Homeland Dramatizations and Native Gaze Demolitions in Nahid Rachlin’s Foreigner and Porochista Khakpour’s Sons and Other Flammable Objects

Nahid Rachlin’s and Porochista Khakpour’s two novels allow to examine the strict relationship between the native writer’s eye and the representation of three symptomatic topics: I, family and homeland. As examples of fiction by women writers born in Iran but later in their lives expatriated to the West, Foreigner and Sons and other flammable objects engage with the analysis of linguistic adjustments, misunderstandings and cultural stereotypes. More in detail, Rachlin’s and Khakpour’s plots concentrate upon an opposite diasporic transient condition, which concerns the families whose situations are portrayed. Thus, the comparison of the two novels examines this condition as characterized by a final overturning of the I, family, homeland roles. Rachlin’s and Khakpour’s works focus on the confused perceptions of family and homeland, in order to observe the scarce faculty of the I to adjust and negotiate or demolish names, habits and foods. The careful selection of narrative excerpts about intimate digressions, family dialogues and homeland memories supplies another focus of this paper, which explores the conflicts inside the father-son archetype and its symbolisms. Lastly, the paper analyses the implications of writing about the need of affiliation between Iran and the West as marked by the dramatization of the I, family, homeland positions in two significant contemporary Iranian-American novels.