雪哈蕊莎德的女兒：伊朗裔美國女性作家

Abstract

本三年期研究計畫主要從近東研究、離散研究以及亞裔美國研究的三重架構探討伊 朗裔美國女性生命書寫與小說創作。伊朗裔移民美國歷史雖然短暫，且多為因政治或宗 教理由而遷徙之中上階級知識份子，然而由於二十世紀以來美伊關係複雜，不論是巴勒 維政府的親美與西化，伊斯蘭革命之後全面反美反西，伊朗在近東地區重要的戰略位置 等等歷史、宗教、政治與軍事因素，都直接影響伊朗裔美國文學的創作。伊朗裔美國文 學雖然早有創作文本出現，直到本世紀方才展露額角，相關的文學研究也是方興未艾， 甚至伊朗裔美國文學是否歸屬亞美研究範疇都有待商榷，卻也因此極具創新研究之契 機。本計畫將由伊朗裔美國社群的女性創作者角度切入，深入研究這些「雪哈蕊莎徳的 女兒」所訴說的國族與歷史記憶。計畫的主要研究焦點為伊朗裔美國移民女性書寫與自 我東方主義式書寫之間的緊張關係，第二代伊朗裔離散子民回歸/回顧「故土」之挑戰， 以及伊朗—猶太裔女性作家如何書寫離散經驗。三年計畫主題分別為：「不止《羅麗塔》： 伊朗裔美國女性移民回憶錄」；「流放幻想：懷舊、『真實之愛』與第二代伊朗裔美國女 性生命書寫」；「『哀傷教育』：伊朗—猶太裔離散社群與《夏拉茲的九月》」。 第一年計畫：不止《羅麗塔》：伊朗裔美國女性移民回憶錄 本年度計畫主要討論伊朗移民女作家的回憶錄書寫在美國書市大賣之後所引發的 「自我東方主義化」論爭。自從2003 年納芙西的回憶錄《在德黑蘭讀羅麗塔》一炮而 紅，高踞《紐約時報》暢銷排行榜117 周以來，伊朗裔美國移民女性的生命書寫廣受歡 迎，甚至有學者提出伊朗裔「回憶錄盛行現象」的說法。對於伊朗裔移民女性回憶錄的 最大爭議，在於作家是否與西方女性主義與美國外交政策合謀醜化伊朗與伊斯蘭，並且 強化刻板印象。本年度計畫將廣泛閱讀伊朗裔美國女性移民回憶錄，例如老牌作家芮琪 琳的《波斯女孩》、卡夏華茲的《茉莉與星辰》與納芙西的新作《沉寂往事》等不同世 代、不同角度的女性移民生命書寫，藉以探討「東方主義式的女性主義」、二十世紀伊 朗女性地位之變化以及強制穿戴面紗、罩袍等等與伊朗裔女性生命經驗息息相關之議 題。 第二年計畫：流放幻想：懷舊、「真實之愛」與第二代伊朗裔美國女性生命書寫 本年度探討出生在美國的第二代伊朗女性對於「故國」伊朗的懷舊想像與回歸。由 於伊朗流亡社群心懷故鄉，試圖在海外複製舊日生活，造成身處美伊文化夾縫的第二代 伊朗裔美國人自我身分定位矛盾，經常企圖藉由回歸「故土」找回「原初的屬性」。但 是回歸之後，卻又再度陷入對革命前的伊朗懷舊與對伊斯蘭共和國的「真實之愛」之間 的掙扎。本年度將從第二代伊朗裔美國女性作家的生命書寫，如莫凡妮的《口紅聖戰》 與《德黑蘭蜜月》等文本，分析其流放的幻想與回歸伊朗之後的現實衝擊，以及伊朗裔 離散社群第二代女性尋覓家園的挑戰。 第三年計畫：「哀傷教育」：伊朗—猶太裔離散社群與《夏拉茲的九月》 本年度計畫以蘇法的小說《夏拉茲的九月》為例，討論猶太—伊朗裔離散社群的歷 史經驗。波斯猶太人的歷史悠久，當今伊朗的猶太人口居中東地區第二，僅次於以色 列，是伊斯蘭國家中猶太人口最多的國家。然而猶太人的地位在伊朗歷史起伏不定， 二次戰後以色列建國之後更造成中東地區反猶情結。身為伊朗猶太人的蘇法在父親遭 到伊斯蘭革命衛隊逮捕、刑求以及釋放之後舉家逃離伊朗，其後以抒情小說的方式試圖再現父親入獄的創傷記憶與震撼家人的「哀傷教育」，同時也記錄了伊朗—猶太裔離 散家庭的形成。本年度計畫將藉由創傷理論研究《夏拉茲的九月》以及相關的生命書 寫文本，如生長於夏拉茲猶太社群的作家歌樂汀的《婚禮之歌：伊朗—猶太女性回憶 錄》及納馬特的《德黑蘭監獄囚犯：伊朗監獄女犯生存故事》與安特卡碧法德的《卡 蜜利亞：誠實自救—伊朗回憶錄》等回憶錄，探討伊朗—猶太裔離散社群與伊朗監獄 經驗之書寫。

