Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity

by Porochista Khakpour

*A Vintage Original*
From the much-acclaimed novelist and essayist, a beautifully rendered, poignant collection of personal essays, chronicling immigrant and Iranian-American life in our contemporary moment.

Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating culture. Growing up as an immigrant in America means that one has to make one's way through a confusing tangle of conflicting cultures and expectations. And Porochista is pulled between the glitzy culture of Tehrangeles, an enclave of wealthy Iranians and Persians in LA, her own family's modest life and culture, and becoming an assimilated American. Porochista rebels—she bleaches her hair and flees to the East Coast, where she finds her community: other people writing and thinking at the fringes. But, 9/11 happens and with horror, Porochista watches from her apartment window as the towers fall. Extremism and fear of the Middle East rises in the aftermath and then again with the election of Donald Trump. Porochista is forced to finally grapple with what it means to be Middle-Eastern and Iranian, an immigrant, and a refugee in our country today.
Brown Album is a stirring collection of essays, at times humorous and at times profound, drawn from more than a decade of Porochista's work and with new material included. Altogether, it reveals the tolls that immigrant life in this country can take on a person and the joys that life can give.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir, Audiobook, Race, Politics, Biography Memoir

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2020

About the author

Porochista Khakpour is the author of the memoir Sick (Harper Perennial, June 2018)—a “Most Anticipated Book of 2018,” according to HuffPost, Bustle, Bitch, Nylon, Volume1 Brooklyn, The Rumpus, and more. She also authored the novels The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury, 2014)—a 2014 "Best Book of the Year" according to NPR, Kirkus, Buzzfeed, Popmatters, Electric Literature, and more — and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove, 2007)—the 2007 California Book Award winner in “First Fiction,” a Chicago Tribune’s “Fall’s Best,” and a New York Times “Editor’s Choice.” Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America, Bookforum, Slate, Salon, Spin, CNN, The Daily Beast, Elle, and many other publications around the world. She’s had fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Leipzig (Picador Guest Professorship), Yaddo, Ucross, and Northwestern University’s Academy for Alternative Journalism, among others. She has taught creative writing and literature at Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, and many other schools across the country. Currently, she is guest faculty at VCFA and Stonecoast's MFA programs as well as Contributing Editor at The Evergreen Review and The Offing. Born in Tehran and raised in the Los Angeles area, she lives in New York City’s Harlem.

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure how to feel about this collection of essays. I’ve read Khakpour’s novels (meh) and memoir (in which an important issue — women being heard and taken seriously by medical professionals — is buried by the overwhelming evidence of Khakpour being an unreliable historian). I’ve been to one of her book readings, one that was mainly attended by her least favorite demographic (white people), where I waited around awkwardly to ask her to sign my book. She asked me if i was Iranian (yes...well, Iranian-American), which delighted me, as I’m not often recognized as belonging to this group of people.

I want to like Khakpour’s work because she reminds me of my older sister. They’re the same age, both born in Iran and raised in California. They both went through a period of rejecting their heritage, and becoming something else — if not blonde and all-American, then something else altogether. They both have fraught relationships with their Iranian immigrant parents. This is probably why I’m drawn to Khakpour’s work, and why why I wanted to read this book. Khakpour writes about her childhood, and trying to find herself and forge an identity as a writer, and as a New Yorker, in this essay collection.

There’s a point in this collection where Khakpour transitions from desperately wanting to be anything BUT Iranian, to claiming identities that she doesn’t necessarily have grounds to claim, or that she doesn’t really explore. The person who was raised secular and experiments with drugs and alcohol suddenly identifies as Muslim. The person who co-opts aspects of hip hop culture and describes her father as “dark” and “resembling Barack Obama” (sorry...what?) attempts to claim Afro-Iranian ancestry without really explaining it, as if this validates the things she does or says . She tells us that she’s queer, but we only hear about her boyfriends, reminiscent of her memoir, where she writes about boyfriend after boyfriend before throwing out the “queer” identifier toward the end of the book. She’s very critical of “white people” and their various micro (and macro) aggressions targeted at her, but she doesn’t really interrogate her own behavior, and she certainly doesn’t consider her privilege as a white-passing individual.

