“Poetry is a serious business for me.  It is a responsibility I feel vis-a-vis my own being.  It is a sort of answer I feel

First aired on KQED Public Radio, 88.5 FM, San Francisco on July 20, 2006, 7:37 a.m >>> Audio “So where are you from?” a guy

A quarter century in the making, Iranian-American literature has reached its most vibrant and exciting phase ever.  And at last we’ve got the book to

Let me be up-front about this:  I am not a Googoosh fan.  The plaintive wail, the disco tempo.    Her charms may be many, her fans

With about a week to go before the “Axis of Evil Comedy Show” comes to the Bay Area, the Iranian-American actor and comedian Maz Jobrani

Every Iranian I met in America was once, according to gender and age, either my cousin, my aunt, or my uncle.  This, at least, was

  You cannot find a pair of bushy eyebrows anymore. They have gone the way of virgins, that is to say, they are now the

  Our courtship started and ended with a problem of names. For a long time in our house that imperious Persian word, khastegari, was invoked

  Long after my last Halloween costume had been donated to Goodwill, my grandmother still went trick-or-treating on Halloween night. When I was growing up

  My mother’s wedding dress was made out of curtains. One day as she sat sipping tea at a cousin’s house, she looked out toward

  Muslim women have sex lives. There’s proof of it now: an Arab woman has just written a pornographic book. To judge by the attention

  The Shah of Iran had a lasting influence on my mother’s fashion sense. Sure, political discussions faded out of my family’s dinnertime conversations by

  When I was growing up, my grandmother had a pair of glasses she kept tucked away in her nightstand. Their black plastic frames covered

I could tell the story of my life through the story of my forked tongues. What I can't seem to do is to remember when

A long time ago, when I was much younger and hadn't yet decided I wanted to be Iranian, one of my older Iranian cousins used

My mother was ashamed of my grandmother's secret, but more than this, she was furious that I'd found out and extremely worried I might divulge