Asia Society’s friendly conversation with two Iranian-American writers and editors of recently released book “Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers” is accessible here.
And guess what? Even Iranian-American struggle with stereotyped portraits of Iran:
One of the authors in Tremors told us about an experience she had of shopping her novel around for nearly five years. Because it is about a relationship between a mother and daughter, and there’s a very positive relationship between the daughter and her father and the father is a very loving, doting father, the publisher suggested she change the representation of the father. They essentially told the author that the father was “too loving” and that she needed to make him more stern and punitive towards his daughter, maybe “have him beat up his wife.” This suggests that publishers are afraid to assert a different vision of Iran because it doesn’t sell against the repetitive and negative stereotyping, particularly, of Muslim men.
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