Bridges, Not Walls: The Life and Legacy of Forugh Farrokhzad

“What would happen if one women told the truth about her life?” Muriel Rukeyser asked. Her response was short: “The world would split open”. And Adrienne Rich, who believed “Lying is done with words, and also with silences,” argued, “When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility of more truth around her.” The Iranian poet, Forugh Farrokhzad(1934-1967) made a rope out of words and pulled herself up from segregated spaces and the burrows in which women’s voices were held prisoner. She told the truth about her life, trespassed sacrosanct boundaries, rejected ancestral silences, and split open the world of Iranian art and culture. Bridges, Not Walls; The Life and Legacy of Forugh Farrokhzad which draws from Milani’s recently published literary biography of Farrokhzad(in Persian), is a story relevant to our time’s personal narrative and history of twentieth-century Iran.