Far From Home, Poet Fatemeh Shams Finds Sense of Belonging and a Voice at Penn
Penn News
February 24th, 2017
The cadence of her poem is almost lyrical as Fatemeh Shams, speaking in her native Persian, reads aloud to the audience at Kelly Writers House. But the tone is forceful as she nearly spits out the word repeated in each phrase: تبعيد, "exile."
It is a word that resonates for Shams, an exile from Iran, who is now in limbo in the United States.
In her first semester at the University of Pennsylvania, Shams is an assistant professor of Persian literature in the Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations Department in the School of Arts & Sciences.
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