Product Description
This digital document is an article from APS Diplomat Recorder, published by Pam Stein/Input Solutions on February 5, 2000. The length of the article is 2219 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: IRAN - Feb. 4 - Theologians Want Culture Minister Ousted.(Brief Article)
Publication: APS Diplomat Recorder (Newsletter)
Date: February 5, 2000
Publisher: Pam Stein/Input Solutions
Volume: 52Issue: 5Page: NA

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
At the age of ten, a young Iranian girl witnesses the horror of her father's execution and escapes the revolution with her sister.Growing up in Tehran in the 1970s, Afschineh Latifi and her sister and two brothers enjoyed a life of luxury and privilege. Their father, a self-made man, had worked his way up from nothing to become a colonel in the Shah's army, and their mother, a woman of equally modest roots, had made a career for herself as a respected schoolteacher. But in February, 1979, Colonel Latifi was arrested by members of the newly installed Khomeini regime, and publicly pilloried as an "Enemy of God." Some months later, after having been shunted from one prison cell to another, and without benefit of a legitimate trial, Colonel Latifi was summarily executed. Fearing for the safety of her children, Mrs. Latifi made a wrenching decision: to send her daughters, ages ten and eleven, to the west, splitting up the family until they could safely reunite. Out on their own, Afschineh and her sister, Afsaneh, were forced to become strong young women before they'd even had a childhood. Even After All This Time is a story of hope and heartache, a story of a family torn apart for six harrowing years, and finally coming together to rebuild in America. In the richly evocative tradition of the bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, this is a story of a family that had the courage to dream impossible dreams and to make them come true against impossible odds. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

great tribute for family love and trimph of human spirit.
This book is a great story of the refuge family from Iranian revolution who ultimately find happines in the USA. The story of family love,tragedy and victory of people who manage to preserve their human dignity despite of overwhelming odds is rewarding experiance for every reader regardless of his or her background or interest in history. Even though the book could also serve as a guide to personal feelingsand expireences of the westrenized Iranian elite destroyed by the Islamic revolution of 1979.

A Breath of Fresh Air
What I love about this book is its ability to engender controversy.... just look at the reviews.I wonder if Ms. Latifi realized it would have such an impact when she wrote it? Every reader finds a different story between the covers....some see a touching tribute to parents, some see an inspirational tale of an immigrant family that overcomes substantial odds, some see it as the whining of a disenfranchised "Persianprincess", some see it as a political novel (go figure!), etc.I see another aspect, a touching exploration of the toll of early loss in life.Ms. Latifi lost her father to execution at the hands of Khomeini's henchmen, and, effectively, her mother due to her absence for a criticalperiod of her early life while Ms. Latifi and her sister were studying in Austria and the U.S. No wonder she says she was reluctant to risk loving and commiting herself to someone outside the family!Enjoy this book for all the different tales it tells.I applaud Ms. Latifi for her straightfoward storytelling (so what if it is not written to the standard of a great American classic.) She really tells it like it is, especially with respect to Persian and American traits, warts and all! (I also loved the Persian sayings sprinkled throughout.) Brava!

Who edited this book?
While I find the author's life interesting and give her and her family much credit, I found the book poorly written. Did anyone edit this book for the author, whose first language is not English? I found grammatical mistakes. Afschineh's story reads like a timeline - "we did this, then we did that..." The word "total" was used too often. For instance, on p. 220 "totally out of control" to describe the scene at the airport when greeting the mom. Or, "totally gorgeous" to describe a man. A 5th grader could have written a better description than that. On p. 244, "he really went all out" to describe Nassar's surprise Disney trip. This is a lame description. On p. 283 alone the setting moves from Tehran, to Indiana, to New York City! Also on p. 283, "nicest, most generous people" to describe Calder's parents. This is another weak statement. How were they nice? How did they show generosity?
The author tries to cover too many events with this book. My sense is that the she wanted to write a book (quickly) to add to her list of accomplishments, without giving the quality and content serious consideration. Apparently the editors weren't concerned with the quality either for they did a poor editing job.

Self-Indulgent, but Not without Charm
The author has many of the defects of your average American kid: Self-absorbed, superficial, etc.
The book is, however, a graphic coming-of-age story of an immigrant child and has its charm. Not great, but worth reading if that's what you're after.

A Page Turner!
I started reading this book and couldn't put it down. This is the incredibly story of the Latifi family who persevered through the revolution in Iran and their immigration to the United States.
I have spent quite some time in the Middle East and having this account of life and hardship in Iran helped me to understand the mentality and culture of women in Iran better.
I immigrated to the United States myself and even though I didn't come here under political asylum I know how hard it is to try to fit into the American culture and still hold on to your heritage. The bonds of family and the will to succeed show once more that you can achieve in this country whatever you want. You just have to have the will to do so, something that we are too quick to forget. This is a must read!
... Read more

Product Description

“Islam and the Muslim World” will help people understand the fastest growing religion in the United States and the dominant religion in a wide area of the rest of the world. This informative and interesting new encyclopedia explores an increasingly important force in the modern world, looking at Islam's role in the modern world, in the context of the religion's history and development over the last 13 centuries, and contains thematic articles, biographies of key figures, definitions, and more, filling a need in this key area of religious studies and serving as a resource for those eager to become better informed.

Customer Reviews (1)

Great writing but a little disjointed
This book is a memoir of Nastaran Kherad and her life growing up in revolutionary Iran under the care of her maternal grandmother. She is imprisoned as a teen-ager for distributing pamphlets against the regime, and is "sentenced" to two years after "confessing" and "repenting."

