October 2006    

Lipstick Jihad Author: Azadeh Moaveni Publisher: Public Affairs $25.00 Cloth (249 p.) ISBN: 9781586481933 B&T         YBP Reviewed by Jen Legier, Customer Service Bibliographer Lipstick Jihad is described by its subtitle as "a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran". Its author, Azadeh Moaveni writes about her own personal experience with this predicament and shares her complex and deeply personal realizations with unassuming grace and humor. We share a time in her life during which she decides to finally revisit Iran, a place she has not seen since she was a child and has alternately longed for and despised as she grew up in California, where she was convinced, "there must be some supernatural explanation…for the landing of thousands of Tehranis to a world of vegan smoothies and Volvos, chakras and Tupak". Moaveni skillfully avoids the overly sappy, even as she discusses matters and people so close to her heart, and her wit and youthful tone lend a wonderful balance to the burden of the history she struggles with. Her revelations about her own life and daily life in Iran and America are small bits of truth that build a network of recognition. I imagine any reader will find bits of themselves in these pages. I recognized myself in Moaveni's description of her well-meaning, but ignorant American friends; my knowledge of Iran (and much of the Middle East) is sadly lacking but for the milestone hostage crisis of 1979. Alternatively, I recognized myself in her admission that the Iran she returned to as an adult and a journalist was an Iran apart from the one she remembered, full of mulberry trees and nightingales, pomegranates and pistachios, freedom and wonder; images real and invented. We all cling to memories of our youth even if they've lost all of their ties to the reality of that moment in the past. Returning to that place in the present and reconciling memory and reality is an experience that is difficult to express; can we really expect others to identify with our memories and our reality? Moaveni's return to Iran was filled with just this kind of collision between past and present, but her journalistic approach to her own developing story captures the experience and presents it to us as a truthful account of life walked in another's footsteps. It was not until the second half of the book that I suddenly began to agree with The Chicago Tribune's assessment of Moaveni on the dust cover insisting that she "writes stunningly well". The first half of the book floated me in circles as I read, wandering between California and a remembered or imagined Iran; I enjoyed the reading but didn't feel a strong connection. Perhaps the sense of dislocation I felt was in direct relation to the author's own internal search for a place to belong and by the time I had (unwillingly) turned the last page I was left with the satisfaction of a nicely balanced, full course meal. The first course sometimes seems less than thrilling at the time, but by dessert you've realized its purpose and its merit. Moaveni's most inspired writing almost always has to do with language. As a journalist and an author one certainly must consider words and their meanings, but this exercise takes on many new lives in Lipstick Jihad. I was amused and touched by the situations in which language was a stumbling block or a weapon or a source of power. After being chased and beaten by the police, Moaveni recalls, "I screamed, using the foulest Farsi I could manage. I cursed the police, the system, the revolution", and then she recounts the hysterical laughter that came from her friend, sitting next to her and explaining that her curses had been grammatically incorrect, anatomically male. So many times I would nod my head to no one in particular, in agreement with the truth of her observations and reactions; a glimpse into the life of a young Iranian-American woman straddling the two countries takes you to fascinating and simultaneously familiar places. Moaveni's time in Iran is brought to life for us with loving attention to detail and keen journalistic insight. Her journey is but one of thousands to be made by the generation of children that make up the Iranian diaspora in America, but it is an inspiring example and an engrossing read. Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.