Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR LIPSTICK JIHAD
[The] sense of being an outsider in two worlds may have made daily life difficult for Ms. Moaveni, but it also makes her a wonderfully acute observer, someone keenly attuned not only to the differences between American and Iranian cultures, but also to the ironies and contradictions of life today in Tehran.
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Moaveni has closed the cultural gulf between young America and young Iran by building a bridge of her own and personally escorting readers across. Its an invitation readers should accept.
The Boston Globe
[A] vivid memoir of... Moavenis time as a journalist among the lost generation of young Iranians and their rebellion against the petty rules that symbolize the greater freedoms denied to them.
Los Angeles Times
Moaveni writes unusually well and perceptively.
New York Times Book Review
[Lipstick Jihad] shows us what Iran looks like in spring and fall, with all those seasons biting winds and unexpected days of sunshine.
Washington Post Book World
Moaveni suffuses her book with the rich detail and critical observation of a good reporter.... It is refreshing and astonishing to see what lies behind [Irans] closed doors: real people who do yoga, drink exotic cocktails and are torn about whether the United States is their enemy or potential savior.
Houston Chronicle
The verdict: A moving memoir of identity. This finely written and thought-provoking memoir... will resonate with readers who have struggled to find themselves in the world, apart from geography or cultural mandates.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lipstick Jihad... is as much personal as political, recounting [Moavenis] efforts to find satisfaction in being Iranian, and to achieve a sense of belonging that eluded her in California.... The authors capacity to appreciate these moments and yet look critically at political and social problems in the country is a kind of integration of nostalgia and reality that sets her story apart from what could have been a predictable homecoming tale.
The Nation
Moavenis memoir takes us nowhere weve been before, or even read about in the daily papers, with tales of young people whose hedonistic lifestyle behind closed doors helped push the pendulum so far in the other direction that they effected real change on the streets.... A must-read for anybody interested in taking a peek at the multifaceted human experiences that lie behind the headlines.
Elle.com
[A] deeply personal glimpse of Gen X Iranians in the United States and Iran. [Moavenis] account... possesses an irresistible vitality.
St. Petersburg Times
Reading Lipstick Jihad is a bit like hearing someones cell-phone conversation on the bus, only way better: Her words are interesting, and shes talking to you. The only frustration is that you cant talk back.
Time Out New York
[G]ripping.... Moaveni paints a damning picture of daily life in Tehran with a hundred fascinating, subtle details.... But much to [her] credit, she is able to find the redeeming aspects of what often reads like a sojourn in
one of the outer circles of hell.
LA Weekly
Moavenis insider status... allowed her a particularly detailed and revealing view of Iranians, especially those of her generation, while her work as a journalist allowed her access and freedom of movement. For the reader, she is the ultimate guide.... Her portrait of Iran... is a fascinating, layered study. Lipstick Jihad offers a new and welcome understanding of a troubled country where daily life is infinitely more complicated than newspaper
headlines would lead us to believe.
San Diego Union-Tribune
American perceptions might be challenged by reading Moavenis insider accounts of an Iran that includes private parties, presidential elections, plastic surgery, Weblogs, skiing, hamburgers and sushi bars, and watching Ally McBeal and Sex in the City via verboten but widespread satellite dishes.
East Bay Express
In recording her struggle to find and make a home in the world Moaveni joins other hyphenated Iranian writers like Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis and Persepolis 2), Gelareh Asayesh (Saffron Sky), and Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran). Moavenis advantage is that she has both a private and public life in Tehran, and is willing to mine both for material.
Chicago Reader
For my parents,
and
in memory of Kaveh Golestan
INTRODUCTION
I was born in Palo Alto, California, into the lap of an Iranian diaspora community awash in nostalgia and longing for an Iran many thousands of miles away. As a girl, raised on the distorting myths of exile, I imagined myself a Persian princess, estranged from my homelanda place of light, poetry, and nightingalesby a dark, evil force called the Revolution. I borrowed the plot from Star Wars, convinced it told Irans story. Ayatollah Khomeini was Darth Vader. Tromping about suburban California, I lived out this fantasy. There must be some supernatural explanation, I reasoned, for the space landing of thousands of Tehranis to a world of vegan smoothies and Volvos, chakras, and Tupak.
Growing up, I had no doubt that I was Persian. Persian like a fluffy cat, a silky carpeta vaguely Oriental notion belonging to history, untraceable on a map. It was the term we insisted on using at the time, embarrassed by any association with Iran, the modern country, the hostage-taking Death Star. Living a myth, a fantasy, made it easier to be Iranian in America.
As life took its course, as I grew up and went to college, discovered myself, and charted a career, my Iranian sense of self remained intact. But when I moved to Tehran in 2000pleased with my pluckiness, and eager to prove myself as a young journalistit, along with the fantasies, dissolved. Iran, as it turned out, was not the Death Star, but a country where people voted, picked their noses, and ate French fries. Being a Persian girl in California, it turned out, was like, a totally different thing than being a young Iranian woman in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In hindsight, these two points seem startlingly obvious, but no one ever pointed them out, probably because if you need them pointed out, you clearly have problems. So I learned for myself, as I endured a second, equally fraught coming of agethis time as a Californian in Iran. I never intended my Iranian odyssey as a search for self, but a very different me emerged at its end. I went looking for modern Iran, especially the generation of the revolution, the lost generation as it is sometimes called. The generation I would have belonged to, had I not grown up outside.
