Towards a Theory of Iranian American Life Writing

Though the Iranian American memoirs published since 2003 are by no means the first autobiographical writings by members of this ethnic group, because they appeared after the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center and in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the response to them demonstrates not only increased anxieties about Muslims in the public sphere, but a sharpening of the debate within the Iranian diaspora about the appropriate role of its members in the host country.