This three-year project proposes to explore Iranian American women’s life writing and fiction within the framework of Near Eastern studies, diaspora studies and Asian American studies. The history of Iranian immigrants in the United States is considerably shorter than those of other ethnic communities in North America. The members of the Iranian American diaspora mostly come from the top stratum of Iranian society before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They choose or are forced to relocate to North America because of political and religious reasons and many of them have gone through the humiliation of spiraling down the social ladder. Because of the knotty relations between Iran and the United States—the pro-American regime of Reza Pahlavi, the anti-American sentiment after the Islamic Revolution, the strategic position of Iran in the Middle East—the study of Iranian American literature is constantly complicated by historical, religious, political and military factors. Moreover, Iranian American literature is a latecomer on the American literary scene and is just starting to gain critical attention. The inclusion of Iranian American literature as part of Asian American literary studies is still subject to debate as well. This project intends to engage in an in-depth research on Iranian American literature through the study of the works by women writers, who can be regarded as the literary descendents of Scheherazade, the quintessential storyteller of Arabian Nights, and focuses on the tension between Iranian American immigrant writing and the suspicion and accusation of self-orientalization against this body of work, the challenges faced by the second-generation Iranian American women in their nostalgic attempts to “return” to an imagined “homeland” of the pre-revolutionary Iran and the diasporic experiences of Iranian Jewish American writers. The three main topics to be researched are: “More than Lolita: Iranian American Immigrant Women’s Memoirs”; “Exile Fantasies: Expatriate Nostalgia, ‘Realistic Love’ and Second-Generation Iranian American Women’s Life Writing”; and “‘Education in grief’: The Engendering of Iranian Jewish Diaspora and The Septembers of Shiraz.” First year: More than Lolita: Iranian American Immigrant Women’s Memoirs The first year of the project will investigate the controversy over the market success of Iranian immigrant women’s memoirs and the accusation of self-orientalization against these women writers. The enormous popularity of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003)—it has stayed on the bestseller list of New York Times for one hundred and seventeen weeks and has been translated into more than thirty languages—has created an Iranian American “memoir phenomenon” in North America. These memoirs, most of them written by immigrant women who have left Iran to escape the fundamentalist rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran, have been enthusiastically embraced by American book club readers on the one hand and, on the other hand, have been severely criticized for conspiring with the Bush administration and for practicing a kind of “Orientalist feminism” to demonize the Islamic Republic. In order to cut through the Gordian knot of the controversies over self-orientalisation and to explore culturally and historically specific feminist issues—among them the changing status of Iranian women in the twentieth century and the practices of veiling and chador-wearing—the project will explore variegated representations of Iran by different generations of Iranian American immigrant women, such as Nahid Rachlin’s Persian Girls (2006), Fatemeh Keshavarz’s Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran (2007), and Nafisi’s second memoir Things I’ve Been Silent About (2008). Second year: Exile Fantasies: Expatriate Nostalgia, “Realistic Love” and Second-Generation Iranian American Women’s Life Writing This project intends to examine nostalgic imagination and “return” journeys of the second-generation Iranian American women. The intense desire of the Iranian expatriate community to recreate a Farsi homeland in the United States has created a problematic state of in-betweenness for second-generation Iranian Americans, who, in turn, attempt to resolve their problems of identification by “going back” to the “land of origin.” In Azadeh Moaveni’s memoir Lipstick Jihad (2005), the young journalist records how, once she has landed in the old country, she has learned that as a “returnee” she needs to make a distinction between “nostalgic and realistic love” for Iran (45). Caught within the web of exile fantasies created by the Iranian diaspora community that she has grew up with, the Palo Alto-born Moaveni has to unmoor herself from the expatiate nostalgia created by her uprooted families and compatriots and to reexamine her identity as both an American and an Iranian woman. Spending two years in Tehran as a reporter for Time magazine provides Moaveni the opportunity to come face to face with the new Iranian society that is completely different from her childhood imagination and memory. This project will explore the challenges for the second-generation Iranian American women to (re)locate their home by studying their life writing as exemplified by Lipstick Jihad and its sequel, Honeymoon in Tehran (2009). Third year: “Education in grief”: The Engendering of Iranian Jewish Diaspora and The Septembers of Shiraz The final phrase of the project aims to explore the experiences of the Jewish community within the Iranian diaspora. At the end of Dalia Sofer’s The Septembers of Shiraz (2008), the Iranian Jewish protagonist Isaac Amin reflects on how he and his wife have “shared an education in grief” because of his prison experience (338). The rare-gem dealer is arrested and tortured by the Revolutionary Guard on the grounds that he is a Zionist spy and is not set free until he has donated his entire estate to the Islamic regime. The dispersal of the Amin families across Europe and North America in Sofer’s novel literally embodies the formation of an Iranian Jewish diaspora at the end of twentieth century. Sofer, who has a first-hand experience of the dangerous escape out of the post-revolutionary Iran with her family after her father’s prison ordeal, attempts to imaginatively represent in this lyric novel her father’s traumatic experience in prison and the shock value of this “education in grief” for her whole family. Related texts of life writing, such as Prisoner of Tehran: One Woman’s Story of Survival inside an Iranian Prison (2007) by Marina Nemat, Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth-a Memoir of Iran (2008) by Camelia Entekhabifard and Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman (2003) by Farideh Goldin, herself a native of Shiraz, will be read along with the novel to investigate the traumas of prison life in Iran after the Islamic Revolution and the lived experiences of the Iranian Jewish diasporic communities.