There are some intriguing bits in this collection, like the essay about Tehrangeles, and the two ends of the spectrum that is the Iranian diaspora in California. She dances around the issues of race and racism in Iran and amongst Iranians in diaspora, but never really dives into them. There are also a lot of questionable bits, like the parts where she essentially brushes off all of her students because they’re apparently all white, instead of using the opportunity to teach them. I think Khakpour needs to do a bit more introspection, instead of attributing every less than stellar interaction she has to the raging racism of the white people around her.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find memoirs and essays from immigrants and other countries so important and enlightening. Here, Khakpour uses her voice to show how being a refugee and Middle Eastern in a country that has a tumultuous past with both has shaped her. She explores her identity of being Iranian and being American and how she can love and struggle with each at times.

I received an advanced copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You are 19 years in America, you become an American on November 2001 and you realize you could have had a child in that time. You have no kids, no husband, no home you own, no roots. No real reason to be here. Trump becomes president and your old country is on the list of the six countries of the "Muslim ban". You are suddenly a Muslim. No one doubts your browness anymore. You realize that every day is lesson in America, the real America, the violent one."
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Thoughts~
I reccomend checking this one out! I really enjoyed these relevant, moving, honest and eye opening essays about being an Iranian immigrant in America.

Porochista Khakpour and her family lived a prosperous life in Iran, but the Iranian Revolution found them escaping to America. In Los Angeles they found themselves living a much different life, one with cultural alienation. Through memories Porochista shares what everyday diaspora feels like, living through 9/11, and America's continued rocky relationship with Iran. She explores her search for identity, touching on mental health, creative writing, and more.

This was a deeply honest read. Another book white people should be required to read in my opinion. Her memoir SICK was interesting reading as well.
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Thank You to the publisher for sending me this book opinions are my own.
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For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong

[Benjamin Rubenstein]

I think this collection of essays can be viewed as a case study in whatever that thing is called where someone demands validation for his or her identity, past, and accomplishments (is that narcissism? I'm not sure). Perhaps whatever that thing is called is built into the genetic code; at least I thought that when the narrator talked about taking selfies in front of a dirty mirror when she was a child.

Ultimately, this just isn't my thing--that's not a critique of the writing, that's just a me-issue with the book--I found it too long for me and I don't care about it, and I listened on two-times warp speed just to complete it.

[Natalie (CuriousReader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published on my blog: https://curiousreaderr.wordpress.com/...

Brown Album collects Porochista Khakpour’s essays exploring identity and expression, growing up, creative writing and loving stories, America and 9/11, and mental health, among myriad of things. She opens the book with positioning herself as an Iranian-American writer, having unwittingly become a kind of representative of Iranians in America or in the West generally, particularly as immigrants and within a setting where these two identities have long been at odds with one another. Being asked to write about various topics related to Iranian-American lives and stories, she’d found herself “a spokesperson of my people“. This essay collection then is in great part dealing with this identity split – Iran and America having a rocky history, hardly less so after 9/11, explaining perhaps some of the authors obsession with this event in history and trying to grapple with its shockwaves many years ahead in her fiction writing. Khakpour describes herself as a novelist but I thought she excelled as an essayist – raising questions of importance without preaching, through the grounded nature of weaving in personal experiences with rawness and allowing for sharp introspections and honest ambiguities; her story-telling really resonated with me on a personal level as a part-Iranian reader but equally allowed me to reflect on things I hadn’t heard anyone questioning before.

