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Book Review of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in American and American in Iran

Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in American and American in Iran
Patouie avatar reviewed on + 132 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2


The perspective truly worked for me: Moaveni is an American, yet since she is raised in a community of Iranians who have settled in California, she sees herself as Persian, and imagines that going to Tehran will feel like coming home. Once there, she struggles mightily both to fit in and to understand and retain her own identity. The book does not spend much time on the religious aspects of Iranian culture, concentrating more on the social and physical ramifications of being a woman behind the veil, and all the adaptations people have made to be able to live with the rules. There are details I wouldn't have thought of, such as how jogging is nearly impossible because the veil doesn't allow the free flow of oxygen, or how naming Iran as part of the "axis of evil" effected the lives of individual Iranians in specific ways.