2017/07/19 by Amirhossein Vafa · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East #Turkey's Politics and Society
paper · doi:10.1080/00210862.2017.1350095
openalex publication_date 2017/07/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Focusing on black women Qadam-Kheyr and Sorur in Mahshid Amirshahi’s novel Dadeh Qadam-Kheyr (1999), this article examines literary representations of the African-Iranian presence, and provides a critique of race and slavery in twentieth-century Iran. In light of the history of the Iranian slave trade until 1928, and the reconstruction of race and gender identities along Eurocentric lines of nationalism in Iran, the novel under scrutiny is a dynamic site of struggle between an “Iranian” literary discourse and its “non-Persian” Others. The “aesthetics of alterity” at the heart of the text is, therefore, the interplay between the repressed title-character Qadam-Kheyr and the resilient minor character Sorur, each registering Amirshahi’s artistic intervention into a forgotten corner of Iranian history.