Constructing Identity in Iranian-American Self-Narrative

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.

“Constructing Identity in Iranian-American Self-Narrative is an important work concerned with the ‘performance of identity’ … . It speaks to an increasing appetite for scholarship that captures the parallel growth in minority literature with transnational echoes. Members of the academic community and the public will find it useful in offering an account of an Iranian American complicated sense of agency in a globe fraught with reductions and over-simplifications.” (Waleed F. Mahdi, European Journal of American Culture, Vol. 36 (3), September, 2017)

"This first comprehensive analysis of Iranian American autobiographical writing is insightful and richly nuanced. Laying bare the multiple contradictory impulses that inform an autobiography, Constructing Identity in Iranian-American Self-Narrative reveals how writing about the self is entangled in the complex workings of memory, self-positioning vis-à-vis a frequently over-determined past, and the performance of a new identity." - Nasrin Rahimieh, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, USA

"Wagenknecht offers a compelling and comprehensive study of Iranian-American memoirs, mining these works to carefully elaborate the construction of a new diasporic identity in the United States. Focusing on a broad set of issues, ranging from memory and nostalgia to ethnicity and racism, her study offers an illuminating exploration of how Iranian-Americans have been able to fashion through writing not only new selves but also new homes for themselves in an otherwiseinhospitable environment." - Ali Behdad, John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature, University of California, Los Angeles, USA and the author of A Forgetful Nation: On Cultural Identity in the United States

"Wagenknecht has performed a great service in her fascinating exploration of Iranian identity. Explicating the cultural structures that form the context of interpretation of everyday life for Iranians, she goes far beyond the crude stereotypes of the Iranian people seen in Western media. She translates Iranian experience in all of its complexity and richness in a masterful narrative that inspires both admiration and a desire to know more about the richness of this great civilization. Even those who think they know Iran (or are themselves Iranian) will gain new insights from her book." - William O. Beeman, Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, USA and the author of The 'Great Satan' vs. the 'Mad Mullahs': How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other

"Meticulously researched and elegantly written, this book convincingly argues that by narrating themselves as Iranian-Americans, autobiographers are claiming their right to self-determination in America's pluralistic society, which encompasses, however, the right to not fully Westernize oneself. This thought-provoking study suggests that it is high time to expand the canon of American literature to include Middle Eastern authors for both scholarly and political reasons." - Volker Depkat, Professor of American Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany

Maria Wagenknecht is an Independent Researcher, Germany.