SELF-ORIENTALIZING REPRESENTATIONS OF IRANIAN MEN IN ECHOES FROM THE OTHER LAND BY AVA HOMA

Abstract

Echoes from the Other Land is a collection of short stories by Ava Homa, an Iranian-Canadian writer and social activist. The stories present a pessimistic and cynical view of Iranian men as victimizers and the country as an open-air prison. The portrayal of men as beneficiaries and perpetuators of restrictive societal norms and women as oppressed captives points to a lopsided politics of representation. The prevalence of such an accusatory and condemnatory stance toward Iranian men is thus problematic. My argument is that, as a diasporic text, Homa’s work harkens back to other notable diasporic works that similarly betray self-Orientalizing tendencies in representing men by characterizing them as primitive and abusive while women as victims. After analyzing these stories from such a critical perspective, I will conclude this paper by discussing the notion of hypervisibility/invisibility as the corollary of such a politics of representation.