spiritual Path with the metaphorical repertoire of Sufi poetry to reinterpret Iranian diasporic literature in terms of the spiritual meanings expressed by mystic poetry. Accordingly, Iranian diasporic literature is reinterpreted as the literature of becoming and transformation. In light of the metaphorical semiosis of Sufi poetry, Fotouhi demonstrates how some writers of diasporic Iranian literature narrate displacement and nostalgia in terms of the mystic desire to return to the original garden of paradise and the world of meaning (ʿālam-e maʿnā). In the process of this literary appropriation and reinterpretation, new and hybrid meanings and modes of expression are created, challenging and adding to both Persian and English literary traditions. One of the examples discussed in this chapter is Manouchehr Parvin’s Dardedel (2003), a verse novel, in which the poets Hafez and Rumi, reincarnated in the shape of cacti in a desert, engage in a heart-to-heart conversation with Professor Pirooz, an Iranian immigrant in the US. Later on in the novel, these poets are transformed into modern New Yorkers in an urban setting; Hafez reappears as a taxi-driver and Rumi as a rapping poet.
Chapter 3 provides a thorough and persuasive analysis of the representation, reception and consumption patterns of Iranian women’s memoirs in the American book market and examines the reasons for the sudden increase in number and the popularity of these memoirs after 2001. Iranian women’s memoirs, in this chapter, are introduced and discussed as “double-edged narratives” (p. 93). On the one hand, memoir is the liberating genre and the very “site of resistance”; it is the personal and the subjective voice, the therapeutic process of self-narration and the medium of “bearing witness to trauma and silences” (p. 100). On the other hand, though, the very structure framing the representation and consumption of Iranian women’s memoirs in America is afflicted by stereotypical presuppositions and erasing forces. In this chapter, history of public interest in American captivity narratives, American Orientalism, the American hostage crisis, and the post-9/11 declaration of “war on terror,” among other factors, contextualize the cultural, social and political background against which Iranian women’s memoirs have been marketed in America and gained readership. Focusing on the paratexts of over twenty memoirs, Fotouhi elaborates on the paradoxical dynamics that both popularize these memoirs and efface their narrative nuances.
Chapter 4 is a theme-based reading of about a dozen novels and memoirs written by diasporic Iranian women in English and focuses on the recurrent theme of a mother–daughter relationship and its relevance to the concept of homeland in these works. By situating this theme in a historical context, the author attempts to highlight how diasporic Iranian women writers have been able to “transgress” both “discursive and physical” boundaries of their familiar homeland to produce alternative narratives to male-orientated representations of Iranian women (p. 142). The chapter is based on the existing studies of the concept of homeland and its strong maternal symbolism within the Iranian culture, literary topoi, and the country’s nineteenth century nationalistic discourse. Not only is the voice of the daughter not reflected in this literary tradition but, despite its grandeur, the position of the mother within it is also bereft of an individual subjectivity; it is both defined and objectified in relation to the male subjects through whose love and devotion the maternal “geo-body” of a nation is supposed to be protected (p. 144). By elaborating on a range of narrative strategies (polyphonic narrations and transpositioning) and thematic elements (such as the concept of a journey, both physical and magic-realistic), Fotouhi ventures to demonstrate how Iranian diasporic women writers have created narrative texts that are both emancipating and reflective of women’s plural experiences.
Chapter 5 deals with the understudied topic of Iranian masculinities as represented in the literature of the Iranian diaspora in English. Here, Fotouhi justly criticizes the stereotypical representation of Iranian men in the works of many Iranian diasporic women writers by highlighting the self-orientalizing tendencies of their writers, whose narrations are framed and conditioned within the western discourse of feminism. Replicating the orientalist image of the Middle Eastern/Iranian man as violent, misogynistic and oppressive, these works tend to reproduce a hypervisible and stereotypical Iranian masculinity that is erased and invisible as an individual (exceptions are also mentioned and discussed). By delving into the underrepresented class of diasporic writings in English by men, Fotouhi further examines the dynamics leading to the lack of recognition of this body of literature. The chapter continues with the closer study of several instances of Iranian diasporic literature written by men that, in one way or another, offer counter-stereotypical representations of Iranian masculinities. Humor, both as a style of narration and in performative art (e.g. in stand-up comedies), comes to be highlighted as a mode of resistance challenging the power structures that pinpoint the image of the Middle Eastern man as terrorist and essentially evil. Other stereotypes such as the orientalist over-sexed image of the Muslim man in harem narratives are challenged by the alternative portrayals of love and romance, an example being Rooftops of Tehran (2009) by Mahbod Seraji. The much repressed theme of homosexuality, too, resurfaces in some of the works written by Iranian diasporic writers; one example is Morteza Baharloo’s Quince Seed Potion (2004). Fotouhi reads the representations of homosexuality in these works not only as the regained voice of oppressed masculine identities, but also as an intertextual revisiting of the convention of homoeroticism in Persian classical poetry.
In the short concluding section of the book, Fotouhi draws attention to an emerging body of the Iranian diasporic literature through digital platforms, e-publishing portals, and the immediate and more accessible online self-publishing possibilities. Regarding the trend as the third wave of the literature of the Iranian diaspora, the author elaborates on how this emerging body of literature has been created and published in response to the political controversies around the Iranian presidential elections in 2009.
As explained in the introduction of the book, not all the titles examined in this study receive the same amount of critical attention. Some titles are only mentioned and introduced while others become the object of closer textual analysis. While some works are categorized and discussed based on recurring themes, the study of some others is limited to the evaluation and interpretation of their peritext. Although the inclusion of such a large body of literature is one of the merits of this book, it also has its own inevitable drawbacks. The work’s solid and well contextualized frame of analysis is sometimes subverted by textual examples that tend to lead to generalized and at times forced conclusions. In chapter 4, for example, the articulation of mothers’ narratives through their journeyed daughters is approached as an act of transpositioning. Fotouhi argues that the daughters’ journey “beyond the domestic restrictions of their home and country” is of “utmost importance for those who want to gain a sense of subjectivity” (p. 157). This line of argumentation, unfortunately, falls into the same interpretive trap as the post-9/11 captivity narratives, a frame of representation that has been legitimately criticized in chapter 3. It also undermines the works of many emerging women writers in Iran who, despite the oppressive conditions, are successful in expressing their feminine subjectivities through and within their literary work. From many aspects, nevertheless, Fotouhi’s work is an important and valuable contribution to the field. It appreciates and examines the multifold features of the literature of the Iranian diaspora in English analyzing the ways in which this body of work operates to maintain, construct, negotiate and challenge a global understanding of Iranian identities.
