Another Sea, Another Shore

Most critics of modern Persian literature would agree that the emergentIranian diaspora literature is both rearticulating and challenging traditionalPersian narratives of identity, nationality, nation-state, and homeland.Another Sea, Another Shore is an admirable attempt to bring together in asingle volume representative samples of this diaspora literature, rooted in atleast 25 years of exilic experiences.The editors, Shouleh Vatanabadi and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami,have done a superb job in selecting the stories as well as in translating themin a fluid, straightforward language. The book contains 21 stories groupedunder three headings that roughly divide narratives into initial experiencesof migrating/travelling, exilic experience, and more settled diasporic articulations.Represented in the volume are narratives of such well-establishedwriters as Reza Baraheni, Hushang Golshiri, Nasim Khaksar, and DariushKargar, as well as those of such new writers as Kader Abdolah, TaherehAlavi, and Marjan Riahi, among others.The constant themes of shattered dreams, unfulfilled hopes, disconnectedborders, ruptured identities, unfamiliar and defamiliarized spacesrunning through each story testify to the fact that this migration of a generationof exiled Iranians was no ordinary migration. It was not just aboutleaving one’s home behind; it was, more importantly, about not being ableto return. And this inability was powerful enough to drive some exiles andtheir loved ones back home to the shores of insanity – and even death. In“Anxieties from Across the Water,” Pari Mansouri masterfully depicts thispainful saga when a mother concludes that “the pain of separation will killme in the end” (p. 7). And it does.Among the collected stories, Mehri Yalfani’s “Without Roots” perhapsbest captures the essence of what one may call an Iranian diasporic experience.In this powerful piece, Yalfani demonstrates a complex web of relationships,conflicts, and interactions that migration creates, such as the onesbetween home and host cultures, old and young generations, males andfemales, as well as those emerging from class issues, racism, and processesof resocialization and identity formation. The old generation of Iranian ...