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Within the emerging genre of Iranian women's memoirs, Farideh Goldin'sWedding Song(2003) and Roya Hakakian'sJourney from the Land of No(2004) are distinctive in that their authors are Jewish. While Goldin and Hakakian share the nostalgia and sense of loss expressed by their fellow memoirists in exile, they offer a nuanced reading of Iranian culture that reflects their dual consciousness of being both Iranian and Jewish, identities that have sometimes been in conflict. Their differing accounts and impressions of growing up in observant Jewish families testify to the diversity of Iranian Jews. In addition to serving as historians of Iran's recent past—Goldin relates events leading up to the Islamic Revolution, while Hakakian relates events that took place during and after it—they critique and commemorate Iranian Jewish life, especially the lives of women. As women writers, they trace the importance of words and stories in their lives, and the destructive role of both censorship and self-censorship.

The essay examines the sometimes synchronistic relationships in Iranian Jewish American literature between reading practices, aesthetics, and politics from the Iran hostage crisis to the War on Terror. As such, Mirakhor describes key features of this canon (its articulations of an imaginary homeland, struggles with assimilation, and belonging neither here nor there as Iranian Jews), as well as its relationship to the larger canons of Middle Eastern/Arab diasporic literatures and American literatures. Examining the works of writers such as Gina Nahai and Roya Hakakian, as well as the Bravo TV series The Shahs of Sunset, Mirakhor critiques the political and ideological dangers of neo-Orientalist and neoliberal rhetorical practices, as well as revealing some of the untethered possibilities in creating more multifaceted, nuanced articulations of “Iranian” and “Jewish” in the United States in the twenty-first century.

Russia suffered another setback after part of a bridgeconnecting Russia and Crimea was blown up. The death of Mahsa Aminiwhile in the custody of the morality police sparked huge protestsmostly by young people in Iran. U.S. National Security Advisor JakeSullivan pledged America's steadfast support for Ukraine when hetraveled to Istanbul to meet with the head of Ukraine's presidentialoffice Andriy Yermak. Andriy Yermak, \"We need to do our best to winthis war, to survive for our people.\" GUESTS: Roya Hakakian, Amrita Sen, Andriy Yermak

In her memoir To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America, Tara Bahrampour, an Iranian American journalist known for her writing in the popular press on Iran and Iranian Americans, describes what she calls \"fake Farsi,\" an improvisational language game that she and her brother played as children.1 To play the game, she pretends to \"sound just like the Iranian TV broadcasters who string together unending chains of complicated words to announce the news.\" Young Tara strips the signifier from the signified, producing a language that is more somatic than semantic, more music than meaning.2 However, this verbal game does have its ideological signification as a performative reworking of a formal, rule-bound apparatus and a ritualized yet flexible performance of national identity: the national television news broadcast and the recitation of classical poetry, respectively.

Canadian journalist Nelofer Pazira was born in India to Afghan parents, then raised in Afghanistan. Her recently published memoir, A Bed of Red Flowers, begins with a description of the day, in 1978, when, at the age of 4, she was brought to visit her father in prison. She left with a burning desire to punish those who took her father away, whoever they were. Like Iranian-American author Roya Hakakian (Journey From the Land of No), who recently spoke at the Blue Metropolis Festival, Pazira grew up under the Russian influence. Although Hakakian was raised Jewish in Tehran and Pazira was raised Muslim in Kabul, both were attracted to the Islamic revolution for the democracy that it promised, only to be disillusioned by the tyranny that it became. Years later, in the U.S., Hakakian became a television producer at 60 Minutes, and Pazira, who landed in Canada at the age of 17, is now a regular contributor to the CBC's National. Both have written compelling memoirs at an unusually young age.

\"Life in God's Presence: Centering Ourselves in a Multi-tasking Culture\" is a conference on centering prayer to be presented on July 1 from 1 to 4 p.m. in the John Parr Health Education Center at St. Mary Medical Center, 1050 Linden Ave. Speaker will be Sister Adeline O'Donaghue, CCVI, director of the Ruah Retreat Center in Houston Texas. Please make reservations by June 24 by sending a check for $5 payable to St. Mary Foundation to Don Carlos, 3745 Parkview Drive, Lakewood, CA 90712. Call Don Carlos at (562) 429-7830. The 5th Jewish Music Festival in Los Alamitos on July 1 will feature some of today's best Jewish bands and solo acts. \"The show will have a taste of all sorts of Jewish music from Klezmer to Yiddish to rock and reggae,\" says Rabbi Shmuel Marcus of JewishCypress.com. The Los Alamitos Jewish Music Festival will be held at the historic Liberty Theater at the Joint Forces Training Base. The theater was the setting for George C. Scott's famous speech in the 1970 motion picture \"Patton.\" Built in 1942 as a USO theater, the Liberty is the last of the old shoebox style theaters, which were known for their fantastic acoustics. The annual JMF concert benefits the Los Al Hebrew High program. The JMF is July 1 at 5 p.m., at The Joint Forces Training Base, 4411 Yorktown Ave. in Los Alamitos. Tickets are on sale now: $90 Co-Sponsor (includes free CD), $36 ($42 at the door) $15 ($18 at the door). For more info or to join the team of sponsors, call Chabad at (714) 828-1851.

When a revolutionary wave swept Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi out of power in 1979, [Roya Hakakian] was only 12 years old. The family lived comfortably in Tehran. Her father was a highly respected Persian- language poet. Iran had the second-largest Jewish community in the Middle East, after Israel, with a history that dated back to 530 BC. To this day, Hakakian cannot get her Iranian passport renewed. She cannot go back. But many American and Canadian Iranians now have dual citizenship which allows them to visit Iran and return. This can lend a false sense of security, she warned, pointing to the case of Montreal photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi, who was murdered while under arrest for taking photos of a demonstration outside a prison in Iran. Colour Photo: TYREL FEATHERSTONE, THE GAZETTE / Writer Roya Hakakian says at first she thought the ouster of the shah during Iran's Islamic revolution would mean an end to corruption and an increase in civil liberties. She's part of a panel at Blue Metropolis today on the role of writers in times of disaster. ;

They had close ties with Muslim friends and neighbours, although an uncle's desire to marry a spirited young Muslim woman sparked a family crisis: \"No decent Jew would ever marry a girl whose uncle has married a Muslim.\" Still, the words \"Next year in Jerusalem\", uttered at every Passover, were purely symbolic; the Hakakians had no desire to leave Iran. Despite Khomeini's assurances that Jews in the Islamic Republic will enjoy the protection and respect due to \"people of the Book\", the Jewish community too becomes a target. A swastika appears on the wall opposite the [Roya Hakakian] house, \"a plus sign gone awry, a dark reptile with four hungry claws\". Hakakian is expelled from school after rebelling against a bigoted principal. Paradoxically, however, her religion proves her salvation when she is arrested with a group of friends for violating the laws of sex segregation and dress. Their captors are interested only in \"leftists and royalists\"; Jews are not worth the bother. Even after such ordeals, the Hakakians leave with the greatest reluctance. Iran's Jewish population is less than half what it was before the revolution and is an ageing community. The dispossession of long- established Jewish communities in Muslim countries, supposedly a gesture of solidarity with exiled Palestinians, was a short-sighted decision made by leaders with no regard for the shared history of the two religions.