Synopses & Reviews
Defined by the Iranian Revolution, forced migration and diaspora, Iranian-American autobiographies center in the experience of rupture and discontinuity. Taking autobiographical writing as performance of identity, this study identifies their narrative patterns and communicative functions in the interaction of author, diaspora and American market. Especially authors' disidentification with traditionalism and politicized Islam and their construction of a 'Persian' instead of Iranian identity speaks not only to the diaspora, but is also geared towards greater acceptance in American society. What is more, self-orientalization aims to satisfy the expectations of American readers. However, this seems to be the price that Iranian-American autobiographers need to pay if they want to work as cultural brokers on behalf of a country that has become largely demonized. Tracing these dynamics of individual and collective identity construction within one of the youngest minorities in the USA, this study offers insights that are not only of scholarly but also of political importance.
Synopsis
Shaped by the experiences of the Iranian Revolution, Iranian-American autobiographers use this chaotic past to tell their current stories in the United States. Wagenknecht analyzes a wide range of such writing and draws new conclusions about migration, exile, and life between different and often clashing cultures.
About the Author
Maria D. Wagenknecht received her PhD from the University of Rostock, Germany and is a Research Fellow for the University of California, Irvine and University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I: TROUBLED HERITAGE
1. Explaining Departure: Narratives of Victimicy
2. A Usable Past: Construction of Religion and Alternative Identifications
PART II: LANGUAGE, BODY, AND THE IRANIAN-AMERICAN SELF
3. The Interplay of Language and Identity Construction
4. The Iranian-American Body In Between
PART III: CULTURE INHERITED/IN FLUX
5. Between Fiction and Fact: Telling the Iranian-American Self
6. Relative Identities: The Iranian-American Self in Its Relation to Others
7. Imagining "Home:" Between Persian Paradise and American Arcadia
Conclusion