Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran 
asked by shakeonit on November 3, 2006 9:04 PM
From the Hardcover
“We stormed every classroom, inscribed our slogans on the blackboard . . . Never had mayhem brought more peace. All our lives we had been taught the virtues of behaving, and now we were discovering the importance of misbehaving. Too much fear had tainted our days. Too many afternoons had passed in silence, listening to a fanatic’s diatribes. We were rebelling because we were not evil, we had not sinned, and we knew nothing of the apocalypse. . . . This was 1979, the year that showed us we could make our own destinies. We were rebelling because rebelling was all we could do to quell the rage in our teenage veins. Together as girls we found the courage we had been told was not in us.”
In Journey from the Land of No Roya Hakakian recalls her childhood and adolescence in prerevolutionary Iran with candor and verve. The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about one deeply intelligent and perceptive girl’s attempt to ï¬?nd an authentic voice of her own at a time of cultural closing and repression. Remarkably, she manages to re-create a time and place dominated by religious fanaticism, violence, and fear with an open heart and often with great humor.
Hakakian was twelve years old in 1979 when the revolution swept through Tehran. The daughter of an esteemed poet, she grew up in a household that hummed with intellectual life. Family gatherings were punctuated by witty, satirical exchanges and spontaneous recitations of poetry. But the Hakakians were also part of the very small Jewish population in Iran who witnessed the iron fist of the Islamic fundamentalists increasingly tightening its grip. It is with the innocent confusion of youth that Roya describes her discovery of a swastika—“a plus sign gone awry, a dark reptile with four hungry claws”—painted on the wall near her home. As a schoolgirl she watched as friends accused of reading blasphemous books were escorted from class by Islamic Society guards, never to return. Only much later did Roya learn that she was spared a similar fate because her teacher admired her writing.
Hakakian relates in the most poignant, and at times painful, ways what life was like for women after the country fell into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who had declared an insidious war against them, but we see it all through the eyes of a strong, youthful optimist who somehow came up in the world believing that she was different, knowing she was special. At her loneliest, Roya discovers the consolations of writing while sitting on the rooftop of her house late at night. There, “pen in hand, I led my own chorus of words, with a melody of my own making.” And she discovers the craft that would ultimately enable her to find her own voice and become her own person.
A wonderfully evocative story, Journey from the Land of No reveals an Iran most readers have not encountered and marks the debut of a stunning new talent.
“We stormed every classroom, inscribed our slogans on the blackboard . . . Never had mayhem brought more peace. All our lives we had been taught the virtues of behaving, and now we were discovering the importance of misbehaving. Too much fear had tainted our days. Too many afternoons had passed in silence, listening to a fanatic’s diatribes. We were rebelling because we were not evil, we had not sinned, and we knew nothing of the apocalypse. . . . This was 1979, the year that showed us we could make our own destinies. We were rebelling because rebelling was all we could do to quell the rage in our teenage veins. Together as girls we found the courage we had been told was not in us.”
In Journey from the Land of No Roya Hakakian recalls her childhood and adolescence in prerevolutionary Iran with candor and verve. The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about one deeply intelligent and perceptive girl’s attempt to ï¬?nd an authentic voice of her own at a time of cultural closing and repression. Remarkably, she manages to re-create a time and place dominated by religious fanaticism, violence, and fear with an open heart and often with great humor.
Hakakian was twelve years old in 1979 when the revolution swept through Tehran. The daughter of an esteemed poet, she grew up in a household that hummed with intellectual life. Family gatherings were punctuated by witty, satirical exchanges and spontaneous recitations of poetry. But the Hakakians were also part of the very small Jewish population in Iran who witnessed the iron fist of the Islamic fundamentalists increasingly tightening its grip. It is with the innocent confusion of youth that Roya describes her discovery of a swastika—“a plus sign gone awry, a dark reptile with four hungry claws”—painted on the wall near her home. As a schoolgirl she watched as friends accused of reading blasphemous books were escorted from class by Islamic Society guards, never to return. Only much later did Roya learn that she was spared a similar fate because her teacher admired her writing.
Hakakian relates in the most poignant, and at times painful, ways what life was like for women after the country fell into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who had declared an insidious war against them, but we see it all through the eyes of a strong, youthful optimist who somehow came up in the world believing that she was different, knowing she was special. At her loneliest, Roya discovers the consolations of writing while sitting on the rooftop of her house late at night. There, “pen in hand, I led my own chorus of words, with a melody of my own making.” And she discovers the craft that would ultimately enable her to find her own voice and become her own person.
