A Separation - Asghar Farhadi
This Iranian film follows the legal dispute of two Iranian families from separate social classes. Specifically, their competing perspectives on the dispute complicate the judge’s (and the audience's) ability to decide who is right in their conflict. Each character’s social positioning influences their understanding of what really happened, and thus the film explores how knowledge is objective insofar as it caters to the beliefs of the person doing the storytelling.
"Dear Regime" - Roger Sedarat
This semi-autobiographical collection of poems treads a delicate balance between exposing the injustices of the Iranian Revolution and maintaining a sense of admiration for the country in spite of its regime, all through the lens of an Iranian-American trying to make sense of his origins.
"Unveiling" & "Women of Allah" - Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist whose themes explore the convoluted relationship between Iranian women and the religious values of their country. Two collections in particular, "Unveiling" (1993) and "Women of Allah" (1993-1997), explore the paradoxical relationship between oversimplified Western representations of the Muslim world with its real-life, multifaceted dimensions.
A Very Large Expanse of Sea - Tahereh Mafi
This novel follows Shirin, a Muslim-American teenager, as she tries to navigate her identity at a new school in a post-9/11, anti-Muslim society. It’s not only another exploration of how media biases inform people’s knowledge about a particular group of people, but how that knowledge may adversely affect one’s ability to form their own identity outside the deficit discourses through which people choose to understand her.
Here to Stay - Sara Farizan
Farizan's novel explores identity and prejudice through the eyes of Bijan Majidi, a popular basketball player who is suddenly villainized after an anonymous photo is spread around his school making him look like a terrorist. The novel follows Bijan, an Iranian who is proud of his Middle Eastern heritage, as he attempts to fight against the forms of Islamaphobia he suddenly begins to experience.
To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America - Tara Bahrampour
Bahramour traces her experiences immigrating to America with her family after the Revolution, growing up and adapting to America, and having to readapt to life in Iran after she moves back there as an adult. In this way, this memoir offers insight into both American and Iranian culture through the unique lens of someone who has traversed both worlds.
Lipstick Jihad - Azadeh Moaveni
As an Iranian-American who grew up in Los Angeles - a city where many Iranians of the Revolutionary era reside in exile - Moaveni details her experience moving to Iran as a journalist in order to consolidate her cultural identity and better understand the history of the diasporic Iranian community back home. Her narrative also offers a portrait of Iran that is far from its extremist reputation; she comes to know the country nearly 20 years after the Revolution, when the reform movement of the new generation is rallying for the end of the Islamic regime.
Journey From the Land of No - Roya Hakakian
Hakakian describes her childhood growing up Jewish during the post-Revolutionary era. Only twelve at the time of the 1979 Revolution, she learns about Islamic fundamentalist through the atrocities that are afflicted against her Jewish community and offers an insider's perspective at what it means to come of age as a minority during a major ideological transformation.
Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora - Edited by Persis M. Karim
This collection of short stories, essays, poems, and articles written by women of the Iranian diaspora explore many of the same themes of hybridity, identity, displacement, and home that are broached in the memoirs.