Revisiting the Past: Contribution of Counter-narratives in Liminal Formation of Identity in Yasmin Crowther's The Saffron Kitchen

Document Type : Research Papers

Authors

1 University of Tehran , Alborz Campus

2 Associate Professor of English Literature, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Tehran , Tehran, Iran

Abstract

In diasporic literature the question of identity is tangled with the question of history. This study aims at discussing how Yasmin Crowther reviews the Persian tradition in The Saffron Kitchen, her autobiographical novel which is mainly set-in early 60s, Iran. The novel focuses on evoking and rewriting history by using different types of counter narratives that contrast with Iranian hegemonic discourse in the field of tradition and culture. It could be said that Crowther underlines Iran’s history during the pre-Revolutionary period and during the 1953 coup d'état and its immediate aftermaths rewrites the exclusiveness of the Persian traditional culture by focusing on the fissure and blank spots in formal representation of history. Within the gaps she re-experiences a history of confrontation and resistance against the dominant patriarchal hegemony, as well as the dominant discourse of power firmed in traditional culture. Her recalled history comprises not only Iranian cultural traditions but also the fear of oppression of people, particularly women, under the sovereignty of traditional cultural discourse. The study applies Homi K. Bhabah theories, as well as Michael Foucault's discourse and power. Thus, this paper aims to examine how Crowther has used counter narrative to distance her narrative from Islamic and political discourse, depict the image of a strong woman and to show historical changes in span of time. The outcomes indicate how the history is redefined under the light of cultural hegemony and the liminal formation of identity is shaped for women in diaspora narratives.

Keywords

References

Amiri, Cyrus. Two Thousand and One Scheherazades: Images of the Father and “Fatherland” in Post-9/11 English Novels and Memoirs by Women of the Iranian Diaspora. Diss. University of Tehran, 2013.
Bahramitash, Roksana. "The war on Terro, Feminist Orientalism and Orientalist Feminism: Case Studies of Two North American Bestsellers." Critique: Critical Middle Esatern Studies. 14(2) (2005):223-237.
Bhabha Homi K (ed). Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1990.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Blaim, Maria Diana. But I’m from Here Now Constructing Identity in Iranian-American Self-Narrative. Diss. Rostock University, 2015.
Brown, Edward Killoran, and James Osler, Bailey, eds. Victorian Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Ronald Press, 1962, 831.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.
Crowther, Y. Saffron Kitchen. New York: Viking Penguin, 2006.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Rabinov, Paul. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Dumas, F. Funny in Farsi. New York: Random House, 2003.
Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et Punir. Naissance de la Prison, Paris, Gallimard; trans. A. Sheridan, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New York, Vintage Books, 1977.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. "Hansel and Gretel." Folk and Fairy Tales. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. 3rd Edition. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2002. 137-143.
Giroux, Henri. Afterword, in Hirsch, Elizabeth & Orson, Gary, eds., Women Writing Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Print
Hinchcliffe, Doreen. Louis Beck and Nikki Keddie, ed. Women in the Muslim World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978. Print.
Ida, Lichter. Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices Against Oppression. New York: Prometheus Books, 2009.189.
Harlow, Barbara. Resistance Literature. New York: Methuen, 1987.
Lionnet, Francoise. “Of Mangoes and Maroons: Language, History, and the Multicultural Subject of Michelle Cliff’s ‘Abeng’.”–Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson eds., DE/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992, 321 – 345.
Minu-Sepehr, Aria. We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.
Moallem, Minoo. "Am I a Muslim Woman? Nationalist Ructions and Postcolonial Transgressions," in shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak out, ed. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Northampton, Mass: Olive Branch Press, 2005:51-55.
Molavi, Afshin. Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys across Iran. W. W. Norton & Company; 2002.
Moein, Mohammad. Aguste 20 1994. May 2. 2016. https://www.vajehyab.com.
Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. London: Verso, 1997.
Morris, Ann and Margaret Dunn. “The Bloodstream of Our Inheritance: Female Identity and the Caribbean Mothers’-Land.” Motherlands: Black Women’s Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia. Ed. Susheila Nasta. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 219-37.
Paidar, Parvin. Women in the Political Process in Twenthith Century Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Rabinow, Paul (editor). The Foucault Reader: An introduction to Foulcault’s thought. London, Penguin, 1991. Print
Sabagh, Georges, and Mehdi Bozorgmehr.  “Secular Immigrants:  Ethnicity and Religiosity among Iranian Muslims in Los Angeles.” The Muslim Communities of North America.  Ed.  By Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith. New York: State Uuniversity of New York Press, 1994. 445-473.
Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 77.
Miriam Ticktin, “Contemporary British Asian Women: Social Movement or Lierary Tradition?” Journal of Women: a Cultural Review 7 (1) (1996): 66-67.
Zimra, Clarissa. “Righting the Calabash: Writing History in the Female Franco-phone Narrative.” − Caroline Boyce Davies & Elaine Savory Fido (eds.), Out of the Kumbla. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990. 143 – 159.
 
Persian Literary Studies Journal
Volume 5, Issue 7.8
November 2016
Pages 17-36

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics