Ava Homa
April 2, 2023 NationalPoetryMonth.ca
Voices Muffled, Bodies Barred by Ava Homa is published on NationalPoetryMonth.ca on April 2, 2023.
From Ava:
"‘Headscarves have a long and complicated history in Iran. Over the years, they have represented contradictory ideas: both backwardness and progressiveness; both misogyny and anti-colonialism; both subversion and subservience. Over the last century, they have been both wholly banned and wholly mandated. Ultimately, the hijab doesn’t mean much in itself; it’s the wearer who imbues it with meaning. Today, by burning their headscarves, Iranian women are providing meaning: They are breaking that voicelessness. Although Iranian women have been muffled, we learned long ago to unveil ourselves through the written word. It’s no coincidence that the first woman in contemporary Iranian history to publicly remove her headscarf was 19th-century poet Tahirih Qurratul-Ayn, who first liberated herself through the expression of her voice. When she bared her head at a men’s gathering in Mazandaran, she created an uproar.
Our voices are everything, and for decades, the voices of Iran’s women have been stifled. It is why I write; for me, the act of writing is a powerful way to undo the repression of mandatory veiling. When women in Iran put their lives on the line to fight for their rights, the least I can do is to be their voice. May we all do the same.’ This an excerpt from my piece at the Globe and Mail.”
Ava Homa is an award-winning novelist, a seasoned journalist, and a human rights activist. Her words have appeared in the Globe and Mail, BBC, Guardian, Literary Hub, Literary Review of Canada and many more. She has spoken about women's rights across North America and Europe, including at the United Nations, Geneva. Ava has a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor in Canada. Her book of short stories on modern Iranian women, Echoes from the Other Land, was nominated for the 2011 Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize. Her debut novel Daughters of Smoke and Fire, the story of a Kurdish woman’s search for justice and freedom in Iran, won the 2020 Nautilus Book Award, was a finalist for the 2022 William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and was Roxane Gay's Audacious book club pick.
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