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Jasmin’s Year In Books

Jasmin’s 2025 Year in Books

Take a look at Jasmin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.

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Jasmin Darznik’s Followers (519)

Jasmin’s Bookshelves

to-read (11)
currently-reading (1)
read (93)
biographies (3)
fiction (5)
influences (3)
memoir (3)
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Jasmin’s Friends (52)

Carl

38,441 books | 4,537 friends

Josh Roberts

469 books | 6,508 friends

Michael McGuire

308 books | 8 friends

Peggy Geiger

20,765 books | 1,068 friends

Michaela

664 books | 598 friends

Denton

784 books | 407 friends

Monika Schrock

3,384 books | 297 friends

James

6,136 books | 2,411 friends

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Jasmin Darznik

Goodreads Author

Website

http://www.jasmindarznik.com

Twitter

jasmindarznik

Genre

Fiction, Memoir, Historical Fiction

Member Since

January 2011

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/jasmindarznik

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There comes a point when the secrets you've kept most hidden become the stories you must tell. I was born in Iran and moved with my family to the U.S. when I was five. Even after earning a PhD in English from Princeton, I never considered becoming an author. But accidentally finding out about my mother's secret life changed that. In 2011, I published my first book, The Good Daughter, which tells the story of how my mother was married at thirteen and forced to give up a child, a half-sister I never knew. That book changed my life. Since then I have been in pursuit of lost or forgotten stories--and the pleasure of disappearing into other worlds through writing.

HOW I STARTED WRITING
I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Nothing in my first-generati There comes a point when the secrets you've kept most hidden become the stories you must tell. I was born in Iran and moved with my family to the U.S. when I was five. Even after earning a PhD in English from Princeton, I never considered becoming an author. But accidentally finding out about my mother's secret life changed that. In 2011, I published my first book, The Good Daughter, which tells the story of how my mother was married at thirteen and forced to give up a child, a half-sister I never knew. That book changed my life. Since then I have been in pursuit of lost or forgotten stories--and the pleasure of disappearing into other worlds through writing.

HOW I STARTED WRITING
I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Nothing in my first-generation immigrant background supported it, and so much impeded it. Still, I was a reader. As a child I left my small town library with novels stacked up to my chest and under my chin. I’d go home and luxuriate in the possibility of disappearing into different worlds. Beyond that was the twenty-room motel my parents bought when we came to America, a place of struggle and uncertainty. Books were my way out.

But writing? Even as I hacked away at the prohibitions and doubts set down by my family, it still seemed impossible. I was expected to do something practical. When I decided to get a PhD in American literature, as far as my family was concerned it was as if I’d run away with the Grateful Dead. As detours go, it was a useful one. As I read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on the Road, I found myself profoundly moved by the feeling these writers weren’t just telling me a story—they were telling me who they were.

Having grown up in a family where telling people who you were could be, and often was, regarded as a betrayal, these works were both a revelation and a provocation. That was a beginning, a very important one: to discover voices that spoke to me with an intimacy I rarely experienced in real life.

Still, I might never have crossed over from reading to writing if I hadn’t bumped into my parents’ next-door neighbor one afternoon when I was back home from graduate school. This was about fifteen years ago. We got to chatting and she told me she’d just published a book.

Hold up! I thought. Writing seemed like such an exalted profession. I’d never known a writer in real life. And now, suddenly, I did: the woman next door. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to ask my neighbor how she’d done it. She told me she’d enrolled in a creative writing workshop through our local independent bookstore, Book Passage, and that’s where she got her start.

That same day I walked over to Book Passage and I signed up for a spot in the writer’s workshop my neighbor recommended. My classmates, mostly women, were strangers to me, people I’d likely never have met in any other context, even though ours was a small community. But once a week, Fridays, 6 to 9 pm, we were kin, bound together by our common love of stories and an urgent, if muted, desire to speak and to be seen.

For two years, I showed up at that workshop every Friday night, pages in hand, heart kicking against my chest as I read for my allotted ten minutes. It was a time of discovery, in some ways the sweetest time of my writing life so far. I wasn’t writing to publish anything, though that might have shimmered as a distant dream; I was wholly taken up by the urge to make something beautiful and to connect with other people.

