128 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1

Another Sea, Another Shore:
Persian Stories of Migration

Shouleh Vatanabadi and Mohammad
Mehdi Khorrami, trans. and eds.

Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2004. 242 pages.

Most critics of modern Persian literature would agree that the emergent
Iranian diaspora literature is both rearticulating and challenging traditional
Persian narratives of identity, nationality, nation-state, and homeland.
Another Sea, Another Shore is an admirable attempt to bring together in a
single volume representative samples of this diaspora literature, rooted in at
least 25 years of exilic experiences. 

The editors, Shouleh Vatanabadi and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami,
have done a superb job in selecting the stories as well as in translating them
in a fluid, straightforward language. The book contains 21 stories grouped
under three headings that roughly divide narratives into initial experiences
of migrating/travelling, exilic experience, and more settled diasporic artic-
ulations. Represented in the volume are narratives of such well-established
writers as Reza Baraheni, Hushang Golshiri, Nasim Khaksar, and Dariush
Kargar, as well as those of such new writers as Kader Abdolah, Tahereh
Alavi, and Marjan Riahi, among others. 

The constant themes of shattered dreams, unfulfilled hopes, discon-
nected borders, ruptured identities, unfamiliar and defamiliarized spaces
running through each story testify to the fact that this migration of a gener-
ation of exiled Iranians was no ordinary migration. It was not just about
leaving one’s home behind; it was, more importantly, about not being able
to return. And this inability was powerful enough to drive some exiles and
their loved ones back home to the shores of insanity – and even death. In
“Anxieties from Across the Water,” Pari Mansouri masterfully depicts this
painful saga when a mother concludes that “the pain of separation will kill
me in the end” (p. 7). And it does. 

Among the collected stories, Mehri Yalfani’s “Without Roots” perhaps
best captures the essence of what one may call an Iranian diasporic experi-
ence. In this powerful piece, Yalfani demonstrates a complex web of rela-
tionships, conflicts, and interactions that migration creates, such as the ones
between home and host cultures, old and young generations, males and
females, as well as those emerging from class issues, racism, and processes
of resocialization and identity formation. The old generation of Iranian



Book Reviews 129

exiles, for instance, is represented in the figure of “the father,” an ex-
colonel in the shah’s army who now drives a cab in Toronto and “talks
about women as if they are sheep” (p. 93). 

The ex-colonel’s generation is a product of a culture that never came to
terms with its own racist character. Many of its members come from privi-
leged ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds and, for the first time,
find themselves at the receiving end of their host societies’ own racism and
exclusion. Unable to fully grasp this condition, they hold on to their home-
grown racist mentality and resort to superiority complexes as therapeutic
mechanisms to cope with their disadvantaged status in new societies. Thus,
it is no surprise that when the ex-colonel’s teenage daughter brings her
friend Salima home, he and his wife make fun of Salima, asking their
daughter: “Why do you make friends with colored children?” (p. 96). 

Similar signs of racial prejudice are evidenced in other stories. In
“The Road to Arizona,” for instance, Nasim Khaksar, a seasoned writer,
finds it necessary to comment on “the black fellow’s” deep voice, “with
that heavy black accent that never fades away even if they stay some-
where else for thirty years” (p. 85). Likewise, in “The Wolf Lady,” Goli
Taraghi talks about the Iranian pride “rooted in 2,500 years of history …
and a belief that we, descendants of Cyrus and Darius, even in our defeat,
misery, and wretchedness, are superior to others” (p. 130). This superiority
complex is an inseparable component of modern Persian literature and is
ingrained in the worldviews of the majority of Persian intellectuals, writers,
and poets. 

A flip side of this superiority complex has been to inferiorize the non-
Persian “others” in the country by denying them the space necessary for
developing their languages, literatures, cultures, and histories. This fact is
well-illustrated in Ali Erfan’s “Anonymous,” in which a member of the
dominant Farsi-speaking group describes his encounters with Iran’s Baluchi
community:

You know that over there everyone has tanned, dark skin, and my white,
fair skin stood out. Then and there I felt I was outside; outside Iran. They
were speaking in a local language, Baluchi. A foreign language, like here.
I did not understand anything … I could not accept that this place was part
of Iran. (p. 224)

Thus, a dominant body foreignizes fellow citizens of his country just
because they have “dark skins” and don’t speak his language, that is, the
dominant Farsi language. In fact, modern Persian literature has always



130 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:1

played a very central role in perpetuating this kind of linguistic racism by
seeking to (mis)represent itself as Iran’s only and exclusively authentic lit-
erature, just as it has sought to establish Farsi as the only legitimate lan-
guage in the country. 

The late Edward Said emphasized the positive impacts that exile usu-
ally has on individuals’ creative and intellectual development. As an indi-
cation of the increasing literary activities in the Iranian diaspora, Another
Sea, Another Shore contains vestiges of positive exilic creativity. For the
first time in the history of Persian literature, themes of identity, nationality,
race, and language are explored as markers of differentiation, distinction,
and othering. Such themes are rarely – if at all – taken up in the dominant
literature back home. 

Certainly, more positive results will come out of this new development
when exiles mature to articulate their own position as “other” in host soci-
eties. By articulating this subordinate position and juxtaposing it vis-à-vis
their superordinate status back home, we may hope that a fully fledged
interrogation of acts of othering, excluding, and marginalizing in both
home and host societies will emerge.

Hopefully, too, we may then witness such works as Another Sea,
Another Shore covering not just Persian stories of migration, but samples
of stories written in Iran’s non-Persian languages as well. To this end,
Another Sea, Another Shore is a wonderful starting point and a solid step-
pingstone. I recommend this work to all those interested in Iran and its lit-
eratures. It is a fine indicator of the beginning of Iranian diaspora’s journey
from monoculturalism to multiculturality, plurality, and heterogeneity.

Alireza Asgharzadeh
Department of Sociology and Equity Studies

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada