In 1976, at the age of twenty-three, Farideh Goldin left Iran in
search of her imagined America. She sought an escape from the
suffocation she felt under the cultural rules of her country and the
future her family had envisioned for her. While she settled uneasily
into American life, the political unrest in Iran intensified and in
February of 1979, Farideh’s family was forced to flee Iran on the
last El-Al flights to Tel Aviv. They arrived in Israel as refugees,
having left everything behind including the only home Farideh’s
father had ever known. Baba, as Farideh called her father, was a
well-respected son of the chief rabbi and dayan of the Jews of Shiraz.
During his last visit to the United States in 2006, he handed Farideh
his memoir that chronicled the years of his life after exile: the
confiscation of his passport while he attempted to return to Iran for
his belongings, the resulting years of loneliness as he struggled
against a hostile bureaucracy to return to his wife and family in
Israel, and the eventual loss of the poultry farm that had supported
his family. Farideh translated her father’s memoir along with other
documents she found in a briefcase after his death. Leaving Iran knits
together her father’s story of dislocation and loss with her own
experience as an Iranian Jew in a newly adopted home. As an intimate
portrait of displacement and the construction of identity, as a story
of family loyalty and cultural memory, Leaving Iran is an important
addition to a growing body of Iranian–American narratives.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781771991391
Publisert
2017
Utgiver
Vendor
AU Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter