Letters

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Friday
May 18, 2001

Give me a break

My name is Ghazal Vaghedi and I am a 21 year old college student in Boulder, Colorado. Just recently I came across an article, more like an editorial, in your magazine that appalled me ["Embrace"]. It enraged me enough that I had to write you guys and let you know exactly how I felt about what this person had to say. So, here is my response to Yariz's article. I probably could have written a lot more, but I had to limit myself somehow.

Yariz, It is awesome that there is an Iranian magazine, where Iranians (and others) from all backgrounds can express their opinions about what they believe. Unfortunately, your article says little about yourself, thus I really don't know what your personal experiences have been with regards to Iranians in America.

You base so much of what you say on sweeping generalizations about a group of people in a foreign land. Many of the people you are talking about, are like my parents who gave up their lives (my father lives basically in exile here) and everything that was familiar to them so that their children could live some dream even if it was the American dream. Although I agree that Iranians should learn about and to embrace other cultures in which they live within...I totally disagree with you that just because we live in America we need to think of ourselves as "Americans"...give me a break.

You are telling me that my 52-year-old mother should completely emerge herself in a culture that is still pretty foreign to her, and thus forget about her true identity. I don't think you even understand how hard it is for someone who has spent almost their entire life in Iran to come to America learn English and enter the work force, especially if that someone is above the age 40; much less learn about "Southern Black Blues and the Holy Bible".

You make it sound so simple, your slogan seems to be: Lose your inferior Iranian identity and merge yourself into the superior American identity. That's just absurd. I've lived here since I was nine years old and I consider myself to be pretty open-minded, but I also consider myself Iranian. Why the hell shouldn't I??????? Even though I am Americanized in many ways and almost every single one of my friends is "American" I am proud to say that I am Iranian.

Your experience with Iranian culture is obviously incredibly superficial. My Iranian culture, unlike yours, is not defined by narrow boundaries (i.e. driving a BMW, "over-priced Channel bags", and eating ghormeh sabzi, etc.). My Iranian culture is defined by Hafez and Saadi, the sounds of the satar, Persian architecture, Iranian paintings, Persian rugs, my traditional dancing...need I go on?????

Stop preaching open-mindedness, when you yourself are the epitome of closed mindedness to your own sense of identity and evidently culture. Stop making Iranians sound so inferior since you obviously don't know that Iranians are the NUMBER 1 professional foreign minority in this country. HELLO to yourself. Iranians are a part of this country in the most important way: they contribute to the American economy, which supercedes all others in the world.

You let yourself underestimate and hence over-generalize a group of people whom the larger majority of are intellects that shouldn't be reckoned with. How ironic that you write about how Iranians in America should call themselves "American", at a time when more and more Americans are researching their ancestry and becoming more proud of their heritage.

We should be proud of who we are and what we represent: one the oldest and richest civilizations in this world. We may be American residents and American citizens, but we are Iranian people from a different root and a different culture. And I for one am proud of who I am and what my culture is (which is in no way similar to your obscured idea of Iranian culture). At the same time, I am proud to live in America and I feel privileged that not only can I partake in a rich culture, but I can also benefit from the so many opportunities that this country offers me.

I can't believe that you allow yourself to refer to people that teach their children about their culture and where they are from as "retarding" them. It is ignorant people, with a narrow scope of reality,that opt not to educate their children about who their ancestry is and about the imporatance of learning and understanding different cultures.

The people, that as you put is so distatesfully, are being "brainwashed" are not the ones that choose to teach their kids about their heritage and the ones that culture their offspring...the people that are truely brainwashed are those people that are narrow-minded enough to believe that by claiming that you are American you can simply forget about who you really are and where you are really from.

Ghazal Vaghedi

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