SoArtClub - May 18, 2018
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| Faranak Farid |
Faranak Farid, a Turkish poet, translator, writer, and women's rights activist, is also one of the founding members of the One Million Signatures Campaign. She has been repeatedly interrogated and reprimanded for her cultural and social activities and was once arrested and pursued legally. Born in 1961 in Tabriz, her latest work involves contributing to the translation of a collection of articles by Kimberly Crenshaw and others on the topic of intersectionality. This book was published in late 2017 by Shiraze Publishing. SoArtClub interviewed her about the challenges faced by non-Persian artist-activists. It is important to note that this interview was conducted in Turkish, and in the Persian translation and condensation, some of the nuances of the language and the sweetness of the conversation have been lost.
Interview with Faranak Farid, Poet, Translator, Writer, and Turkish Feminist
In me, everything took shape consecutively. In the intellectual circles of the Pahlavi regime's opposition, the main issues discussed were imperialism and class inequality. Immediately after the new regime came to power, one could notice the restriction of women's rights and the growing attention to gender inequality. Subsequently, with the atmosphere created by the regime change and the rise of our mother tongue, issues of linguistic inequality began to arise, followed by questions regarding racial and ethnic inequalities. All these issues emerged one after another for me and later took a more serious form. The tightly controlled conditions of the 1980s brought intellectual circles into private homes. These gatherings, often made up of entire families, gave a more artistic direction to the activities. From these home-based gatherings, artists emerged in various fields such as poetry, music, Azerbaijani dance, theater, and more.
Faranak Farid, a Turkish-speaking poet, translator, writer, and women's rights activist, begins her narrative of ethnic and gender inequalities in Iran: "In the early 1980s, it was in these circles that I became aware of a very simple, yet complex issue: I could neither read nor write in my mother tongue!"
From that moment on, I could no longer be indifferent to the oppression that had been imposed on us and on our language. The issue of language was merely an outward result of a long-standing systematic cultural assimilation, with a history of nearly one hundred years. From these circles, I started learning my mother tongue and gradually discovered its beauty and depth. I wrote my first long poem in Turkish in 1994. It took over a decade for me to become proficient enough in my mother tongue to start publishing my work.
The problem here is that in a country where languages are severely restricted by the dominant, official, and political language, when a person writes in their mother tongue, their audience is significantly smaller. Some wrote in Persian and succeeded, but those who chose to revive their mother tongue faced both limited audiences and the fact that even the Turkish-speaking audience was not sufficiently literate in their mother tongue! To add to this issue, people generally do not read much, and there is not enough support for writers and publishers who publish books in their mother tongue.
Faranak Farid, an identity-based activist on women's issues, reflects: "For me, there's an issue that I think could be a problem for other non-Persian women artist-activists as well. Before everything came together, I realized that, as a woman, Turkish speaker, and someone living outside the center, I had witnessed various forms of inequality. I could never prioritize one over the other, and I understood that I had no choice but to scatter my efforts!"
At first, by recognizing the inseparability of basic human rights, I felt at ease, and later, I found that my experiences throughout these years aligned with the theory of intersectionality. I understood the reason for my scattered efforts with greater clarity. In the beginning, I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but now I realize that the various inequalities I’ve witnessed are the root causes of my jumping from one issue to another and trying to be active in many areas that had little activity. This was not a personal weakness of mine, something I had long blamed myself for!"
She adds: "As I said, the questions were not limited to gender inequality or class inequality or racial/ethnic inequality, but when we realize the interconnection of gender with other forms of inequality, we see that we are dealing with a very complex and intertwined issue. Therefore, it’s not easy to just be leftist, or simply a women’s rights activist, or merely an identity activist. Interestingly, I was arrested due to the environmental crisis of Lake Urmia!"
In this part of her speech, referring to her presence at the Women’s Commission in March 2009, she recalls: "I remember in one of the meetings of the Women’s Commission in New York, a Black woman said something that has stayed with me forever. She said, 'We weren’t invited to the planet to be told that the issues of the Earth don’t concern us; we are inhabitants of the Earth, and everything on it concerns us!' I too could never prioritize one issue over another or say, 'It doesn’t concern me.' I know for sure that we must stand against all inequalities, which, as it turns out, are all interconnected."
She also reflects on the challenges of writing in her mother tongue: "The effort required to write and publish works in my mother tongue is several times greater than the effort needed to write and publish works in Persian. For example, if I want to publish a book in Turkish, it will take the equivalent of publishing three similar books in Persian in terms of time and energy. This is due to the characteristics of our language and its alphabet, as well as the fact that neither I nor my audience have been academically trained to think, read, and write in this language. As I mentioned, it took me a long time to learn how to read and write in my mother tongue. I had to learn from various sources or through self-teaching, familiarize myself with its rules, and apply them, and this process continues even now. Additionally, being in the process of raising awareness, there were constantly issues that I had to prioritize, causing me to delay working on my own literary and translation projects. In the true sense of the word, my writings always waited for me!"
What Farid discusses confirms that the structural dominance of the Persian language over other languages spoken in Iran has reduced these languages, which have a rich history and literature, to weak languages that face difficulties in production and publication. These languages, which have been assimilated and weakened, will gradually be absorbed into the official language of the country. Undoubtedly, if it weren’t for these scattered resistances, these languages and the identities connected to them would face extinction. It is people like her who remain hopeful and determined to preserve and revitalize their linguistic and cultural heritage.