Nostalgia for the motherland and ambivalent attitude toward cultural identity are among the dominant themes of migration literature, not least in the poetry of Iranian female writers. The present paper examines the issue of identity politics in “Autumn Letter” (2006), a posthumous short lyrical poem by the Iranian-American Susan Atefat-Peckham (1970-2004). To illuminate the way the speaker’s cultural identity is constructed and represented within the discourse of this poem, the researchers draw upon postcolonial theory, particularly Homi Bhabha’s concepts of displacement, mimicry, double consciousness, hybridity, and ambivalence. Employing a descriptive-critical method, this qualitative, library-based study explores how the poem captures the complex identity negotiations of the speaker and her mother, who have to deal with their Persian cultural heritage within a North American context. The results indicate that both the physical relocation and the psychological dislocation of the two subjects after the parents’ immigration to the US, especially the mother(-figure), participate in shaping their new identity as a heterogeneous merger of the two incongruous cultures, ultimately leading to their affliction with double consciousness. While the mother’s imperfect adoption of the English language suggests her attempts at mimicry and ambivalence, the poem’s integration of Persian cultural symbols with American experiences can signal how the speaker, as a second-generation immigrant, seeks to enter the third space and embrace hybridity. The findings of this study can help to gain a deeper understanding of identity politics and intersectionality of identity in Atefat-Peckham’s poetry as well as those of other contemporary female Iranian diasporic writers.
