Women's Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran

Download or read book Women's Autobiographies in Contemporary Iran written by Afsaneh Najmabadi and published by Harvard CMES. This book was released on 1990 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The four essays in this volume discuss the autobiographical writings of Iranian women. The contributors to the collection include William Hanaway, Michael Hillmann, and Farzaneh Milani. Milani asks why modern Persian literature, with its rich self-reflective tradition, has not produced many autobiographies, and what particular problems confront Iranian women engaging in autobiographical writing. Najmabadi discusses one of the earliest modern autobiographical writings by a woman, Taj os-Saltaneh’s Memories, and Hillman projects Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetry as an autobiographical voice. Hanaway investigates the possibilities of going beyond lack of Western-style autobiographical form and looking for what Persian literary forms and categories provide for the autobiographical voice.