Description: An Iranian-American journalist details the surprising state of her family's homeland, which she discovered when she was assigned to Iran in 1999 to cover the student revolution. In 1970s California, Azadeh Moaveni grew up with a split cu...
Synopsis An Iranian-American journalist details the surprising state of her family's homeland, which she discovered when she was assigned to Iran in 1999 to cover the student revolution. In 1970s California, Azadeh Moaveni grew up with a split cultural personality: she enjoyed Western music and fashion with her friends at school but led the restrictive existence of a traditional Iranian daughter while at home. As family members fled from Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she absorbed their tales of the luxurious lifestyle and rich cultural heritage they had left behind. She had to wait 20 years to visit Iran for herself, and she immediately realized that the nation her relatives remembered was a thing of the past. Moaveni's two years in Iran marked the culmination of her personal journey of introspection, and finally led her to try to achieve an identity by adopting the best parts of both of her conflicting backgrounds.