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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The daughter of an American singer and an Iranian architect does justice to both her heritages in this thoughtful memoir. Tara Bahrampour spent most of her childhood in Tehran, but in 1979 she fled from there with her family as the unfolding Islamic revolution made Iran unsafe for anyone with Western ties. While her parents struggled to make a living in the U.S., Bahrampour worked on becoming an American teenager, though she still felt strong ties to the warm, communal world she left behind. Returning for a visit in 1994, Bahrampour found a nation too complex to be properly described by political stereotypes--a transitional society where her female relatives slept in lacy negligees and watched illegal American videos, but also drove around with a tape of Khomeini's speeches in their car's cassette player. During her stay, despite some scary encounters with hostile officials, Bahrampour rediscovered a continuity she could never find anywhere else--the links to kin and to history that are alive in the Iranian landscape. This rootedness, she accepts, will never be hers as an Iranian American, yet her thoughtful examination of what she has gained and lost affirms the value of a life informed by two cultures. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
This latest addition to the growing body of memoirs of multicultural childhoods is an entertaining account of an upper-middle-class upbringing in Iran and the United States. Skillfully deploying anecdotes of cross-cultural encounters, Bahrampour keeps her narrative moving briskly through her early girlhood in Tehran with her American mother and Iranian father, her adolescence on the American West Coast and her return to Iran after college. Bahrampour shows a light touch is everywhere evident as she details teen culture in 1980s California and her experiences in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran. Upon her return to Iran, she notes the banned TV satellite dish of her neighbors, which they hide from roving helicopters by a line of laundry. Deadpan, she wonders "if the authorities will ever realize that that shirt, that tablecloth, and that towel must be dry by now." However, Bahrampour overestimates the interest readers will have in her family life: only the exotic appeal of Iran to Americans distinguishes a narrative many people in their 20s could have written about alienation and how their dating habits distressed their families. Bahrampour's ultimate lesson?that "it is always the place you cannot go to that is the good one"?is as germane to people who have always lived in one shiny American suburb as it is to those who have shuttled between two very different cultures.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
The daughter of an American singer and an Iranian architect does justice to both her heritages in this thoughtful memoir. Tara Bahrampour spent most of her childhood in Tehran, but in 1979 she fled from there with her family as the unfolding Islamic revolution made Iran unsafe for anyone with Western ties. While her parents struggled to make a living in the U.S., Bahrampour worked on becoming an American teenager, though she still felt strong ties to the warm, communal world she left behind. Returning for a visit in 1994, Bahrampour found a nation too complex to be properly described by political stereotypes--a transitional society where her female relatives slept in lacy negligees and watched illegal American videos, but also drove around with a tape of Khomeini's speeches in their car's cassette player. During her stay, despite some scary encounters with hostile officials, Bahrampour rediscovered a continuity she could never find anywhere else--the links to kin and to history that are alive in the Iranian landscape. This rootedness, she accepts, will never be hers as an Iranian American, yet her thoughtful examination of what she has gained and lost affirms the value of a life informed by two cultures. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
This latest addition to the growing body of memoirs of multicultural childhoods is an entertaining account of an upper-middle-class upbringing in Iran and the United States. Skillfully deploying anecdotes of cross-cultural encounters, Bahrampour keeps her narrative moving briskly through her early girlhood in Tehran with her American mother and Iranian father, her adolescence on the American West Coast and her return to Iran after college. Bahrampour shows a light touch is everywhere evident as she details teen culture in 1980s California and her experiences in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran. Upon her return to Iran, she notes the banned TV satellite dish of her neighbors, which they hide from roving helicopters by a line of laundry. Deadpan, she wonders "if the authorities will ever realize that that shirt, that tablecloth, and that towel must be dry by now." However, Bahrampour overestimates the interest readers will have in her family life: only the exotic appeal of Iran to Americans distinguishes a narrative many people in their 20s could have written about alienation and how their dating habits distressed their families. Bahrampour's ultimate lesson?that "it is always the place you cannot go to that is the good one"?is as germane to people who have always lived in one shiny American suburb as it is to those who have shuttled between two very different cultures.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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