Homeland Beyond Geography: Race, Memory, and Belonging in Iranian American and African American Literature

Abstract

This essay examines the concept of homeland in Iranian American and African American literature, arguing that homeland is not a fixed geographical location but a dynamic construct shaped by race, memory, displacement, and historical experience. Drawing on diaspora theory, particularly the work of William Safran, James Clifford, Avtar Brah, Stuart Hall, the essay compares the representations of homeland in the writings of Porochista Khakpour, Marjane Satrapi, and Firoozeh Dumas with those of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. While Iranian American writers portray homeland as an emotionally fragmented and transnational space negotiated between Iran and the United States, African American writers redefine homeland through memory, community, and cultural survival in response to the historical rupture of slavery. Bringing these literary traditions into conversation demonstrates that race fundamentally mediates access to home and national belonging, although it does so through distinct historical trajectories. Iranian American writers confront racialization through the logic of foreignness and the continual negotiation of transnational identity, whereas African American writers expose how slavery and white supremacy transformed homeland into an ethical and historical struggle rather than a recoverable place. By reading these traditions comparatively, the essay challenges geography-centered understandings of diaspora and argues that homeland functions as an evolving practice of identity formation shaped by racial formation, historical memory, and cultural resilience. Ultimately, both traditions reveal that the search for home is inseparable from the politics of belonging and the historical conditions that determine who is permitted to belong.