In one of the earliest essays she attempts to confront the split of Iran’s identity as part of a dreamscape “Persia”, with rich art and history; in contrast to the country’s bleak present and conflicted relationship within and outside its national boundaries. “In the beginning there was the word… Persian“. Its connotations of all that is good about a country in a single word, as a strategic distancing from that four-letter name suggesting hostage crisis, terrorists, islamists, suspicion. As much as she questions some of the country’s identity crisis, she shares some of her personal journey in figuring out who she was – as an immigrant of two identities especially as she had few memories of Iran, having moved as a three year old – she describes some of the mixed feelings she has of her own legacy, how she relates to her parents’ background, political stance, attitude towards their new homeland, and where they belong. Her story of coming of age is increasingly complicated with some health issues that shapes many of her life decisions and paths taken. She finds a particular sense of purpose and connection through books and story-telling, she shares this passion through some of her journey into becoming a teacher of creative writing and a published author.

I thought this was a wonderful book that really illustrates on the one hand the wider experience of being an immigrant or child of immigrants stuck in between two cultures and identities – never quite belonging to either; as well as the more specific relationship she has with her birth country – a relationship that she continues to make sense of through the writing of this book. A wonderful, thoughtful and in my opinion, highly eye-opening book about some of the experiences of someone both being able to “pass” and being judged as “other” in the country they have made their own. “I accepted it [America] and never, until much later, considered that it might not accept me”.

[Stuart · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a lot, Ms. Khakpour can turn an incredible phrase and occasionally has very excellent insights, especially into being shoehorned as a novelist and essayist into specific subjects. However, her essential inability to get over things (which provides grist for many writerly mills) and her inability to contextualize her suffering or even identify what her problem is makes this a deeply unpleasant read. And not in the James Baldwin sense. is she too Iranian? Too American? Too hyphenated? Why does it matter? What does this mean for other members of the diaspora? You will never learn, in this collection of essays the tehrangelenos are wealthy, happy, and secure in their identities. One gets the sense she is deeply resentful that but for the overthrow of the shah she would have had a comfortable, aristocratic upbringing.

I think there's an issue with writers, especially memoirists, pundits and non-academic essayists describing universal experiences--these people are bottomless pits constantly hungry for attention and praise and can never adjust to whatever surroundings they have, they exist in the middle of an enormous negative space created by their inability to relate to anything beyond themselves.

This collection of essays, despite the occasional flash of clarity, is largely a litany of grievances, ones often only the writer knows is there--maybe half a dozen times in the text she is agonizing over her being perceived as white, or Iranian, or a refugee only to have her interlocuter have no idea what she is talking about or why it matters. This is not simply a case of white cluelessness (though she does a good job of showing that off at times) but a failure on Ms. Khakpour's part to realize that she is the protagonist in nobody else's life.

The second half of the collection provides an unintentional look at the absolute inability of liberal culture and identity based politics to confront fascism. At one point she confronts a friend who uses the term camel jockey--rather than "this is hurtful for these reasons, to me personally" or "that's an outdated term which isn't even funny" or "let's unpack the history of that ethnic slur" she screams "do you realize who you are talking to?" and then cuts him out of her life. The notion that the problem with the statement is that it hurts you personally lets systemic racism off the hook. Her post-Trump essays are increasingly unable to deal with political reality, and never does she explore colonialism or imperialism as it relates to her specific upbringing--her exploration of Iranian-American relations is largely focused on her ancestry and what that means for her and how she feels she has been wronged and harmed by others based on their abstract and immutable hatred of her people, focused entirely on her.

I sincerely hope Ms. Khakpour finds comfort in her identity and relief from her suffering.

[Shaelene (aGirlWithBookss) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Brown Album, Khakpour explores what it is to be an Iranian Muslim in America, and her feelings struggling with her identity.
This essay collection will make you laugh & cry, and become completely absorbed in this writer's fascinating and entertaining adventures.

Being a white woman, I can only speak on so much of this. Having read Sick by Khakpour and relating to it so much, I knew going into Brown Album I wasn’t going to relate to it in the same way, but what kept bringing me back was the writing and storytelling. I so much enjoyed the stories Khakpour has to tell, especially about her family- I will never get the image of Khakpour and her mother eating sheep testicles and brain matter out of my head!

