Everything about Roya Hakakian reveals truths about Iran that are not well understood in the United States. A highly educated, attractive, secular woman who has been successful as a journalist, author, filmmaker and poet, Hakakian, 42, was born and raised a Jewish Iranian until the age of 18.
She and her family fled Iran in 1985 and she now lives with her Iranian Jewish husband and twin three-and-a-half-year-old sons in Connecticut.
During a four-day visit sponsored by the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning and Alverno College, Hakakian addressed seven local audiences last week.
The youngest of three children and the only daughter of “an esteemed poet and teacher” Hakakian grew up as part of a cosmopolitan elite in Tehran. Though her parents had been the targets of bigotry as Jews when they were growing up, she said in a recent telephone interview, “in my years, these things were quite passé. We were modern people with modern aspirations” and Iran was religiously, “a very egalitarian place.”
Initially, religion did not play a part in the revolution either, Hakakian explained.
“It came to be known as an Islamic revolution after it occurred, in retrospect. But at the time it was taking place, when the ordinary cosmopolitan elite was getting behind it, the revolution was started for the noble reasons that people around the world [have always] stormed the streets — for equal rights.
“It was only after the middle class and the clerics took power that it came to be an Islamic revolution,” she said.
Between the time the revolution began in February 1979 and the time the Islamic clerics solidified their hold on power, “the country, especially Tehran, experienced a period of unparalleled freedom,” she wrote in her 2004 memoir “Journey from the Land of No.” It was that time, when she was an idealistic teenager, that Hakakian focuses on in her memoir.
Life in the U.S. has been liberating for Hakakian, who speaks flawless English despite having not spoken English when she came to the U.S. at 19. For one, she has found her way back to Judaism as a religion.
“I had trouble with the standards of Judaism in Iran, which seemed almost fanatical. It wasn’t the kind of Judaism that appealed to me and only after I came here [and found a more democratic Judaism] did I want to be involved,” she said.
She said she has not been the target of any anti-Middle Eastern prejudice since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Though she knows that mistakes have been made and injustices have occurred, she has been impressed with the overall response of ordinary Americans.
“I always loved America and the more I stay here the more I think we could have reacted far more violently. Hardly anyone I know has been negatively affected.” She does think the American government overreacted, she said.
Hakakian is currently finishing another nonfiction book, which will be published by Grove/Atlantic Inc. next year. It deals with the murder of four Iranians in 1992, she said.
Kathy Jendusa, executive director of WSJL, said that the opportunity to bring Hakakian to Milwaukee fit perfectly into the society’s focus on Jewish diversity, begun some six years ago with Donniel Hartman, co-director of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
Hakakian’s visit included an appearance at the WSJL Annual Meeting Luncheon at UWM’s Zelazo Center on Sunday, April 26, in which she spoke about her memoir and coming of age in Iran during the revolution.
She also participated in a debate, “‘Our’ Middle East/Whose Middle East? Official Versions/Historical Perspectives” at Alverno on Thursday evening April 23.
The panel also included Israel emissary Rakefet Ginsberg; Palestinian community activist, Sadiqa Issa; and Douglas Savage, assistant director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Institute of World Affairs and was moderated by Jeana Abromeit, Alverno sociology professor.
In addition, Hakakian met with Alverno students, faculty from various universities, Jewish students at Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee, local Iranians at Boswell Book Co. and spoke at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun’s Shabbat morning service April 25.
A freelance writer, Andrea Waxman is a former assistant editor of The Chronicle.
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