She bursts into languages

Trauma and multilingualism in One Woman's War: Da (Mother)

Bibliographic Data

ID21726531
AuthorsAzadeh Safaeian (University of Illinois Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-18
Publication date2026-07-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMiddle Eastern Literatures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1475-262X • E-ISSN: 1475-2638
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1475262x.2026.2632961
OpenAlexW7167142521
LanguageEN
References cited25

This paper asks what happens when we include multilingualism in our theorization of trauma by focusing on war experiences of multilingual subjects. In analyzing Da (Mādar): Khāterāt-e Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseini, beh ehtemām-e Seyyedeh A’zam Hoseini [Da (Mother): Memories of Seyyedeh Zahra Hoseini with Supervision of Seyyedeh A’zam Hoseini] (2008)—an Iranian war memoir narrated by an Iraqi-born Kurdish-Iranian woman—I examine the intersection between momentary emergences of ethnic languages and the representation of war sufferings. For this multilingual subject, the paper shows, trauma manifests through restless code-switching and language entanglement. Although the book is written in Persian, Iran's national language, there are many instances where the text switches between Persian and the narrator's native languages: Kurdish, Arabic, and Luri. The momentary emergences of the “minor languages” in the work—languages that are marginalized by a hegemonic national language—are closely tied to remembering the experiences of loss

First language · Multilingualism · Neuroscience of multilingualism · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis

Tools

Open DOI