By Azadeh Moaveni
This week's book review takes us away from Robert Baer's realpolitik in The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower and into more personable territory. Lipstick Jihad is an autobiographical piece about a woman whose family fled Iran after the 1979 revolution and found itself among other members of the Iranian diaspora in Palo Alto, California. Ms. Moaveni discusses the difficulty of growing up in two seemingly irreconcilable cultures, which provides an interesting perspective on how the actions of a person's home country can affect how they are treated internationally (she discusses blatant racism toward Iranians after the 1979 Hostage Crisis and again after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001).
The most interesting part of the book, however, occurs after the author graduates college with a degree in journalism and moves to Tehran as a foreign correspondent. She confronts the reality of modern-day Iran and realizes that it is not the idyllic nation that her parents spoke lovingly of. In gripping narrative, she describes her struggles with the local morality police, widespread sexism, and political stagnation. She once again finds herself between cultures and suffers the inevitable identity crisis.
Lipstick Jihad is an easy book to read and is not academic in the traditional sense. If you are looking for a history of the Islamic regime, this is not the book to read. If you want a glimpse into daily Iranian life from an American who spent extensive time in the country, this is the perfect book. Again, it looks at life from a limited perspective--an American from California will inherently have a different mindset than someone who grew up in the heart of Tehran or Isfahan.
The biggest downside to this memoir is its age. Ms. Moaveni lived in Tehran from 2000-2001, which makes her analysis of Iranian culture interesting, but somewhat obsolete. Fortunately for fans of the author, she published a second book this year about her return to Tehran in 2005: Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran. I haven't read it yet, unfortunately, but it's on my ever-growing reading list.
