Announcing the Oklahoma Premiere of the Iranian American Documentary Film The Dawn Is Too Far, by The Editors of WLT

Next Wednesday, November 13 at 4:00 pm cst, the University of Oklahoma’s Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies will host the Oklahoma premiere of The Dawn Is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life (2024) in Gould Hall 155, followed by audience Q&A with executive producer and co-director/co-producer Persis Karim. An immersive, 55-minute-long documentary, the film features eight San Francisco Bay Area–based Iranian Americans who share their stories within the larger context of Iranian historical events and events that also shape the United States. The screening is free and open to the public.

The title of the film comes from a line of Persian poetry that refers to Yalda, the longest night of the year, or the winter solstice, in which Iranians await the arrival of light, longer days, and eventually Norooz, the spring equinox. The Dawn Is Too Far poetically narrates the story of a community of Iranian Americans who have made the San Francisco Bay Area their home over the past five decades. The film seeks to expand our understanding of Iranian immigration—what it means to leave home and country; to live through the turbulent histories of dissent, revolution, war, and separation; and to reinvent oneself in a new place, country, and culture.

The Dawn Is Too Far does not paint a story of salvation and happy assimilation but rather seeks to identify the complex ways that members of the Bay Area’s Iranian diaspora community have navigated the challenges and traumas of history—both Iranian and American—to reinvent themselves and tell their own stories; these as-yet-untold stories build on a longer history of Iranian immigration to Northern California, where Iranians as students, activists, artists draw on as well as influence the larger culture of the Bay Area. This community and all that it has faced offers a more nuanced story of the Iranian diaspora, enriching and enlivening the region where they live, work, and build families and community. The Dawn Is Too Far undermines the news headlines, which are dominated by narratives of enmity and mistrust between the government of Iran and the US, to offer a more humane understanding of how people’s lives and the sacrifices they make are part of the larger story of immigration.

An Iranian American writer, poet, and professor at San Francisco State University, Persis Karim guest-edited the “Writing Beyond Iran” issue of World Literature Today in 2015. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, the daughter of an Iranian father who came to the US in the immediate aftermath of Iran’s military occupation by British and Soviet troops during World War II. She came of age during the 1979 Iranian Revolution and felt a deep concern for how Iran was represented in the media, defying what she experienced in her family and the larger community of Iranian Americans. She has been engaged with the Iranian diaspora community in the US for more than thirty years in her capacity as a professor, first at San Jose State University, where she founded the Persian Studies program, and currently as director for the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University.

Dr. Karim has written extensively on the culture and literature of Iranian Americans and is the editor of three anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian Americans (1999); Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (2006); and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers (2013). She has worked actively to support and help build the Iranian diaspora community in the Bay Area, largely through her literary and cultural activism. She has watched over three decades from the seat of observer-participant as this community has evolved and grown, welcoming younger generations into it.

As part of OU’s David L. Boren College of International Studies, the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies represents a number of vibrant and growing resources in Middle East and North Africa studies at the University of Oklahoma. The mission of the Farzaneh Family Center is to coordinate a variety of teaching, research, and outreach activities at OU that explore the history, culture, society, and politics of Iran, the Persian Gulf, and those regions historically shaped by the Persian language. These activities include publications, lectures, conferences, workshops, film screenings, and art exhibits.

Gould Hall is located on the OU campus at 830 Van Vleet Oval in Norman, Oklahoma. Parking info can be found here. For accommodations, please contact [email protected]. The University of Oklahoma is an equal opportunity institution.