This article discusses the representation of Iranian womanhood in Yasmin Crowther’s The Saffron Kitchen (2006). Narratives of domestic tyranny and the oppression of women by male family members in the Muslim world have been a constant focus of mainstream Western media in recent years. These stories become even more appealing when they are narrated by “liberated” Muslim women who play the role of eyewitnesses to the alleged oppression of women in Muslim countries. This interest in narratives by Muslim women has resulted in an unprecedented popularity of narratives by diasporic Muslim women, especially Iranian women. In this article it will be shown that The Saffron Kitchen, like many other post-9/11narratives by women of the Iranian diaspora, provides an exaggerated account of the oppression of women in Iran. Furthermore, it will be argued that this exaggerated emphasis on the subjugation of Iranian women—since it constructs Iran-based women as permanently silent—has been effective in establishing diasporic Iranian women as representatives of all Iranian women and has resulted in the popularity of their work.