A wonderfully evocative story, Journey from the Land of No reveals an Iran most readers have not encountered and marks the debut of a stunning new talent.
Reviews
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Roya Hakakian's memoir of the ayatollahs' revolution from the perspective of a Jewish teen-ager is absolutely thrilling.
From Roya's description, it was Berlin 1933 all over again with Jews mouthing the slogans of the revolution and praising Khomeini as the savior from the wicked shah. With Jews not naming Israel but regarding Tehran as their homeland. With the Jewish school suddenly
naming a woman in veils as the new headmaster and demanding from the girls why Jewish fathers always deflower their daughters.
Roya Hakakian, a former producer for CBS' "60 Minutes," is a wonderful writer who infuses this sad story with a page-turning intensity that is rare in non-fiction. I heartily recommend it.
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From Roya's description, it was Berlin 1933 all over again with Jews mouthing the slogans of the revolution and praising Khomeini as the savior from the wicked shah. With Jews not naming Israel but regarding Tehran as their homeland. With the Jewish school suddenly
naming a woman in veils as the new headmaster and demanding from the girls why Jewish fathers always deflower their daughters.
Roya Hakakian, a former producer for CBS' "60 Minutes," is a wonderful writer who infuses this sad story with a page-turning intensity that is rare in non-fiction. I heartily recommend it.
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reviewed by mike on November 15, 2006 7:30 AM
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"Journey to the Land of No" is a first-person memoir of a Jewish girl growing up in Iran during the Revolution. The book describes what her life and the life of her family was like before and after this cataclysmic event.
Having developed an unaccountable interest in the Iranian Revolution during the past year, I have read perhaps a dozen books about this subject.
Hakakian's book, while not bad, would have to be toward the bottom of the list of books you should read about this subject. It just didn't grab me.
And certainly there has been no shortage of books written by women who lived in Iran during the Revolution and have since escaped. But if you're only going to read one or two, there is much better fare out there. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is searing and unforgettable, and the graphic novel "Persepolis" is simply excoriating. This latter would be at the top of said list.
Yeah, the competition is pretty stiff these days. The bar for writing an "I'm an Iranian exile and here's why"-type book has been set incredibly high by so much good stuff out there now, and Hakakian's effort doesn't quite measure up.
Anyhow. Compared to harrowing books like those, Hakakian's story is -- dare I say it? -- ho-hum. Occasionally it is tenderly written, but I left the book feeling that she had little to say, and because, at least compared to other authors writing about the same subject, little remarkable happened to her.
What is most regrettable about the book, I suppose, is that Hakakian's Jewishness is almost incidental to her tale. This is sad. She certainly mentions that she was Jewish, and this does form the cornerstone for a few events in the story, but basically what happens to her and her family could have happened to pretty much any Iranian during that time.
And this is regrettable because the Jewish angle was the one really original thing this book had going for it. And the author, I must aver, failed to really explore it or make it come alive.
In fact, so forgettable is the whole outing that, a few weeks after having read this book, I am unable to recall a single incident from it.
Having developed an unaccountable interest in the Iranian Revolution during the past year, I have read perhaps a dozen books about this subject.
Hakakian's book, while not bad, would have to be toward the bottom of the list of books you should read about this subject. It just didn't grab me.
And certainly there has been no shortage of books written by women who lived in Iran during the Revolution and have since escaped. But if you're only going to read one or two, there is much better fare out there. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" is searing and unforgettable, and the graphic novel "Persepolis" is simply excoriating. This latter would be at the top of said list.
Yeah, the competition is pretty stiff these days. The bar for writing an "I'm an Iranian exile and here's why"-type book has been set incredibly high by so much good stuff out there now, and Hakakian's effort doesn't quite measure up.
Anyhow. Compared to harrowing books like those, Hakakian's story is -- dare I say it? -- ho-hum. Occasionally it is tenderly written, but I left the book feeling that she had little to say, and because, at least compared to other authors writing about the same subject, little remarkable happened to her.
What is most regrettable about the book, I suppose, is that Hakakian's Jewishness is almost incidental to her tale. This is sad. She certainly mentions that she was Jewish, and this does form the cornerstone for a few events in the story, but basically what happens to her and her family could have happened to pretty much any Iranian during that time.
And this is regrettable because the Jewish angle was the one really original thing this book had going for it. And the author, I must aver, failed to really explore it or make it come alive.
In fact, so forgettable is the whole outing that, a few weeks after having read this book, I am unable to recall a single incident from it.
reviewed by titanium7 on November 27, 2006 8:09 PM