I think this is a book that everyone can take away a little something from. Khakpour’s voice is essential in a time when American’s relations with the Middle East are so delicate, in a time when the Muslim no-fly ban is reality.

4 stars.

***ARC provided by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Anahita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book more than I expected I would. Khakpour’s writer’s voice reels you in from the very beginning, and her personal anecdotes didn’t feel tired or repetitive like a lot of writing about Iranian-America and the diaspora tends to feel.

I especially enjoyed these essays/chapters (but I recommend the whole thing): “Revolution Days”, “An Iranian in Mississippi”, “Secret Muslims in the New Year”, “A Muslim-American in Indonesia”, “How to Write Iranian America”, and the titular final piece “Brown Album”.

[Sara Zia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book more. Hypothetically it should be my dream book: a collection of essays by a fellow Iranian American artist my age raised outside of Tehrangeles glam. But maybe for exactly this reason I am more critical of it? The burden of narrow spectrums of representation is that when someone “breaks through” with accolades from institutional gatekeepers that allow the person wider distribution, the rest of us want that person to be our everything, to say and do it all because hey it’s finally our turn at the mic! I look forward to a day where a collection of essays by an Iranian American whose racial analysis I don’t agree with (and find lacking in any analysis of power and privilege) is insignificant because there are so many others out there.

[Ilana · Rating 5 out of 5]

´When Iranians write you and say you are not Iranian enough for them, thank them, and when others say you are too Iranian for them, thank them too´.



The Essays on Exile and Identity included in the Brown Album recently published by Porochista Khakpour are an interesting genuine journey of coming at terms with a constantly changing perception and acceptance of identity. Being other in America - and elsewhere - requires a long travail that involves some risks: your assigned group may not accept the final results, you may not be happy with the roles assigned, the majority would have different expectations - culturally, gender-based, economically - from you as inherently associated with your group - ethnic, cultural, other.

´I was brown, bisexual, from a Muslim background, of the dreaded Middle East, of the even more reviled Iran, always poor from parents who were originally not poor and then had become very poor´, a daily life within so many margins.

Like her memoir of living with chronical illness, Sick, I could not easily put down the The Brown Album. First, there is the constant exploration of a specific identity in the making, against all odds and branding associated, especially in the post 9/11 America. On the other hand, this unique story has to do with an everyday experience many of those dislocated for various reasons from their country of birth may resent at a certain point. Of course, some ethnic groups are more demanding than the others, and some countries are more or less oblivious to the identity appropriation - religious, linguistic and/or cultural.

Khakpour was born in Tehran, in a family belonging to ´academic aristocracy´ - her father was involved in the development of the atomic program and her great uncle is Akbar Etemad, considered as the father of Iran´s nuclear program. Forced by the post-revolutionary Iran political circumstances to leave the country, her family considered for a long while the American journey as temporarily. The life in America is a reverse of fate and social status, as they do not belong to the so-called Therangels based in the rich part of LA. On one side, the glamorous Iranians: ´Here all the base materialism purged by the Islamists could upchuck ebulliently like a Disney-lit confetti-bomb blitz. Thbey were safe´. On the other side, her family: ´Old Iranian aristocrats stuffed into a tiny crummy suburban apartment with nothing to show of their pedigree but the insanity of those who once had everything and were forced to abandon it all, almost overnight´. Stories that are often replicated in different languages and cultures, at least for the first generation of immigrants.

Khakpour´s first escape and the beginning of a new cycle of identity redesign is once she is leaving for NYC to study creative writing at Sarah Lawrence, an experice she describes as: ´To me, I thought it could be a place where I could pile on identities as if they were pizza toppings, cheap and fast and easily pickled off, but hopefully so amply loaded that who I actually was could be, for once, truly obscured´. In the end, she will be fully at home in the NYC nightclubs: ´Electronic music and its physical incarnation, the rave, was a tempting and great equalizer´.

