The Enduring Complexity of Exile & Identity

Laleh Khadivi in
my favorite magazine WLT

The current issue of WLT features an interview with Iranian novelist and filmmaker Laleh Khadivi in which she touches upon a topic that I often return to in poetry (or perhaps it's the very topic that drew me into poetry to begin with): exile. 


Khadivi discusses identity and exile, and how the publishing industry will respond when faced with "narratives that take on the unending complexity of exile and identity that offer no clean and comfortable endings." In this response, she's also underscoring a theme of her recent interests: post-national identities in the 21st century. 


Khadivi says: 

As a writer who belongs more to Edward Said’s exilic consciousness than to any one particular country, I would like to think that literature is appealing because it rises above nationality and nationalism and draws people to places where they can suspend judgment, assumption, and belief.

Khadivi online: 

- Emory University Creative Writing Program website

- Documentary "900 Women" website (the film is about the women's prison St. Gabriel in Louisiana)