Tonight, writer Angella Nazarian reads from Life as a Visitor, her account of fleeing Iran with her family and life as an immigrant caught between two cultures. This event, which is co-sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, will be webcast live. She shares the story of her memoir.
In writing my book, Life as a Visitor, I wanted to talk about the psychological and personal issues that take over the life of an 11-year-old Iranian girl when she finds herself in a new country without her parents. This book was a deeply personal tale of my journey. But an interviewer raised an interesting question last week: “Your book is a personal tale, but isn’t the personal also always political?” Anything that is related to Iran and one’s experience in the country seems to have political overtones. Many Iranian Jews did as my family did at the start of the Islamic Revolution in 1979—they fled the country, leaving their belongings and loved ones behind in a matter of days or at the most a couple of months. So tales of displacement, loss, and revolution, as personal as they may be, are embedded in the larger arena of world politics. Now once again, I see images of uprisings, protests, and violence coming out of Iran, and I am reminded of what I witnessed as a child. But this time instead of fear, I am feeling a renewed sense of hope.