Tina Shina
Portfolio Overview and experiment reflection
Welcome to my portfolio. .خوش آمدید
This portfolio showcases my experimental work through the course of 1 Semester. I used my college application essay and turned it into 3 genres to cater towards different tastes and different audiences.
WHAT AM I WRITING ABOUT?
Isn't that the million dollar question! Read the pieces and hopefully find out!....
In all seriousness, I chose to write about one of my favorite writers of all time. Forough Farrokhzad was an Iranian poet, director, and film writer. She wrote in the feminine perspective, about her experiences in life. She wrote about sex, love, nature, womanhood, motherhood, and living in the politics of Iran at the time. She is now known in literary circles as one of the best contemporary female Iranian writers, but her reputation seems to be stuck at that. Most readers in the west have no idea who she is, and I wish to make her work more accessible to the anglophone world and to expand her legacy beyond Iran.
HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
I discovered Forough Farrokhzad in my research to find a topic for my IB required English Extended Essay Obviously, being Iranian, I was driven to the known poets of my culture” Rumi, Ferdowsi, Hafez. However, something just didn't click. I didn't feel any connections with these religious, old men who wrote about life centuries ago. That's when I found Forough: 33 years old, from the 1960s, feminine, bold, and immensely talented. I absolutely devoured her poetry, and even found a potential dream of becoming a literary translator like Sholeh Wolpe, the woman who translated her works. I ended up writing my essay about the farsi language, and how Foroughs works often get translated into a homoerotic context, even though there are no gendered pronouns in the farsi language…
Experiment 1: The song
I had always wanted to try my hand at songwriting, and found this was my chance to do so. I took inspiration from Taylor swift's “the last great American Dynasty” In which she tells the story of the former owner of her house and connects it to herself in the end. It had the perfect amount of creativity, reflection,and storytelling that I was aiming for. I wanted something easily accessible that would inspire curiosity about Forough. I Included snippets of her poetry and told her story in song format to get people hooked and paint her at the mythical legend she was.
Experiment 2: The Photo essay
This experiment was an extension of the visuality that I used to write my first experiment. I wanted something to accompany the words I was writing, and Through that a photo essay might just do the trick. From my research, and previous knowledge, I infer that photo essays are a more western form of visual storytelling. By telling Forough’s story in this medium, I aim to insert her name into western art circles. In one particular article, she was called the “Iranian Sylvia Plath ''. I want her to be known as The Forough Farrokhzad.
Experiment 3: The op-ed
For this experiment, I wanted to provide an introduction to who forough was, but couldn't really find the right genre to do so without compromising the creativity that I loved. With a regular op-ed article, it was more something to be digested, rather than art, which did not appeal to me. Reading other western and English articles about her concerned me, due to the repetition of a few facts and the same angle used to paint her character over and over again. For Foroughs case, I’m sure there is tons more information in the farsi-speaking world that has not made it over to the western anglophone world, because western writers limit themselves to the information that is readily and easily available to them. This is extremely harmful as it circulates the same information over and over with no progress, no analysis, and no true journalism. Luckily, I have Farsi fluency as a tool to combat that, and I tried my best to do so.
Fully Realized Project
The fully realized project is 100% my favorite, and I hope you like it too. I took the idea of an arts section op-ed, and married it to a stage script to create a sort of hybrid baby. Instead of your traditional modes of inserting imagery into writing, I chose to split the article into 3 sections, beginning each one with a small script like writing, and then reverting back to the original op-ed format to contextualize it and convey the information. I don't want to explain more than that, as I think the piece should speak for itself.
