Lipstick jihad: a memoir of growing Iranian in America and American in Iran - Moaveni, Azadeh
Summary: The story of the Iranian-American author's search for identity between two cultures torn apart by a violent history paints a portrait of Iran's next generation.
Booklist Reviews
After growing up in suburban California, where she never felt fully comfortable, Moaveni moved in 2000 to Iran, the land her parents had fled. Although she spent her childhood aching to live in Tehran, the place she discovers is nothing like she imagined--and, indeed, not what most of us imagine, either. She describes a sprawling city choked by smog and traffic; people "preoccupied by sex in the manner of dieters constantly thinking about food"; and, of course, the volunteer Morality Police, whose brazen cruelty has to be read about to be believed. Moaveni has captured Tehran's youth, the "student demonstrators" often in the news, in both their worldliness and their ignorance. And although much of the writing tells more than it shows, Moaveni is riveting when she works her way into a scene--capturing, for instance, the horror of a girl who must not react when the Morality Police beat her boyfriend lest they find out she is breaking shariah by dating. Not quite Persepolis without the pictures, but good stuff all the same. ((Reviewed February 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
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