Porochista Khapour journey of defining herself is a courageous attempt to deny general lines and look for those specific descriptions that fit individual stories. We may move within defined limits and cultural expectations, but what about taking the courage of defining ourselves first as individuals described through genuine features than based on general categories? Such an approach is a matter of psychological comfort that is not easy but it´s almost an intellectual obligation.

After the two memoirs, I am looking forward to read the novels Khakpour wrote, including her incoming one dedicated to Tehrangels. I love her courage and her intellectual vibe very much.


Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

[Voclo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this - memoirs are one of my faves, and I’ve read SO many good ones. This was just too scattered and loose. And SO much…whinging. As a person who was mired in horrible bipolar depression for a decade, suicidal, self-harming, trying to extract myself from an abusive marriage…the reacting to awaiting your first novel’s NYT review by prank-calling (and permanently alienating) friends? Goes beyond unrelatable. There’s not even much in the way of cultural context (Crying in H-Mart as an example of excellent cultural framing) to explain why the author is reacting in such a…petulant way to an incredibly positive (if fraught) development.

In short, readers need to have empathy for autobiographical writers, and I was just so *irritated* by this author that I couldn’t lean into the legitimate struggles she was experiencing.

[Megan Beam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gosh this is such powerful work. The layers of cultural and individual truths in every single essay... I am seriously astonished by how much I learned reading this. So, so good.

[Rachel León]

A really great essay collection.

[Lisa]

I like reading the author's non-fiction (and haven't read her fiction), and this collection was pretty interesting, and some of the essays felt overlapping/redundant (which she acknowledges).

[Tasha Diamant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started following Ms Khakpour on Instagram and I’m very touched by her kindness, vulnerability, and ability to share the contradictions and challenges she faces as an Iranian-American, and, especially, how her microcosm is a mirror of the macrocosm.

[sam hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. some great writing and some not so great writing. her story about going to mississippi was really well done.

[Nelda Brangwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The highs of career successes and the lows of discrimination and emotional defeats are laid bare in this series of essays by an Iranian American living in a white America. She writes with humor about subjects that are very pertinent in the climate created by Trumpism.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was downright amazing. And humbling. I listened to an author event with Khakpour the other night while I was reading this. I can't remember her exact quote, but she was talking about obnoxious questions at readings and mentioned that they typically come from white women. Well, reading this made it clear to me that I'm one of those obnoxious white women. This book should be required reading; it is a full education for those of us who are trying to overcome prejudices that we were raised with and be a little bit more sensitive to identity and belonging. And it will maybe teach me to ask fewer stupid questions. I would love to be taught by Khakpour; she challenged me in ways I needed, but struggle to find opportunities for. Again, she would probably hate that, but I applaud her for her never-ending service in telling her stories.

Please, read this! I'm planning on buying a copy so I can highlight and revisit it and hopefully, continue to learn to be a better person.

[Erika Juarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read. As a Latina it is amazing to see how many of us, people of color, first gens share similar experiences and perspectives.

[Simone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible. This author is tone def on every single level. Not only is she tone def in her writing but in her thought process as well. While she picks apart all that is wrong with colonization and western views. She refuses to put her own actions under a microscope. Porochista is a part of the problem. She herself a proud gentrifier. Talking about 3rd world countries without respecting their culture. And just like the person who wrote it. This book is trash. Nothing she writes will make her any more “woke” she likes to hide behind other minority groups plight in order to make herself look compassionate and worldly. No her views are just as deadly and detrimental as the colonizers she writes about.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully written, deeply raw essay collection. Porochista is very honest about her experience as an immigrant and her feeling of being an exile both from her home country, her immigrant community, and America in general. Yes, 9/11 and Trump’s election does play into these essays heavily. I like that she isn’t afraid to end the book with the essay that is probably the most raw, honest, and angry of all of these, and that it doesn’t end on an upbeat note. Definitely pick this up when it comes out.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having felt like I got to know Porochista Khakpour through reading her bestselling memoir Sick, I was glad to gain a deeper understanding of the writer through her most recent work Brown Album. This narrative explores Khakpour’s earlier years and young adulthood as an immigrant to the United States after her family fleeing the Iranian Revolution.

