Wednesday, August 20, 2008 
My old hometown weekly has four excellent feature stories about Iran, Iranians, and Tehrangeles this week. The photo above belongs to a photo essay by Teun Voeten called This is Iran, Too, which shows how un-Ahmadinejad Iran and Iranians really are. I’m also very excited about Mehammed Mack’s story, In Search of Home, in which he profiles three very different Iranian families in LA and their pre- and post-revolution lives. Mack is a great writer and I always read his LA Weekly stuff, though I wish he had talked to some recent immigrants, too: It would be nice to have some more socioeconomic diversity in Iranian diaspora coverage in the press, as most profiles focus on those who came here shortly after the revolution and are thriving financially, and that’s a very incomplete picture. For every BMW-driving Iranian living in Beverly Hills, there’s one working at a grocery store and living in a low-rent apartment a bad neighborhood in the Valley, and people don’t know this about Iranians. Maybe they should, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Regardless, I see the pre- and post-revolution contrast as a pretty important thread tying the three profiles together, and it’s a good piece that I wish I’d written.
Nazanin Arandi wrote a piece called The Pencil Revolution about graphic artist Reza Abedini, using his work to illustrate the search for Iranian identity. His poster for a Sepideh Farsi film is pictured here. I’m so proud of all the amazing graphic design coming from Iran and Iranians these days. We have a history steeped in calligraphy and art so it’s a natural extension, I think - calligraphy is really just an expression of typography, after all, and typography is the cornerstone of text design (pardon my inner type and design nerd). The point is that this article is really timely and I’m so glad it’s a feature. 
And finally, saving the best for last, Nayer Khazeni’s personal essay Misadventures in the Motherland is evocative, finely crafted, and incredibly, heartbreakingly nostalgic. I’m so blown away by all this stuff on the Weekly this week. It truly makes me proud of both the paper and the Iranian community in Los Angeles - and truly makes me miss them. It might be a good idea to send the Weekly feedback on their site, thanking them for their coverage. As someone whose job it used to be to read all the reader letters sent to a magazine, trust me when I say that large groups of people writing about the same thing get noticed by editors, and they’re remembered, too.
And on a related side note, Pars Arts is looking for young Iranian diaspora - like you - to write for the site. If you’re interested in contributing, please email me at editor AT parsarts.com with your interest, ideas, and a writing sample. We have some excellent writers joining in the near future and look forward to bringing on many more.
Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:00:00 -0800
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