Learn to COOK - Persian Girls: A Memoir
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List Price: $23.95
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Manufacturer: Tarcher
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Tarcher
Manufacturer: Tarcher
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2006-10-05
Publisher: Tarcher
Release Date: 2006-10-05
Studio: Tarcher
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Editorial Reviews:
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Praised by V. S. Naipaul, Anne Tyler, and other writers, Nahid Rachlin has spent her career writing novels about hidden Iran-the combustible political passions underlying everyday life and the family dramas of ordinary Iranians. With her long-awaited memoir, Persian Girls, she turns her sharp novelist's eye on her own remarkable life.
When Rachlin was an infant, her mother gave her to Maryam, Rachlin's barren and widowed aunt. For the next nine years, the little girl lived a blissful Iranian childhood. Then one day, Rachlin's father kidnapped his daughter from her schoolyard, and from the only mother she'd ever known, and returned her to her birth family-strangers to the young girl.
In a story of ambition, oppression, hope, heartache, and sisterhood, Persian Girls traces Rachlin's coming of age in Iran under the late Shah-and her domineering father-her tangled family life, and her relationship with her older sister, and unexpected soul mate, Pari. Both girls refused to accept traditional roles prescribed for them under Muslim cultural laws. They devoured forbidden books. They had secret romances.
But then things quickly changed. Pari was forced by her parents to marry a wealthy suitor, a cruel man who kept her a prisoner in her own home. After narrowly avoiding an unhappy match herself with a man her parents chose for her, Nahid came to America, where she found literary success. Back in Iran, however, Pari's dreams fell to pieces.
When news came to Nahid that her sister had died, she traveled back to the country where she had grown up, now under the Islamic regime the West has been keeping a wary eye on for the last few years, to say good-bye to her only friend. It is there she confronts her past, and the women of her family. A story of promises kept and promises broken, of dreams and secrets, and, most important, of sisters, Persian Girls is a gripping saga that will change the way anyone looks at Iran and the women who populate it.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Strong, Independent Woman
Comment: For me, the most interesting thing about Rachlin's very interesting memoir was the incredible strength she showed in forging a life for herself that was so different from the culture she was born into in Iran and for which she had very little or no family support. It is a very personal tale of courage. Rachlin was given to an aunt to raise shortly after her birth and then wrenchingly, for both Rachlin and her aunt, taken away from her when she was about 8. I suspect it was this horrible experience that later gave Rachlin the courage to leave her family to attend college on a scholarship in the United States and to live an independent, solitary and self-sufficient existence in the United States for awhile before she met her husband.
If I am at all disappointed with this book it is because of the emphasis Rachlin places on arranged marriages as the cause of unhappiness in women in the culture she was born into. Rachlin's sister was in an abusive arranged marriage as were other women in her family. I know some couples who are in very happy arranged marriages and I know a lot of women who are very unhappy in marriages of their own making. The divorce rate in the United States certainly attests to that.
No, I would not have liked my life and/or marriage determined for me. And I value the ability to chart my own course. But Rachlin goes too far I believe when she seemingly equates arranged marriages with unhappiness and abuse.
But overwhelmingly, this is a very interesting, and although somewhat sad, nonetheless a charming book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Engaging Memoir
Comment: Very interesting to learn about the Iranian culture from an author who is unafraid. I felt her writing portrayed her pain as well as her strength. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, informative memoir from my new favorite Iranian writer
Comment: Particularly in the current political climate, I was hoping that this book would provide a fascinating look into a culture that is, at best, underrepresented in mainstream English language books and, at worst, criticized, discriminated against, and even hated; the fact that the author is a woman made it all the more enticing as I simply can't read enough of how my fellow women live, survive, and thrive in other cultures.
PERSIAN GIRLS delivers on all accounts and has made me want to learn more not only about this intriguing woman--cappuccino is on me if you're ever in southern Italy Ms Rachlin!--but also about Iranian history and culture in general.
From Rachlin's difficult childhood with a mother who didn't seem to want her and a father who wanted only control to her struggle for independence and acceptance in America, PERSIAN GIRLS places the reader in the very heart and mind of the author as she rises to each successive challenge placed before her.
From the time Rachlin was taken from the only mother she knew, I found myself cheering her on-a credit to an outstanding opening scene that transports the reader to 1950s Iran amidst a prayer rug, a Koran, rose water, a paraffin lamp, and hot summer nights spent talking about a golden ladder descending from the sky.
And yet Rachlin's writing style isn't nostalgic or wistful. She presents her life with such an objective tone sometimes that I forgot she was telling her own life story--and this is not a criticism. To the contrary, I felt like what I was reading was a true, fair account of events, and knowing that I'm able to trust the author is so very important.
At times, however, I did feel that there was just a bit held back regarding the working through of her feelings in some of her relationships, particularly the most difficult ones; the fact that some family members are still alive surely had something to do with this, but overall I don't find that this guardedness distracts from the memoir. Rachlin gives plenty of clues into her personality to provide the reader with a sense of what the author might've been feeling, and I don't think there's anything wrong with a little mystery in any book, even a memoir.
