Pomegranate Seeds Scattered Like Memories: Exploring Memory, Exile, and Selfhood in Goli Taraghi’s Life Writing

In transnational autobiographical narratives, life writers often attempt to reconcile themes of identity, belonging, and loss of home, particularly as they navigate movement in-between their homeland and their newly adopted countries. In Persian literature, the tradition of autobiographical writing is more recent, picking up popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. One such writer, Goli Taraghi, is more prominent and active in her autobiographical writing, particularly where it concerns themes of loss and exile. _Khāterhāi Parakāndeh_, or Scattered Memories, was published in Persian in 1992 as a series of autobiographical short stories retelling her childhood spent in Iran, in addition to other allegorical, fictional narratives like “Khānehi dar Āsemān,” or “House in the Sky,” recounting a grandmother’s displacement following the revolution. More specifically, her autobiofictional short stories simultaneously narrate the way her little girl is being picked up by a school bus set against a wintery backdrop in Paris, while also recalling stories of a similar school bus driving her as a child through the wintery snows of Tehran. Through these jumps in time and place, Taraghi draws attention to the stitches and seams of life writing and the fabric of remembering. Drawing on Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s seminal theoretical work on autobiographical writing, this talk notes three autobiographical 'I's permeating Taraghi’s narrative landscape, which reflect the shifting narrative voice: the narrating ‘I,’ narrated ‘I’ and ideological ‘I.’ These distinctions are helpful for determining the various modes of narration in Goli Taraghi’s work, which offers a multitude of reflections for viewing an autobiographical subject caught in-between worlds. While some of Taraghi’s work has been translated into other languages, like Faridoun Farrokh’s 2003 English translation of _Khāterhāi Parakāndeh_, renamed as A Mansion in the Sky: And Other Short Stories, it is Sara Khalili’s 2013 English translation of _The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons: Selected Stories_, which more prominently debuts Taraghi’s work to global Anglophone audiences. In this collection of autobiographical short stories, Taraghi presents frank pictures of her childhood in Tehran, exile and displacement in Paris, and subsequent return visits to a changing, post-revolutionary Iran. Ultimately, Taraghi’s agency is strengthened through autobiographical short stories that disrupt narratological convention, while critically evaluating a life in-between Iran and France.