While the writing itself is superb, the imagery is exceptional, and the tale is thrilling and unbelievable, the story as a whole is a bit confusing as Kherad jumps around from her prison life to her childhood with little context, and then she skips over much of her teen-age life, where she must have been formulating opinions about her country or maybe not, we're left in the dark. The style gets better in the middle and second half of the book as we learn more about Kherad, but I wanted even more about how she got where she was. Also could benefit from some dates to place the story into historical perspective. Nonetheless it's a good read of a personal and tragic account growing up in volatile Iran. ... Read more

Product Description
The 19 papers collected in this volume were delivered at a symposium held in Toronto, November 1989 in order to discuss the art and culture of Timurid times. The papers cover the last decades of the 14th century and the whole of the 15th, in an area of western Asia extending roughly from the Euphrates to the Hindu Kush and to the Altai. ... Read more

Product Description
A young Iranian-American journalist returns to Tehran and discovers not only the oppressive and decadent life of her Iranian counterparts who have grown up since the revolution, but the pain of searching for a homeland that may not exist.

As far back as she can remember, Azadeh Moaveni has felt at odds with her tangled identity as an Iranian-American. In suburban America, Azadeh lived in two worlds. At home, she was the daughter of the Iranian exile community, serving tea, clinging to tradition, and dreaming of Tehran. Outside, she was a California girl who practiced yoga and listened to Madonna. For years, she ignored the tense stand off between her two cultures. But college magnified the clash between Iran and America, and after graduating, she moved to Iran as a journalist. This is the story of her search for identity, between two cultures cleaved apart by a violent history. It is also the story of Iran, a restive land lost in the twilight of its revolution.

Moaveni's homecoming falls in the heady days of the country's reform movement, when young people demonstrated in the streets and shouted for the Islamic regime to end. In these tumultuous times, she struggles to build a life in a dark country, wholly unlike the luminous, saffron and turquoise-tinted Iran of her imagination. As she leads us through the drug-soaked, underground parties of Tehran, into the hedonistic lives of young people desperate for change, Moaveni paints a rare portrait of Iran's rebellious next generation. The landscape of her Tehran-ski slopes, fashion shows, malls and cafes-is populated by a cast of young people whose exuberance and despair brings the modern reality of Iran to vivid life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (64)

An amazing depiction of acculturation for those torn between homelands
Moeveni takes special care while artfully drawing out the struggle to find a place torn between two homelands. More immportantly, her uncanny ability to describe the torment that so many of us "hyphenated" nationals feel. A good read.

Perspective and biases
This title was the subject of a book group I recently joined, therefore, I had an opportunity to hear several interpretations of it.It has made reading these reviews all the more intriguing. After completing the book I considered it one woman's well-written experience with jihad - struggle - between two cultures, within one culture (Iran), between genders, between her parents, between family members, and between the writer and her Maman - or mother.I see it as a personal story and not representative of either Iranian, American, or the immigration, exile or displacement experience. The true nature of these experiences can only be determined by the individual who goes through them. An example of a traumatic "dislocation" experience in the book was Agha Joon's (the grandfather). According to the author, he took refuge in a small California garden and expressed himself only through poetry.I can't help but wonder what his own expression of his experience would have been and how accurate was the author in interpreting it?I ask this because the members of my book group related to this book through their own family immigration experiences.It did not matter if the "immigration" story to the US was from Germany, Hungary, or Mexico, our perspectives and biases about this book were solidly entrenched in the experiences of our ancestors, or at least our interpretation and understanding of them. I think this book is an excellent platform to test our awareness of our own biases and begs us to understand our own stories: Why did our previous generations leave their homeland?Was there conflict about the leaving? Did they want to go where they immigrated to? Were they exiles or could they return to their homeland? How much choice did they have?That said, I hope we would understand why one of us would see the author as being "snooty" while someone else sees her as "insightful". As important, though, is this book has put Iran back on my radar screen beyond the sounds bytes of the nightly news. When I hear reports of violence in Iran I now have a picture in my mind of the rebellion that occurs under severe oppression. The author was rebellious - and brave. Kudos to her for telling her story.

Superficial, overly self-conscious, and repetitive
I can't believe that there are fools giving this a 5 star review. Basically, a magazine article by a better writer would have given me all I needed to know about living in Iran in the early part of the 2000s. Not only was there really very little substance here, but it's overwritten, with a bit too much attitude and a juvenile need to stuff every sentence with unnecessary modifiers (try "impossibly young"). Then there is the arrogance of youth: "During the week we were all frantically succeeding at our jobs - apparently the only mode of being serious people in NYC..." Come on - I didn't think I'd be reading some pampered kid's diary. I want the last few evenings back from my friend who wanted me to read this.

Luscious Lipstick Jihad
I read Moaveni's folllow-up book to this one, Honeymoon in Tehran, before reading Lipstick Jihad.I was a huge fan and curious to read her "prequel".It was lots of fun to go vicariously experience her first impressions of Tehran and the experiences of her life that lead up to her first move there, especially already knowing what was to happen later in her tale.She is a beautiful and entertaining writer, infusing her account of modern Iranian culture with many on-the-ground, profoundly relate-able accounts.I left the book feeling inspired as a fellow journalist, and wishing I could go for coffee with Moaveni the next time she's in town!

horrible
i ordered the book over a month ago and i have still not received it, and i have a feeling i won't. i also can't get a hold of the seller, who won't reply to my e-mails. ... Read more

Product Description
Iranian women. Women's rights movement in Iran, List of Iranian women, Persian literature, Iranian women and Persian music, Iranian modern and contemporary art, Culture of Iran, Greater Iran, Kurdish women, Iranian Revolution, Cinema of Iran, Dabir Azam Hosna, Farrokhroo Parsa ... Read more