Manijeh Moradian's This Flame Within is a pathbreaking contribution to ethnic and transnational feminist studies that helps expand the field of Asian American studies and rewrite its genealogy from a new perspective—a new movement, region, and archive. It is informed by Moradian's research on west Asian diasporic struggles, specifically the history of the Iranian leftist student movement in the United States in the context of antiwar/anti-imperialist struggles in the 1960s and 1970s. The book uses archival research and in-depth interviews with members of the Iranian Students Association (ISA) who were engaged with antiracist and anticolonial organizing with other students in Third World movements. Focusing on Iranian immigration to the United States before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, an underaddressed diasporic Iranian history, it offers a brilliant transnational feminist critique of the “affects of solidarity” that spurred these international students to resist both imperialism and authoritarianism.
Moradian's book is one of the...