Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran

Halasa (Mother of All Pigs), literary editor of the Markaz Review, assembles searing essays, interviews, photos, and art inspired by the protests for women’s rights that spread through Iran starting in 2022. In September of that year, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by Iran’s Morality Police for allegedly violating a law that requires women to cover their hair, sparking protests across the country and engendering the rallying cry—”Woman, Life, Freedom”—for a protest movement. The collection begins with an anonymous letter that details Vida Movahed’s 2017 arrest after she climbed a utility box in Tehran and removed her hijab, which the author sees as one leg of a “sprint relay” toward greater equality. Later, journalist Niloofar Rasooli pays tribute in stark and unsparing prose to protestor Ghazaleh Chalabi, who was shot and killed while filming protests in northern Iran in September 2022. Rasooli adds that Chalabi, who chanted “do not be afraid” moments before her death, “is killed to be erased, to be stopped.... Her video, however, achieves the opposite.” Pulling together diverse voices from Iran and abroad, Halasa paints an affecting and sometimes painfully visceral picture of Iranian women’s fight for freedom. This leaves a mark. (Nov.)