Between Absence and Presence: Exile, Memory, and the Archival Impulse

Writing from exile can mean working within an absence. The writer can write her way around that absence and eventually into it, always teetering between absence and presence, fragmented memory and reconstructed narrative, silence and speech, death and life. Memory plays a large role in this space. But at what point does memory turn into a memorial? An exploration of writing about Iran—including its long and rich history of Jewish life—from a geographic and temporal distance.