Scholarship documents the politics of the Iranian diaspora, yet overlooks how phonetic markers of identity construct diasporic precarity. The Persian accent functions as sonic racialization: even visually assimilable subjects become audibly other, their voices flattened into comedic punchlines or the generic “Muslim terrorist.” This violent “accented thinking” creates what Sara Ahmed terms affective economies of shame that force disoriented relationships with one’s own speech. Drawing on Ahmed’s phenomenological frameworks, my paper examines how accent becomes contested ground in Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version (2023), where assimilation logic confronts acts of refusal. Keshavarz foregrounds codeswitching politics, contextualized through divergent media audibilities: diaspora stand-up comedy strategically reclaims stereotyped accents to critique Western Islamophobia. These accented performances expose divisions within diaspora representation, revealing cracks in grand narratives of Cyrusmania and religiosity. The collision between Western diaspora media and Iranian television blurs coherent orientation and stable identification. The accented Iranian subject embodies productive disorientation, unsettling normative assimilation, and demonstrates how accent constructs transnational identity, opening space for emergent artistic and critical voices.

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