Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate has been a central point of controversy since before the imprinting of the first Gutenberg Bible. And yet, the hyphen has persisted, bringing and bridging new words and concepts. Hyphen follows the story of the hyphen from antiquity—"Hyphen” is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning “to tie together” —to the present, but also uncovers the politics of the hyphen and the role it plays in creating identities. The journey of this humble piece of connective punctuation reveals the quiet power of an orthographic concept to speak to the travails of hyphenated individuals all over the world. Hyphen is ultimately a compelling story about the powerful ways that language and identity intertwine. Mahdavi—herself a hyphenated Iranian-American—weaves in her own experiences struggling to find a sense of self amidst feelings of betwixt and between. Through stories of the author and three other individuals, Hyphen collectively considers how to navigate, articulate, and empower new identities. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate has been a central point of controversy since before the imprinting of the first Gutenberg Bible. And yet, the hyphen has persisted, bringing and bridging new words and concepts. Hyphen follows the story of the hyphen from antiquity—"Hyphen” is derived from an ancient Greek word meaning “to tie together” —to the present, but also uncovers the politics of the hyphen and the role it plays in creating identities. The journey of this humble piece of connective punctuation reveals the quiet power of an orthographic concept to speak to the travails of hyphenated individuals all over the world. Hyphen is ultimately a compelling story about the powerful ways that language and identity intertwine. Mahdavi—herself a hyphenated Iranian-American—weaves in her own experiences struggling to find a sense of self amidst feelings of betwixt and between. Through stories of the author and three other individuals, Hyphen collectively considers how to navigate, articulate, and empower new identities. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Preface
Part 1 Ancestors Worshipped
1. My Big Fat Persian Wedding (Pardis)
2. U-Hyphens
3. Ancestors Hear My Prayers (Daniel)
4. Hyphen Justification – Gutenberg and His Travails
5. Lost in Migration (AdeChike)
6. Like Water for Chocolate (Ania)
Part 2 Hyphen as Divider
7. Scolding Private Hyphen
8. Pardis 9/11
9. Ade
10. A Hyphen Set in Stone
11. Dani
12. Ania 2.0
Part 3 The Death and Re-birth of the Hyphen(ated)
13. Hyphen Thief On-The-Loose?
14. The Big Moment
15. The Big Game
16. The Big Debate
17. The Big Read
18. The Big Reveal
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Index
A history of a humble grammatical marker, the hyphen, that explores how it evolved orthographically and typographically as well as the powerful role it has come to place in identity and sexual politics.
Pardis Mahdavi is Dean of Social Sciences in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a Professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University, USA. She is a non-fiction writer with 20 years of experience as an anthropologist, public health researcher, and expert in sexual politics across the globe. She is the author of five books, including the first book on the sexual politics of modern Iran, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (2008). A former journalist turned academic, she has written for Ms. Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Conversation, The Huffington Post, Jaddaliyya, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine. Her work has been covered in documentaries, radio shows, podcasts, and media outlets, including CNN, PBS, NPR, and Publishers Weekly.
The hyphen, which may not technically qualify as a punctuation
mark, because it operates at the level of the word rather than the
sentence—it doesn’t make you pause (though it may give you
pause)—has inspired not one great book but two: “Meet Mr. Hyphen
(And Put Him in His Place),” a classic by Edward N. Teall,
published in 1937, and “Hyphen,” by Pardis Mahdavi, which came out
in 2021. Mahdavi, an Iranian-American (hyphen hers), was a dean at
Arizona State University when she tackled this project, as part of
a series for Bloomsbury Academic called Object Lessons, “about the
hidden lives of ordinary things.”
*The New Yorker*
While the hyphen shines as a connector of compound words and allows
them, over time, to take on new meanings, for the author its true
magic lies in its ability to harmonize and honor a person's
individuality.
*Shelf Awareness*
Mahdavi's compelling histories offer guidance for a way out of a
struggle that binds us all within so many unhelpful and frankly
boring binaries. The book rules.
*The Stranger*
Part memoir, part meditation, this book, like the hyphen, is small
but mighty. Mahdavi weaves together the line-breaking history of a
typographical mark with the heart-breaking choices faced by those
living hyphenated lives—Chinese-American, African-American,
Mexican-American—in the United States. Mahdavi draws on her
ethnographic skills to reveal how the hyphen can punctuate lives,
tearing them apart. Yet the hyphen's connective force cannot be
underestimated. Ultimately, as an Iranian-American, Mahdavi urges
refusal, showing us that to embrace the hyphen is to choose
wholeness.
*Elizabeth Chin, Professor of Media Design Practices, ArtCenter
College of Design, USA, and Editor-in-Chief of American
Anthropologist*
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