The City of Kermanshan, the Site of Cultural Rebellion and Rebirth The city of Kermanshan (Persian, Kermanshah) has been the site of unique religious, cultural, geographical, and linguistic heterogeneity since antiquity. Its origins and contributions to the Kurdish and Iranian civilization are well documented often subsumed under Persian culture. In the recent century, more concerted and institutionalized efforts and campaigns have been directed at metamorphosing and misrepresenting the cultural and linguistic heritage and diversity of the city by promoting the dominant Persian language and culture at the cost of the multilingualism and multiculturalism of the city. The city has had to fight tooth and nail for the preservation of its name. Similarly linguistic survival has been a challenge for the city in the face of the hegemonic presence and influence of Persian. Against this background in recent years a counter narrative that explores and exposes the tension between the official representations and cultural construction of a Kurdish literati has engendered new dynamics for the reassertion of cultural identity and continuity. A fertile but underexamined site for the study of cultural revival and rebirth of cultural identity is the radical but “legal” production of new literary works as means of both cultural assertion and refutation of the official and dominant cultural modes and discourse. Such a revival is constituted by and constitutive of linguistically shaped and charged literary works to protect and preserve a culture that has constantly been under threat at least for the past 200 years institutionally. A survey of the current literary trends and contemporary bilingual poets and authors would reveal that this cultural campaign is laying the ground for reviving, protecting, and promoting Kurdish cultural identity in the face of past and present injustices and cultural and linguistic discriminatio