Quote 1

But really, my parents abandoned everything they knew and loved because they didn’t want their daughters to grow up with a strict religious code. Why inflict the same rules on us in America?

This quotation comes in Chapter Four, “The Myth of The Iranian Parent”, as Saedi describes the ways her parents differ from stereotypes of conservative Persian parents. She explains how their reasoning for being relatively lenient with Sara and her siblings reflects their Iranian identity, rather than standing in conflict with it. While the stereotype of Persian parents includes being very strict, in some ways Sara’s parents are less strict than her American friends’ parents. Saedi frames their permissiveness as a result of their decision to flee Iran following the establishment of Islamic law in the country. Sara’s parents grew up in the cosmopolitan culture of pre-revolution Tehran, when Sara’s mother wore miniskirts and Sara’s father took his girlfriends out on public dates, activities that became illegal after the Islamic Revolution. Although Iranian culture is in general more conservative than American culture, Sara’s parents’ rules for their daughters are not a rejection of their Iranian identity in favor of an American one but rather a choice to honor the freedom of their own youth in pre-Revolution Iran.

Quote 2

There’s enough about me that doesn’t look Iranian. Almost every Persian person I meet is surprised when I whip out my broken Farsi. Even my name gets bastardized all the time (the ar in Sara rhymes with “car,” not “care”). But my nose is undeniably Persian, and changing it would feel like rejecting the most significant part of myself.

These lines conclude Chapter Eight, “Rhinoplasty Acne-pocalypse,” in which Saedi grapples with how her appearance informs her Persian identity. Throughout the book, Saedi struggles to balance and embrace her hybrid identity as both Persian and American. In this section, her prominent nose is the physical representation of that struggle. Sara’s nose is large, a trait she identifies as typically Persian. However, nose jobs are also common among Persian women, complicating how she perceives her nose in relation to her ethnicity. Both her sister and her mother have had their noses surgically altered, making Saedi question whether remaining true to her Persian heritage requires that she celebrate her nose or change it. This quote reveals her ultimate decision: though she dislikes her nose, she feels it is essential to her Iranian identity. She argues that even though nose jobs are common Iranian status symbols, altering her nose would leave her with too few outward signs of her ethnicity. Keeping her nose is a deliberate choice to maintain her hybrid identity.

Quote 3

In that moment, being surrounded by a diverse group of ethnicities—all of us about to become citizens together—I realized that this is what I loved about America. This was why I was proud to be here. I was about to become part of a country that was much more rich and interesting because it had no walls built around its perimeter.

This quotation comes from Chapter Fifteen, “I Am a Spork,” when Sara becomes a US citizen, a defining moment in her struggle to build an identity that is both American and Iranian. Although getting a green card and ultimately her citizenship has been her goal for years, before taking her oath she fears that finally becoming a US citizen and renouncing her Iranian citizenship will mean losing her Persian identity. Other details in the scene reflect her apprehension, such as her description of the vendors outside the ceremony welcoming new citizens with capitalism and obesity. However, the ceremony itself provides the catalyst for Sara to feel a sense of the hybrid identity she has been creating throughout the book. When the home countries of the new citizens are read aloud, she feels a simultaneous pride in her Iranian background and in her identity as a new citizen of a country built on diversity. In this quotation, she cites diversity as an essential quality of the United States and a source of its strength, just as her own identity and strength flow from her combined Persian and American background.

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