Home Is a Stranger

by Parnaz Foroutan

“A thought-provoking memoir about the challenges of personal and national relations.”  —Foreword Reviews  New travel nonfiction from a break-out novelist and recipient of a PEN Emerging Voice fellowship that speaks to the immigrant and female experiences of America and Iran  Unmoored by the death of her father and disenchanted by the American Dream, Parnaz Foroutan leaves Los Angeles for Iran, nineteen years after her family fled the religious police state brought in by the Islamic Theocracy.   From the moment Parnaz steps off the plane in Tehran, she contends with a world she only partially understands. Struggling with her own identity in a culture that feels both foreign and familiar, she tries to find a place for herself between the American girl she is and the woman she hopes to become.   Written with the same literary grace and passion as her fiction, Home Is a Stranger is a memoir about the meaning of desire, the transcendence of boundaries, and the journey to find home. 

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Iran, Biography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 24, 2020

About the author

Parnaz Foroutan was born in Iran and spent her early childhood there. She received PEN USA's Emerging Voices fellowship for her first novel, Girl From the Garden, which was inspired by her own family history.

She has been named to the Hedgebrook fellowship and residency, and received funding from the Elizabeth George Foundation, among other institutions.

She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've found a bit of a memoir stride this weekend, this is no. 3! After her father's death, Parnaz returned to Iran in her 20s (in 2001) to try to regain a sense of connection to his past. Along the way she broke most rules of respectability, had a few life-changing experiences, and struggled to bridge the gap between her two identities.

Among the many "mistakes" she made, she was reprimanded or arrested for "revealing too much of herself (being open)," laughing out loud, and showing a line of ankle while playing tennis. At one party she realized what she was saying was being portrayed by other women her age as "corrupting propaganda of the slut from Los Angeles."

The writing is beautiful, leading me to immediately look for more by this author (I was hoping for poetry but she does have a novel that came out a few years ago, huzzah!). I did find a few events in this book to feel a bit like she was asking a bit too much suspension of disbelief by the reader but they were beautifully rendered. Perhaps Iran really does contain that kind of magic.

I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss, and it came out March 24, 2020.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir of the author's search for her past and her future, Parnaz Foroutan leaves Los Angeles following her father's death to return to Iran, the country her family fled 19 years earlier. This is a beautifully written account of her quest to find her identity as she wrestles with a culture that is foreign and familiar, ancient and modern and religious and secular.

[Chaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

How is one to find belonging in a place she doesn't belong? How to define oneself as a "Los Angelino" or "Iranian" when you are neither, and both? This poetic and beautifully written memoir places the author in an in-between time: between youth and adulthood, between being a child to one's parents and moving away from them, between being an American and an Iranian. Parnaz is an Iranian woman who left the country with her parents at the start of the revolution and landed in Los Angeles -- perhaps the most polar opposite place she could be, culturally and spiritually. She has grown up in California, but at 29, she still doesn't quite fit in. Her school years were awkward, more so than for the average LA teen, with her parents' rules and guidelines for her as a "proper" modest Muslim woman limiting her breathing space and marking the parameters of her behavior. Toss her headscarf aside as she might when she left the house and stuff it in her backpack -- she would still carry that identity on the streets of America, and it affected her relationship with others.

When her father dies, Parnaz moves back to Iran to find traces of him and traces of herself as well, but she fits in there as awkwardly as she did back home in LA. She's not a proper Iranian girl, and gets herself into trouble time and again with her "loose" and free ways, her rebelliousness against the restrictive patriarchal society, and her conflicting desire to fit in there but on her terms.

In the Iran that she finds stifling in many ways, however, she also finds beauty, simplicity, colors she never imagined, and a kind of happiness.

I would categorize this book between two genres - memoir and poetry. The language sings and is evocative of Parnaz' conflicting emotions, which shift like sand underfoot. The stories are realistic, and suspenseful, keeping the reader holding her breath, but lyrical as well, each episode weighted with significance. We can feel the emotional and psychical importance of these events as they sear themselves into Parnaz's mind and soul.

The author does a fantastic job of evoking a particular time in a young woman's life, when the search for meaning and identity weights every event with potential, when the future is limitless because it is unknown, when the idea of "becoming" is just as important as "being."

One thing I would have liked to have more of a sense of was the narrator's relationship with her father, which is the impetus behind her move back to Iran and one of the overarching themes of the story, but the reader does not get a clear sense of that relationship at all, only a post-death sadness at the loss of him, and a little glimpse of the end of his life, with his waning health and the narrator's tortured sad waiting for his death. Her father is clearly a larger presence post-death, whether appearing to her in a dream or in the form of a spiritual conduit/shaman. Perhaps that is purposeful, but the importance of her relationship with him loses its significance a bit due to this lack.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Home is A Stranger is a memoir focused on the transformative experience of a young woman caught between two worlds—and two selves. It reads like literary fiction, and at times, like poetry. A living, breathing poetry that lifts you to golden heights and plunges you into murky depths. Alternating between Los Angeles and Iran, Foroutan navigates life, death, and the space in between, in this exquisite sensory and intuitive journey.

Foroutan holds a unique perspective of Iran as someone who escaped Iran's religious police state as a child, grew up in Los Angeles as an American girl where she was still often perceived as the Other, then returned to Iran as a young woman to discover a world both foreign and familiar. I loved exploring Iran's beauty through her eyes, and I marveled at her bravery in pushing the boundaries of so-called decorum to assert her sense of self and equality. The social, religious, and political underpinnings of her experiences serve to enrich them, raising the stakes for Foroutan's personal transformation.

At times I found some of her experiences to be almost beyond belief—until I later realized that this was not just a physical journey. The physical is there, to be sure, vivid and pulsing with so much life that it hurts: desire, longing, sun on skin, tangerine exploding in mouth. But this is also a deeply emotional and spiritual journey, a search for identity and meaning that can't help but serve as a lens for the physical.

All in all, a gorgeous and insightful read. Whether you're looking for memoir, fiction, or poetry, Home Is a Stranger will be sure to satisfy!

[Lauren Hakimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Page-wise, this is a skinny book, but that's only because the writer is good at packing wisdom into singular sentences and letting the reader have space to absorb it. It's an Iran travelogue but it doubles as a woman's coming-of-age story. The only thing stronger than the author's 20-something self's fear is her lust, which shines through the indulgent prose. There were only a few passages where the author's love of nature and people came off as a little corny for my taste, but I also appreciate that those passages are powerful in portraying a young woman's lust in a repressive society. I thought it had a weak beginning but it got better as it went on, and the way the author plays with time and withholds details was very effective. I think people will like this book if they liked Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid or The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

[Tiffany Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I loved reading about the Iranian people from the authors perspective. The author was born in Iran but grew up in America. She makes a few trips back to her home country and this is her journey that she tells us about. I would recommend this book.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

[Sylvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved much of this book. Returning to Iran after growing up in Los Angeles, the culture shock for Parnaz was major and I found that fascinating. The parts of this book I had a problem with was her crazy spiritual moments and instant connections found between herself and strangers. Just too “woo-woo” for me.

[JKC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why did I stop reading this? The narrator/author seemed ridiculously naïve. I got tired of her describing men like out of a Harlequin romance novel. And it was too depressing to think that, after most of my lifetime, there are still real life stories of terrible sexism and mistreatment of women.

[Tanya G · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favorite book.

[Liliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this book

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Randomly picked this book up at a library sale and it is one of the best memoirs I’ve read.