It’s a fascinating and engaging and sometimes necessarily biting exploration on identity and culture.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author wrote a raw and personal account of what it was like to be a teenage immigrant. On top of the normal insecurities one experiences as a teen, the author had to deal with feelings of being different than their peers. I appreciated the author not sugarcoating her experiences, as it was important to me as a reader to have the good and the bad highlighted.

[Alicia Bane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was fantastic. The way Khakpour writes of her experiences as an Iranian-American is both funny and poignant, with such honesty and depth. This is the first book of hers that I've read, and now I absolutely have to buy her novels because I couldn't put this down.

[Sonora Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I always enjoy Khakpour's writing.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s the 1980s in southern California, where you and your parents have recently arrived. What is the difference between “Iranian” and “Persian,” and which do you use to self-identify? What is it like to know there is a huge, wealthy diaspora from your homeland just forty-five minutes away in “Tehrangeles,” blithely bleaching their hair and buying Bijan, while your downwardly-mobile clan in south Pasadena can barely afford a must-have Christmas Cabbage Patch doll? How do you cope when no one, not even your own people, can pronounce your name, when William Faulkner’s elderly nephew believes you are an Italian publisher named Pia and that he would sweep you off your feet if not for that pesky half-century age gap? To find out, read Brown Album by Porochista Khakpour, grapple with what it means to feel brown when most of the world, your own family included, sees you as white, and always remember that “true Cabbage Patch Kids, the real ones, come with butt tattoos.”

[Sheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a hyphenated Iranian, there was a lot I resonated with in Brown Album - stories of growing up between two cultures, and never really belonging to either (and not being close to the local Iranian community either). “How to write Iranian America” was pure gold, and felt the most authentic of the essays.

So it pains me to write this... but to me, most of these essays felt like Khakpour attempting to connect with something, anything, to try to forge a sense of identity from everything. Sometimes the links were quite tenuous and a bit uncomfortable... notably the time she admits she pretended to be half Black, before mentioning that she later discovered some distant African-Iranian heritage.

Ultimately, I felt that Brown Album wasn’t so much an exploration of being Iranian-American in the 21st century, but more what it feels like to spend a lifetime searching for a sense of identity as an Iranian-American refugee.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really interesting collection. Khakpour is able to eloquently voice to the many dualities of the immigrant experience. The yawning gap of the immigrant experience as lived by children and that of their parents or the feeling of being pigeon holed into representing a country that only becomes further removed from one’s identity as the child begins to understand themselves as more and more American. She similarly discusses the conflicts that come from a loss of status from the home country to the US, as well as the uncomfortable discussions of race that are virtually nonexistent in the home country but are paramount in the US. She does all of this in a style that is completely disarming, sharing her vulnerabilities, past mistakes and moments of cowardice. Definitely worth the read.

[Miguel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very inward looking, Brown Album is a mishmash of various essays revolving around the author’s experience growing up and living in the US as an Iranian immigrant. It seems much to her annoyance that she has to dwell on her origin, yet this seems to take up the bulk of the book’s contents for good or bad. There’s quite a bit of navel gazing going on, and it’s difficult to get deeply involved in passages about changing one’s hair color to blonde, although to be fair this does seem to preoccupy many people in how others perceive their outward appearance. The latter sections touch on race, although not deeply.

[Sarah Sleeper · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a devoted reader of fiction, I was slow to dive into this book of essays. But once I did, I read it straight through in two days. It was so full of cultural, political, sociological, historical and literary observations and details that it constantly triggered my memories, emotions and philosophical reactions. Brown Album doesn't have a standard memoir structure, but instead is more relational. It organically tracks the author's development as a person, an Iranian and American, and an artist. Khakpour's experiences are her own, but her memoir is something that anyone struggling with identity can read as a beacon of a way forward.