Forough Goes West

This essay explores the legacy of Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad (1935–1967) in the Iranian American diaspora. At once political and poetic, particular and universal, Farrokhzad’s oeuvre has in recent years become a vital coordinate for a number of contemporary Iranian American women exploring issues of gender, faith, social justice, and human rights across historical and cultural boundaries. I argue that the imaginative recovery of Farrokhzad by Iranian immigrant women writers and artists not only complicates the West’s frequently reductive contemporary representations of Middle Eastern women, but marks a bold and evolving interface between modernist Iranian literature and contemporary Iranian immigrant literature. Works discussed in depth include the photographs and films of Shirin Neshat and Maryam Habibian’s play Forugh’s Reflecting Pool.