Book Pick of the Week - Teen Review

Persian Girls by Nahid Rachlin

This book can be categorized as an autobiography although the title is very generic. The narration involves mostly author’s life with a strong parallel drawn to her sister Pari’s life based on the choices they made as the opportunities presented themselves given the stern circumstances, and to some extent her perspective of Iranian girls’ lives. The author gets separated at the age of nine from the only mother that she knew in her childhood, when she was given away by her biological parents, and struggles to come into terms with her biological parents’ emotionally restricted environment when she is abducted and brought back to live with them. After she befriends her sister Pari, she shares her thoughts and artistic ambitions with Pari. Although they both decide to marry someone they love, which is for the most unheard of in Islamic religion, and manage some secret romance, Pari ends up marrying choice of her father who keeps her a prisoner in their own home. Fortunately for Nahid, Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrest makes her father agree to continue her education in Lindengrove College in America which opens a door for freedom. Nahid doesn’t return to Iran as expected by her parents after graduation, but marries and settles down in America. She lives in an ambivalent state where she enjoys the American freedom yet resents the hole in sense of belongingness it created in her. Her sister Pari divorces her abusive husband, marries again but suffers from depression due to estrangement from her son from previous marriage, and eventually dies mysteriously. After Nahid finds out about the death of her sister, she travels to Iran to find the reason for her sister’s death and to bid good-bye to her only soul mate.

Recommendation: This book can be recommended in general for all teens but in particular older teens might be able to appreciate the ambiguity of the author’s attempts to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of two distinctly different American and Iranian cultures.