Laughing Matters: Satire and Child Narrators

Laughing Matters: Satire and Child Narrators in Memoirs of the Iranian Diaspora

Niyosha Keyzad

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English

University of Toronto

Friday, 26 Janauary 2018, 4:00 p.m.

200B Bancroft, Bancroft Building

4 Bancroft Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1C1

https://goo.gl/qhdeVh

Abstract:

Children can easily open the door,

That lets the spirit rise up and wear

Its favourite costume of mirth and laughter. –Hafiz

Throughout Iran’s history of political turbulence, Iranians have become particularly adept at appropriating humour as an instrument of liberation, social criticism, and political sublimation. The Iranian affinity for satire is manifest in the production of timely political jokes, satirical poetry, and witty protest slogans that are ubiquitous in everyday Iranian social life. A number of diasporic Iranian memoirists (Satrapi 2003, 2004; Dumas 2004, 2008; Khorsandi 2009) deploy satire through child narrators in recounting their experiences of living through the revolution and in the diaspora. In Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud describes jokes as: “‘a contrast of ideas’, ‘sense in nonsense’, [and] ‘bewilderment and illumination’” (7). As modes of narration, satirical humour and the child narrator share a sense of bewilderment about the wrongs of the world, often contemplating the contrast between ‘sense and nonsense.’ However, while satire is primarily concerned with absurdity, injustice, oppression, and the misuse of power, children are not yet socialized to understand the underlying forces of life’s adversities. Marjan Satrapi’s Persepolis (2003), Firoozeh Dumas’ Funny in Farsi (2004) and Laughing Without an Accent (2008), and Shappi Khorsandi’s A Beginner’s Guide To Acting English (2009) draw on the universal appeal of humour and childhood by narrativizing experiences of exile, dispersal, and resettlement through satirical child narrators. This presentation will look at the ways in which the memoirs at hand confront the cultural trauma of the revolution and the hardships of living in the diaspora with satirical humour and the pretense of childhood naiveté.

Bio:

Niyosha is a PhD Candidate at the Department of English and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Her research interests include: memoirs of the North American Iranian diaspora, literatures of exile and displacement, theories of space and identity, and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. She currently teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough.