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With this book, Amy Motlagh considers how racial thinking underpins cultural practices in Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Despite cultural traditions depicting black people and the documented presence of black Iranians, many have insisted that race is not an important aspect of Iranian culture, that "blackness" does not exist in Iran. Instead, it is the notion of being "Persian" that binds all Iranians together. But, as Motlagh argues, the word "Persian" masks a long racial history that depends on the specter of blackness to define what is truly Iranian.
Amy Motlagh is the author of Burying the Beloved: Realism and Reform in Modern Iran (2012) and Colorblind: Racial Thinking and Cultural Production in Iran and the Diaspora (2026), as well as the translator of The Space Between Us (Yek ruz mandeh beh ‘ayd-e pak; 2014) by Zoya Pirzad. She is an associate professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East/South Asia Studies at UC Davis, and is the inaugural Bita Daryabari Presidential Chair in Persian Language and Literature.