On another level, Rachlin's expat status in America really spoke to me, and I'm sure to plenty of other expats as well--the feeling of being caught between two cultures, two languages, two ways of life. On whether she regretted her choice to go to America, in a subsequent interview, Rachlin said:
I have never really regretted my choice to come to America, pursue my own goals. But I am always aware of a loss, a price to pay for the independence I have gained. I don't have easy access and closeness to people I love, because of all the distance between us.
Indeed I wouldn't mind another memoir (or even a how-to!) from Rachlin on her marriage to an American and raising her daughter in a country that is a sometimes enemy of her own. I look forward to reading Rachlin's fiction as well.
I wholeheartedly recommend this memoir to anyone with an interest in women's history, cultural differences, the Middle East, family relationships, love, or, you know, life.
This review originally appeared on my blog here: [...]
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Memoir that reads like a novel
Comment: The front cover of Persian Girls: A Memoir by Nahib Rachlin has a quote from a Boston Globe reviewer saying that the "memoir reads like a novel", which I felt was very accurate. Nahib has provided us with a peek into her world, spanning over fifty years, and immersing us in the culture of Iran and her family.
Nahib pulls us quickly into her world, showing us her split childhood - life with her adopted mother for her first 9 years, and then life with her birth family. Nahib's birth mother, Mohtaram, was very fertile, she agreed to give a child to her sister, Maryam. It was when Nahib turned 9 that she was considered "of age", able to legally marry, and that is when her father came to get her. When her father took her from her adopted mother, Nahib lost an attentive mother, she gained a sister and confidante.
Nahib's relationship with her older sister Pari is incredibly moving. Both girls loved American movies and the idea of new freedoms for women. I look at my daughters, and hope for them to continue their close relationship - one like what Nahib and Pari had. There were many times as I was reading Persian Girls that I wished I was reading a novel, and that the author could guarantee me a happy ending for everyone involved. The relationship between Nahib and Pari was so intense, and yet fraught with obstacles. Their middle sister, Manijeh, was their mother's favorite, and the obvious favoritism made for a lot of rivalry between them. As time passes, and physical distances between them increase, the bonds between them change and strengthen.
The Iranian Government and its changing laws cast a shadow over the lives of Nahib and her family. Every choice they make has to take the laws and social mores into account. Nahib's brothers go to college in the US, which is seen as a very modern thing to do. However, her two older sisters are married traditionally - in arranged marriages. While all families worry about appearances, in Nahib's father seemed to worry even more than usual. His job as a lawyer seemed tied to how his family is perceived, and he must balance the traditional and the modern.
Parts of Persian Girls feel like a mystery, and one that cannot be solved. Without an omniscient narrator, we only know what Nahib has experienced or discovered. I wish I could see into the heads of many of the characters, but there is an intimate feeling reading one person's memories, one person's truth.
Nahib states at one point in Persian Girls that she feels like she doesn't belong in either culture. I know that feeling is common among many ex-patriots, but I have to wonder if the problems in US-Iranian relationships made her transition more difficult. I found myself identifying so much with Nahid, finding many universal truths within her words, no matter your background.
I highly recommend Persian Girls to anyone who enjoys memoirs and non-fiction, as well as to anyone who enjoys women's fiction or literary fiction - it really is a memoir that reads like a novel. It pulls you in, with vivid imagery of Nahid Rachlin's world. Watch out, though, once you start it you won't be able to put it down easily! I look forward to reading Nahid Rachlin's other books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I wanted to like this more
Comment: Persian Girls is the true story of Nahid Rachlin's experiences growing up in Iran during the years leading up to the Iran hostage crisis.
I was particularly interested to read this when I learned there was an adoption theme to the story -- until she was in elementary school, Nahid was raised by her aunt Maryam. Nahid's biological mother had given Maryam baby Nahid to raise as her own, since she had been widowed without children and Nahid's biological mother already had several children. And interesting sisterly pact.
But at the age of nine, Nahid was yanked from her peaceful existence as the only daughter of religiously observant Maryam to live with her estranged biological family.
The story is a mostly sad one -- there are not very many happy endings in this book, partly because of the iron fist with which her father ruled her family, and because of the fall of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. But it is an interesting portrait into life in Iran and what it was like to be raised as a girl in a country where daughters were, at least at that time, thought more of as chattel than individuals.
My one reservation about wholeheartedly recommending this book is Rachlin's writing style. I have never read any of her fiction, but this book read more like a series of journal entries than a narrative story. I also kept waiting for there to be some sense of hope, but this seemed to be more a story of resignation than one of triumph -- a tale of the bonds of sisterhood and how the lives of Nahid and her sister Pari came to differ on many levels as Nahid eventually made her escape to America.
While not every story is a happy one, and I certainly enjoy memoirs that aren't 100% happy and joyful, I kept waiting for there to be some relief in this tale about how lives were shattered and how families were torn apart. I found the writing style to be a bit disjointed in places, but not enough to keep me from finishing the book.
For those of us who grew up in a time of new awakening and women's rights in America, this was a fascinating look inside patriarchies of the Middle East, the small roles women had in that society. There are some poignant story arcs that I don't want to spoil, but ultimately, Persian Girls reinforced the stereotype we have about how women are treated in that part of the world and the lack of value placed on women's lives.
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