Tara Bahrampour

To See And See Again

The daughter of an American singer and an Iranian architect does justice to both her heritages in this thoughtful memoir. Tara Bahrampour spent most of her childhood in Tehran, but in 1979 she fled from there with her family as the unfolding Islamic revolution made Iran unsafe for anyone with Western ties. While her parents struggled to make a living in the U.S., Bahrampour worked on becoming an American teenager, though she still felt strong ties to the warm, communal world she left behind. Returning for a visit in 1994, Bahrampour found a nation too complex to be properly described by political stereotypes--a transitional society where her female relatives slept in lacy negligees and watched illegal American videos, but also drove around with a tape of Khomeini's speeches in their car's cassette player. During her stay, despite some scary encounters with hostile officials, Bahrampour rediscovered a continuity she could never find anywhere else--the links to kin and to history that are alive in the Iranian landscape. This rootedness, she accepts, will never be hers as an Iranian American, yet her thoughtful examination of what she has gained and lost affirms the value of a life informed by two cultures. --Wendy Smith

The New York Times Book Review, Adrienne Edgar
In To See and See Again, Bahrampour has written a fascinating, often moving, account of her life on the boundary between two very different cultures.

From Kirkus Reviews , December 1, 1998
A beautifully written memoir that delivers much more than the story of a young woman's life. Bahrampour, a Princeton Ph.D. candidate in sociology, grew up in two culturesAmerica and Iranvery much in conflict. The daughter of an Iranian father and an American mother, she claimed American habits as her early norms. Unsurprisingly, when the family moved to Iran, navigating a contradictory array of expectations proved challenging. Riding a bike in an alley was considered ordinary in the US but outrageous by her father's relatives. However, the young Tara grew attached to Iranian ways, so when the family returned to the US due to the Islamic Revolution (she was 11), the authors sense of dislocation only heightened. Financial problems, moves from place to place, and her struggles to fit in with new friends all intensified her sense that the rigid customs and extended family of her Iranian life could serve as a source of stability, not just of frustration. Bahrampour wasnt completely comfortable in either America or Iran, and neither country was completely comfortable with her. The teenage Tara became hip, but Iran was still in her blood; in a 1990 trip there, she discovered both an alien extremism and artifacts of her past, still meaningful for her present. Penetrating insights into the tensions of a multicultural identity can be found throughout the book, but the most profound passages occur when she returns once again to the West. Shes no sympathizer with the Iranian moral police. Yet in Brussels, Tara is shocked to glimpse a couple holding hands publicly. She realizes that ``here I would find no silent bonds of solidarity, nothing of the watchful, comforting community'' found in Iran. A rare honesty reveals emotional complexity. (Author tour) -- Copyright Š1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description A fascinating, bicultural look at upper-middle-class life in pre- and post-Revolution Iran.

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