Translating the Self
Language and Identity in Iranian-American Women's Memoirs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9977516 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Babak Elahi (Rochester Institute of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 461-480 |
| Publication date | 2006-11-13 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Iranian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-0862 • E-ISSN: 1475-4819 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00210860601004933 |
| OpenAlex | W2073661049 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 6 |
In recent years, a number of Iranian American women have written and published memoirs of a return to Iran. One motif that these memoirs share is their concern with language as a key element of cultural identity. The article examines these memoirs as negotiations of identity through language. Relying on Joshua Fishman's anthropological definition of language and ethnicity as being, doing, and knowing, and on Taghi Modarressi's notion of “accented writing,” this article examines these writers in terms of their relationship to Persian as a key component of the self. As these memoirists narrate their journeys between Iran and the United States, they perform a translation of self across the boundaries of language. Some narrate an “accented identity” that celebrates hybridity; others acknowledge their assimilation into American society and into the English language. All attempt to reclaim Persian as an artifact, if not a medium of cultural belonging
Aesthetics · Art · Ethnic group · Hybridity · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Memoir · Motif (music · Persian · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.27 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2022 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |