Reading Hoda Hadadi in Tehran: The Implicit Articulation of Lesbian Identity in Iranian Children’s Literature

Abstract

Reading Hoda Hadadi in Tehran: The Implicit Articulation of Lesbian Identity in Iranian Children’s Literature Massih Zekavat (bio) Sexuality in its full diversity has been expressed in Iranian lore and literature both explicitly and implicitly (Alfiyah and Shalfiyah, Astarābādī, Floor, Khānsārī, Najmabadi, Nakhshabī, Shamisa). Yet, as the modern notion of childhood and children’s literature emerged at roughly the same time as the heterosexual/homosexual divide consolidated, sexuality also receded from Iranian children’s literature.1 Besides religious considerations, censorship is another important reason. Publications are subject to censorship both before and after their release in Iran. For a book to be published, the manuscript must be licensed by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which often involves demands for modifications to ensure compliance with the law and sharia, yet this does not immunize the author and publisher against further liability in case authorities later find traces of transgression even in a licensed publication that might lead to a ban on the book and potential punishment for the parties involved. While unashamedly and avowedly heteronormative, Iranian children’s literature frequently attempts to eschew sexuality. Nonetheless, we seem to have both a pattern of slow emergence in the face of hostility and heteronormativity (as in the West in the 1960s) and a particularly pronounced version of those things due to religious beliefs and the political situation in Iran. Examples of this slow emergence include Azadeh Mohseni’s title story in Born in the Owl Month, Nooshin Zargari in Woody, and, in particular, Hoda Hadadi in children’s and young adult literature. Hadadi, writer, poet, and illustrator, was born in 1977 in Tehran. She has so far created almost sixty titles as author, illustrator, and author/illustrator and has won several distinctions and awards. Her books My Day with the Clouds, Deep in the Sahara (written by Kelly Cunnane and illustrated by Hadadi), Drummer Girl (with Hiba Masood), and Rainbow in My Pocket (written by Ali Seidabadi and illustrated by Hadadi) are available in English.2 [End Page 283] Responding to Caitlin L. Ryan and Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth’s call for queer readings of the works that are already on the shelf in hopes of advocating diversity and inclusiveness, I argue that Hadadi repudiates heteropatriarchy and subtly depicts an alternative paradigm of lesbian rapport in three of her books. Specifically, in her picturebook Goli and Zebra (2007) Hadadi censures the institution of heterosexual marriage, and in her young adult novel The Clown (2012/2013) she explores the joys of a homosocial bonding of characters in an unsympathetic and repressive context. Hadadi further depicts the jouissance of a lesbian rapport in her picturebook Two Friends through drawing on nature, investigating the philosophical, emotional, and ethical implications of lesbian sexual performance and creating a dialogic, rather than imitative, relationship between the text and illustrations. Taken together, these moves demonstrate a daring transgression that is even more impressive in an Islamic context where male homosexual practices are still subject to corporal punishment or even execution, and lesbianism is almost inconceivable. These three books fit different categories and genres and use different modes of expression. Their intended readers and arguably their social functions are also different. Hadadi starts with criticizing heteropatriarchy and exposing the devastating effects of a heterosexual marriage for women in her animal fable Goli and Zebra, where marriage does not lead to the realization of the protagonist’s self and her dreams. Her realist novel The Clown uses meticulous characterization and a socially located setting to offer a more pragmatic attitude to exploring resistance at a social level. Meanwhile, the picturebook Two Friends features unnamed protagonists in a natural setting not bound by time or place; it adopts an open-ended, psychological and individual perspective in order to address fundamental and philosophical questions. Reading these works together, I argue, sheds light on Hadadi’s revisionary project through which she attempts to break with the tradition, open a space for and give voice to the peripheries, and destabilize the ideology propagated by the repressive regime. The supposed asexual nature of children and the necessity of guarding their innocence postponed homosexual representations in children’s literature. At...