EBOOK
About
A century of family tales from two beloved but divided homelands, Iran and America
Drawing on her remarkable personal history, NPR producer Davar Ardalan brings us the lives of three generations of women and their ordeals with love, rejection, and revolution. Her American grandmother's love affair with an Iranian physician took her from New York to Iran in 1931. Ardalan herself moved from San Francsico to rural Iran in 1964 with her Iranian American parents who barely spoke Farsi. After her parents' divorce, Ardalan joined her father in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he had gone to make a new life; however improbably, after high school, Ardalan decided to move back to an Islamic Iran. When she arrived, she discovered a world she hardly recognized, and one which demands a near-complete renunciation of the freedoms she experienced in the West. In time, she and her young family make the opposite migration and discover the difficulties, however paradoxical, inherent in living a free life in America.
Drawing on her remarkable personal history, NPR producer Davar Ardalan brings us the lives of three generations of women and their ordeals with love, rejection, and revolution. Her American grandmother's love affair with an Iranian physician took her from New York to Iran in 1931. Ardalan herself moved from San Francsico to rural Iran in 1964 with her Iranian American parents who barely spoke Farsi. After her parents' divorce, Ardalan joined her father in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he had gone to make a new life; however improbably, after high school, Ardalan decided to move back to an Islamic Iran. When she arrived, she discovered a world she hardly recognized, and one which demands a near-complete renunciation of the freedoms she experienced in the West. In time, she and her young family make the opposite migration and discover the difficulties, however paradoxical, inherent in living a free life in America.
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Reviews
"At once insightful and symbolic, My Name Is Iran is an intimate, readable and revealing tale of a maverick daughter of modern Iran and a rare glimpse into the many layers of life in that nation and the aspirations and frustrations that have shaped its recent history."
Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future
"Here you will meet the Iran Davar Ardalan who long ago captured my imagination and encouraged my love for Iran. Without fear, she reveals her place as the great-grand daughter of the Revolution, caught in its complexities. A product of dreamers and do-ers who are both unforgettable and amazing, her story is a broad tapestry on which East and West commingle. This book is her gift to both cultures, and to you."
Jacki Lyden, Senior Correspondent & Host, NPR and author of Daughter of the Queen of Sheba
"This is a fascinating story about one woman's remarkable life between the worlds of Iran and America."
Ole D. Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee