Tremors New Fiction by Iranian American Writers By Anita Amirrezvani and Persis Karim, eds. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2013. 338 pages.)

Abstract

This collection of short stories and novel excerpts is the first of its kind to appear
in English. Its twenty-seven stories are intended for the general public
interested in exploring new horizons in fiction, although the fact that the book
is published by a university press might limit public access.
Tremors is a collection of fiction revolving around the ideas of migration,
exile, hybrid identities, and coming to terms with these. The book is divided
into three sections, each of which, according to the editors, revolves around a
central theme. The stories in the first section, “American Homeland,” involve
fictional accounts of the challenges of “immigration and assimilation in the
United States” (p. xii). This, in fact, is not always the case. In Dena Afrasiabi’s
“String,” for example, the female narrator, Forugh, is at home in the United
States, for the only challenges facing her are the memory of her dead mother
and the shadow of her sorrow-stricken Iranian father lurking in the background.
Similarly, in Salar Abdoh’s “Fixer Karim,” it is the immigrant Heavy
K who continues to ease past assimilation barriers in the United States, to the
astonishment of the well-established Iranian-American narrator, so much so
that the story ends with Heavy K appearing as the lead singer in a country
band. In a number of stories, (e.g., Taha Ebrahimi’s “Family Trouble” or J.
Kevin Shushtari’s “The Sweet Dry Fruit of the Lotus Tree”), in fact, the narrator’s
family is well established and feels at home, sometimes with an American
parent, until ghosts or guests from Iran upset the peace.
The second section, “Iran, Land of Resilience,” has been so named because
the setting of these stories is Iran, although not all of them entertain
such a view about the land. One example is the excerpt from Zohreh Ghahremani’s
Sky of Red Poppies, in which the dark days of oppression under the ...