That’s what got me started, and what keeps me going to this day. ...more

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Jasmin Darznik’s books

Average rating: 4.09 · 14,416 ratings · 2,256 reviews · 12 distinct works • Similar authors

	Song of a Captive Bird 4.21 avg rating — 6,171 ratings — published 2018 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Bohemians 4.04 avg rating — 4,391 ratings — published 2021 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life 3.95 avg rating — 3,812 ratings — published 2011 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	American Goddess it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Une fille comme il faut by Jasmin Darznik (Goodreads Author), Florence Moreau it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	(The Good Daughter: My Mother's Hidden Life) [By: Darznik, Jasmin] [Mar, 2012] by Jasmin Darznik (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Les Bohémiennes, Volume 2 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Les Bohémiennes, Volume 1 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dreaming in Persian: an interview with novelist Gina Barkhordar Nahai.(Interview): An article from: MELUS 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	[Good Daughter: My Mother's Hidden Life] [By: Darznik, Jasmin] [March, 2012] by Jasmin Darznik (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Jasmin Darznik's Blog

Reintroducing the Magnificent Loïe Fuller

“Obsessed with Light” Resurrects a Forgotten Revolutionary

There are artists who disappear so completely from cultural memory that their rediscovery feels like archaeology—not just of their work, but of entire ways of seeing the world. Loïe Fuller was such an artist. Watching Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum’s documentary Obsessed with Light, I found myself wondering how a woman who essentially i

Jasmin is Currently Reading

Jasmin Darznik is currently reading

Model Citizen: A Memoir

by Joshua Mohr (Goodreads Author)

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Mar 15, 2021 09:47AM

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Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Winter Living Style: Bring Hygge into Your Home With This Inspirational Guide to Decorating for Winter by Selina Lake	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Secret Rules to Being a Rockstar by Jessamyn Violet (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing New Coastal: Inspiration for a Life by the Sea by Ingrid Weir (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Nathan Turner's I Love California: Design and Entertaining the West Coast Way by Nathan Turner (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Sacred Spaces: Everyday People and the Beautiful Homes Created Out of Their Trials, Healing, and Victories by Carley Summers	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jan 18, 2024 09:35PM · like

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Quotes by Jasmin Darznik (?)

“I was a woman and I couldn't speak with the voice of a man, because it was not my voice - not true and not my own. But there was more to it than that. By writing in a woman's voice I wanted to say that a woman, too, is a human being. To say that we, too, have the right to breathe, to cry out, and to sing.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

19 likes

“We only lose ourselves by looking back.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

7 likes

“Art could survive; even when suppressed, even when outlawed, it could survive far worse fates than fire.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

6 likes

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Polls

In Sept-Oct 2025 we read The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik. Was this book a 5 star read for you?

Read rated 5 stars

3 votes 42.9%

I am undecided whether I will ever read this book.

2 votes 28.6%

I am going to read it but haven't yet.

1 vote 14.3%

I pass, it was not my cup of tea.

1 vote 14.3%

Read rated 4 stars

0 votes 0.0%

Read rated 3 stars

0 votes 0.0%

Read rated 2 stars

0 votes 0.0%

Read rated 1 star

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I am currently reading.

0 votes 0.0%

7 total votes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Cover to Cover Ch...: Aths' 100 books in 2011	4	36	Apr 03, 2011 11:12AM
The Seasonal Read...: * Spring Challenge 2013: Tasks	9	715	Apr 19, 2013 07:31PM
The Seasonal Read...: 20.6- Seasoned Reader- Alexandra's task: Messing Around	67	117	May 20, 2013 02:48AM
The Next Best Boo...: The Title Game	20218	14601	May 30, 2013 12:53PM
500 Great Books B...: Brina's 2018 Reading Women Challenge	5	24	Jan 18, 2018 05:40AM
Historical Fictio...: Publisher Giveaway	19	57	Jan 30, 2018 09:56AM

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Jasmin’s Quotes

“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
― E.L. Doctorow

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Jasmin’s Friend Comments

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message 1: by Donna

Dec 27, 2017 07:15PM

Jasmin, thank you for accepting my friend request on Goodreads. I hope I can win your book, SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD. Looks to be a very good read.
Happy New Year.
Donna

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