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Pardis Mahdavi
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Hyphen (Object Lessons) Paperback – June 3, 2021

by Pardis Mahdavi (Author), Christopher Schaberg (Series Editor), Ian Bogost (Series Editor)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 17 ratings
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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.

Previous page
  1. Part of series
    Object Lessons
  2. Print length
    176 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Bloomsbury Academic
  5. Publication date
    June 3, 2021
  6. Dimensions
    4.8 x 0.55 x 6.45 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1501373900
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1501373909
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"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.'" - Mary Norris, 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

About the Author

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.

Christopher Schaberg is Director of the Program in Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness (2017), The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth (2018), Searching for the Anthropocene (2019), Pedagogy of the Depressed (2021), and Adventure: An Argument for Limits (2023), all published by Bloomsbury. He is also the founding co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons book series.

Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, Director of Film & Media Studies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. Bogost is author or co-author of ten books, including Alien Phenomenology (2012)and Play Anything (2016).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Academic (June 3, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501373900
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501373909
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.8 x 0.55 x 6.45 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

About the author

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Pardis Mahdavi

Pardis Mahdavi

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Pardis Mahdavi, PhD is associate professor and chair of anthropology. director of the Pacific Basin Institute and dean of women at Pomona College. Her research interests include gendered labor, migration, sexuality, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health in the context of changing global and political structures. She is the author of four books: her first book, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution was published with Stanford University Press in 2008, and her second book, Gridlock: Labor, Migration and ‘Human Trafficking’ in Dubai, also Stanford University Press, was published in 2011. Mahdavi’s third book, entitled From Trafficking to Terror: Constructing a Global Social Problem was published by Routledge on October 1, 2013, and her fourth book, Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives also Stanford University Press was published in April 2016.

Pardis was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the Asia Society, and has received fellowships and awards from institutions such as Google Ideas, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Drug Research Institute, the American Public Health Association, and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She has consulted for a wide array of organizations including the U.S. government, Google Inc., and the United Nations. In 2012, she won the Wig Award for teaching at Pomona College.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Chock-a-block
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended !!!
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2023
I absolutely have to agree it's a beautiful poetic book in every way. I am grateful for this astonishing history lesson on hyphens, which included some remarkable personal stories of Pardis Madhavi. I have been a fan of Dr. Madhavi for years, and I always look forward to reading her next book. She is a master story-teller. The book is easy to read and I hope one day it will be adapted to a movie or a TV show. Pardis is a fantastic writer and a meticulous researcher.
A-MUST-READ for for anyone 'interested in the hidden lives of ordinary things.'
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Richard S. Nodell
5.0 out of 5 stars A bridge in a time of divisiveness
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2021
What captivates about the Hyphen - also what will turn some readers off- is the interweaving of a bit of linguistic history with stories that embody the strains on living that history today symbolizes. In the tradition of groundbreaking sociologists like Robert Coles and Herbert Gans, who began to tell the story of real people on the receiving end of social economic forces, Mahdavi has the reader live in the tensions her stories report. More importantly, Hyphen offers us a a change in direction, a way of thinking that binds differences and contradictions. As a writer, Mahdavi, takes the risk of making readers uncomfortable as we face the difficult realities of lives we would rather not think about.
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Britt Fuqua
4.0 out of 5 stars Grammar Meets Ethnic Diversity
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2021
The Bloomsbury Object Lesson series is made up of short volumes on the cultural impact of everyday objects. While this series has been diverse in both its subject matter and authors, the books basically fall into two categories. Some titles, like the ones on golf balls, phone booths and cigarette lighters, present a straightforward history of the objects in question. Other authors use the object as a metaphor for whatever hobbyhorse they wish to opine about.
For example, Kara Thompson's book on blankets is mainly about President Trump's immigration policies. While Jean-Michel Rabate's Rust spends many pages analyzing Victorian art critic, John Ruskin's theory of colors.
The latest volume in the series, Hyphen by Pardis Mahdavi, takes a hybrid approach. There are chapters about the invention and development of this oft-maligned punctuation mark. An interesting section details the controversy that erupted when the Shorter Oxford Dictionary eliminated most hyphenated words.
But the bulk of Hyphen concerns America's contradictory attitudes towards hyphenated Americans. We celebrate ethnic holidays like Saint Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo and Hanukkah. But the country has always harbored a xenophobic suspicion of any group that is not White and Protestant.
There are also contradictions between hyphenated Americans themselves. Mahdavi's parents fled to the US from Iran during the early days of the Revolution and they tried to give her a traditional Persian upbringing. But, as you might expect, she rebelled against their patriarchal traditions. Mahdavi grew up to become a feminist scholar at Arizona State and the college's dean of social sciences.
Mahdavi returned to Iran to research the feminist movement there and was promptly arrested by the Revolutionary Guards. The chapter on her harrowing experience as prisoner of these fanatics is the most interesting one in the book. Unfortunately, she sketches the events briefly and does not explain what led to her release or what happened to the other women detained with her.
Hyphen also tells the story of some of Mahdavi's students and the balancing act they must maintain to survive in the dominant culture. There is a Nigerian-American whose desire to play college football is blocked by his tradition-bound mother. After a tragedy, he winds up at ASU only to be pressured by African-Americans on the team to take a knee during the national anthem. Meanwhile, his father, an army veteran, insists they he show respect for the flag.
It is stories like these that make Hyphen compelling reading. However, the hybrid nature of the book works against it. An account of a trans Chinese-American and the rejection by the family and by gay activists at college is juxtaposed with the story of how Gutenberg invented movable type. The controversy of ethnic insensitivity at Google follows a chapter about a Mexican-American student who is attacked by fellow campus activists for not knowing Spanish.
These transitions are jarring. But the elegant prose and empathetic accounts of these struggling young people make Hyphen a worthwhile read. The growing diversity of the US will continue to be a significant topic in the future. Mahdavi's book, though brief, adds an important voice in the debate about our nation's demographic development.
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GiovanniGF
2.0 out of 5 stars disappointing
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2021
Verified Purchase
While I certainly agree with Mahdavi's politics and found the historical chapters mildly interesting, the case studies sounded totally made up and as wooden as workplace sensitivity training dramatizations. Her personal stories were more compelling but much too brief and not enough to save this short book. Too bad.
One person found this helpful
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Pablo G.
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book.
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2021
A beautiful book in every way. Loved the history lesson on hyphens - and the personal stories and those of Dr. Madhavi's students even more. Highly recommended.
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Georgia Reader
2.0 out of 5 stars Misleading
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2022
Only a very small portion of this book is actually about the punctuation mark (and what little of that there is is very shallow). The rest is stories of "hyphenated" people, e.g. "Iranian-American," which the author is. The stories are not at all compelling, but seemingly contrived and saccharine descriptions of the angst of "fitting in," or "coming out," which have been done better in other works. Whether the fault of the author or of an editor, the book contains errors ("foregoing," for "forgoing"); misspellings ("Dionysus" for "Dionysius"); and placeholder end notes that were not completed ("Reference for ...."). I regret having bought this book, and have no interest in exploring any others in the series.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Nur Amin H.
4.0 out of 5 stars A thrilling read
Reviewed in India on June 17, 2022
Verified Purchase
Such a pleasant and brilliantly concise storeytelling!
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Nur Amin H.
4.0 out of 5 stars A thrilling read
Reviewed in India on June 17, 2022
Such a pleasant and brilliantly concise storeytelling!
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