(Note: Please excuse the lateness of this. I beg birthday, having turned 33 last night.)
Oh, I had the slow burn on this one at first. Another 400 page person of color second generation homeland narrative? But I have deadlines and my birthday and a keynote speech to write and blahhhh. Do I have to? The first few pages didn’t grab me. And then I skipped ahead 100 pages and whoosh! I plunged into Tara’s world and the pages flew by under my fingers. I couldn’t wait to see what happened.
I feel like nothing I say in response to To See and See Again may be a new sentiment. But yes, the present tense made the story alive and fresh without seeming trite (something I think I worry about in using first person.) Bahrampour’s storyteller’s voice is so natural, calm and compelling. She doesn’t need to rely on tricks to move the book forward. While some memoirs we read seemed so carefully constructed in their structures – you could feel how the author had written a treatment and thought out how to make it work - this book just felt big and rich with story. The structure that Bahrampour emplyed of big… I think they’re too long for chapters- sections of text? -containing multiple stories spanning long chunks of time (the beautiful calm garden of the old days in Iran; her childhood in Iran; her time in America; her return), is one I loved. While Neccesary Attachments sometimes felt “too much” and claustrophobic in its big, relentless chunks of story, and Eat Pray Love felt on a different, cutesy, bite-sized plane where one can never forget that the structure has been carefully constructed to sell and entertain, To See and See Again rested on the strength and honesty of its writers’ voice and stories. I felt like I was floating in a big ocean of stories and I wanted one more, and then one more.
Bahrampour’s book is one I want to compare with Andrew Pham’s. Both are 1.5 generation immigrant memoirs, of growing up til 9 or 10 in “home” and being forced to leave due to war or revolution, growing up all the way in America, then coming back to the homeland to answer one’s questions about it in adulthood. How are they alike and different? Pham’s is another carefully structured book- his structure of alternating chapters of sequentially remembered past and adventure in the present, punctuated by the occasional flashback of early floating memory, works to fuel and push his book. Bahrampour uses huge chunks of story but they’re animated and made light by her details, her questioning, her intimacy. I loved how she brought us into the world of all her characters. Her family members and friends felt more in focus, more close-up than Pham’s characters did. She felt like she relied more on the strength of her observations, from her marriage of storyteller’s voice and journalist’s observing eye, to fuel that book than any artfully conceived structure.
And this is one thing. Nowhere did I not believe Barampour, but I did find myself shaking my head. How did she capture all these stories and dialogue?! They’re so rendered, don’t feel reconstructed, she gets all the details and they fill up her chunks of storytelling… This is one book where I found myself wanting an Afterword, where Barampour could talk about how methodology. But in my guessing, I think: maybe she just remembered like many people remember family stories, word for word without reporters notebooks, tape recorders or strategies learned from books. Maybe she is just the storyteller of the family. (Though being a journalist, having said “reporter’s notebook”, must’ve helped her.) I love the marriage of journalism and story in this book.
I would write more about what I love here, but perhaps it’s out of place in a blog that is supposed to be about detailed examinations of structure and craft. But bear with me and let me gush for a moment: I love, love, love how Barampour takes her time with telling many stories about Iran. How she examines multiple women’s stories. How she tells multiple kind of stories of diverse, resisting, alive and lively and lovely women. How she is not afraid to ask questions, about the life she didn’t lead, about what was lsot and gained in leaving Iran, and not having one Right Answer. The scene on p.248 of her mother insisting on taking a wounded kitten to the vet in the middle of heavy fighting, a room full of calm people with their pets, insisting on continuing life as normal, so the center will hold. How clear her love is for her family, and for all the small beauties of Iranian life. Fereshteh and Kambiz and their third way in Iran, of loving the traditional music and art and cultur of Iran, their apartment with its bright walls and books.
Two other big things I appreciated : One, that Bahrampour was able to write a narrative of growing up multiracial that gets into all the small nitty gritty moments of being seen, seeing, and constructing identity. I think this is incredibly hard to do. It’s something I reach for in my own writing and don’t always feel I get to. It’s rare to find a narrative of multiracial existence that is neither trite (“the best of both worlds” “kimchi and collard greens!”) or weighed down by pain. Many mixed-race narratives need to talk about the pain we experience as mixed-race people, but I really appreciated that Bahranpour chose to tell other stories. Second, I loved that this was a happy family story that was still real. I loved seeing the love and closeness between Mama, Baba and Tara and her siblings, that was still imperfect and real. There aren’t enough happy family stories out there that aren’t bullshitting, and it was nice to read this one. It made me want to make a version of her family, or go and live with hers, or both.
Finally, this may be a cheap shot, but, as much as I loved Persepolis, how much more I was surprised to find myself loving this book! As rich as Satrapi’s narrative of Iran is, it’s filled with grief and more grief. Even the small moments of resistance Satrapi documents feel futile. How amazing to see more hope, more choices, more rebellion everywhere in Barampour’s book. It made me question Satrapi’s narrative as THE feminist book about Iran. As much as she breaks stereotypes and shows that Iranian women are communists, feminists, intellectuals, fighters, in the end, all resistance is crushed and the loneliness of exile is the only solution. There is no return. I’ve accepted that narrative as the feminist woman of color gospel on Iran, and Barampour’s narrative makes me question the ease with which I come to believe there can be just one.
