“Lipstick Jihad”
by Azadeh Moaveni
Published: March 2005
ISBN: 1586481932

(Updated: May 4, 2007.)

From the Publisher…

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 standoff 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.

A very interesting read. A very interesting contrast to Cane River.

Both books search to fill out personal, cultural history. The latter goes back. This book moves forward into the present. The latter absolutely moves in the realm of the heart. This book navigates by making head-way. Neither worlds explored are “acceptable” to either heart or head. Yet we move on “anyway”. And, given the absolutely current context of this book, I can understand taking the rational approach. It provides distance. It provides choice. As a reader though this made me not care less but care differently than I could have I suppose. And given that it don’t move in the realm of the heart, the “what to do now” part is so very unclear.

I do think that it is that exact point that makes me give this book a 4 out of 5 hearts rather than the 5 out of 5 hearts I gave “Cane River” (and I write that not to say that the stories themselves are comparable but the search to explain and know sort of is). When my heart gets the meaning, it helps my head figure it all out. There is no route, for me, that runs the opposite direction. My heart got the meaning of “Cane River”. I can’t write the same for “Lipstick Jihad” although my head now understands more of the details.

Definitely an interesting, current, head-smart book.