With nearly every action, Iranian women fight the status quo and political structure of their country, said Shahrnush Parsipur, an Iranian-born novelist and the University's first International Writing Fellow. Parsipur spoke Friday during a panel discussion titled "The Ethics of Speaking: First Person Accounts from Women Writers and Artists from Islamic Societies," part of a week of events sponsored by Brown's International Writers Project.
The five-member panel - made up of writers and filmmakers - drew about 50 people Friday afternoon to the Joukowsky Forum at the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies.
One of the newest obstacles Iranian writers have come across is the United States' "editing embargo."
"As a publisher it is a fragile time, because there is a lot of conflict in the world today," said Livia Tenzer, editorial director for Feminist Press in New York.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is part of the U.S. Treasury, oversees textual interactions, Tenzer said.
"It's not illegal to publish works from embargoed countries, but it is illegal to provide the services of editing," she said. But the embargo has not deterred women writers and artists from producing work, nor Tenzer from publishing it, she said.
Filmmaker Rabeah Gharrafri, who was born in Iran and grew up in the United States, said she struggles to find a common ground between American and Iranian cultures in her work.
"I find that using humor and pathos in storytelling is cross-cultural and defies any language barriers. In my films, I want the audience to feel for the culture they are coming in contact with," Gharrafri said. But she said she still finds subtitles helpful.
"I don't make films about living in Iran - it will fail on some levels because there is no translation for me," she said. "I grew up in the U.S. I succeed if I'm true to my own life experiences."
Gharrafri said she is careful not to speak for all Iranians in her films, but with her own voice. One of her films is about a group of Iranian performers who immigrate to New York City, where Fharrafri grew up.
Filmmaker Shirin Neshat said she runs into problems with "visual language" in her work. Neshat's current project, called "Women Without Men," is based on Parsipur's novella of the same name.
"I have to develop a system of being respectful to the Persian spoken language and culture, while bringing that into a universal iconographic language," Neshat said.
Neshat said she lives in a world of dualities and contradictions. "I'm between violence and beauty, the U.S. and Iran, Eastern culture and Western culture. I see everything in two parts, and my films tell the audience of a world they are attracted to and afraid of. It's complex, and I leave behind a center," she said.
Different people deal with the pressures of government differently, Neshat said. "Art is my voice and art can empower women. It's important to know that Islamic women are fighters, and art often reflects their fight," she said.
Parsipur, who is working with Neshat to produce the film version of her novella, said that she often confronts language barriers in her work. "I write in Persian, and there aren't many English or French-speaking people who know Persian, so my work is always subjected to translation," she said.
Parsipur has written eight works of fiction and a memoir, all of which were banned by the Islamic government and was imprisoned several times for her writing. Her books are available only on the black market in Iran, Parsipur said.
Parsipur said her memoir of her time in prison is different from most of her work. "I tried to be objective and neutral in my memoir. The Islamic government banned it anyway," she said.
Like Parsipur, filmmaker and writer Assia Djebar has been affected by the Islamic government. Djebar, who had planned to make a film based in part on the Koran, was censored by the Iranian Ministry of Culture.
"Iran needs to reach a common ground that lets women produce artistic work free from political and religious strictures," she said.
