“I Cannot Lie”: The Literary Biography and Unpublished Letters of Forugh Farrokhzad, LMEI, SOAS
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2017-02-13

This lecture titled ''“I Cannot Lie”: The Literary Biography and Unpublished Letters of Forugh Farrokhzad' was the first of four lectures on Forugh Farrokhzad by Farzaneh Milani. Part of the Yarshater Lecture Series in Persian Literature.
You can find out more about this event at https://goo.gl/Horj0Q
You can find out more about this event series at https://goo.gl/SdEFiq

"When a woman tells the truth," Adrienne Rich once proclaimed, "she is creating the possibility of more truth around her." And Muriel Rukeyser asked incisively, “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?” Her response was short: “The world would split open.” Forugh Farrokhzad (1934-1967) told the truth about her life and the society she lived in and created the possibility of more truth around her. She also split open the world of Iranian literature.

Farrokhzad lived a rich and complex life and produced poetry more autobiographical than any other Iranian before or after her. A rebel who challenged cultural and political absolutism in her all-too-brief, 13-year literary career, she was a figure of intense controversy. Although banned after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this poet, who adopted the pseudonym “Iconoclast,” is now an icon, the Iranian equivalent of a rock star, a guru. Her five poetry collections, the many books, articles, and movies on her life and art, her voice recordings, and her short documentary film on leprosy sell like hot cakes inside and outside Iran. Indeed, a whole new industry has developed around her name.

This series of four presentations focuses on the life and art of this daring, often irreverent trespasser of sacrosanct boundaries and explorer of taboo topics.

Lecture to be preceded by a reception at 6:00pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre Foyer.

Farzaneh Milani is Raymond J. Nelson Professor and Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures and former Director of Studies in Women and Gender at the University of Virginia. She has published several books, most recently Words, not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2011; co-winner of Latifeh Yarshater Award), and over one hundred articles, epilogues, forewords, and afterwords in both Persian and English. She has served as the guest editor for special issues of Nimeye-Digar, Persian Language Feminist Journal, IranNameh and Iranian Studies: Journal of the International Society for Iranian Studies. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Ms. Magazine, Reader's Digest, USA Today, and contributed to National Public Radio's All Things Considered. She has presented 240 lectures nationally and internationally. A past president of the Association of Middle Eastern Women's Studies in America and a Carnegie Fellow, Milani was the recipient of the All University Teaching Award as well as Zintl Leadership Award (2015).

Chair: Stefan Sperl, SOAS