Americanized Chapter Four, FAQ #2, & Chapter Five Summary & Analysis

Chapter Four, FAQ #2, & Chapter Five

Summary: Chapter Four: The Myth of the Iranian Parent

Sara rates her parents, Ali and Shohreh Saedi, as 25 percent traditional and 75 percent “super cool.” They are open-minded liberals who trust their children. Sara compares her mom and dad to popular stereotypes. Stereotype 1 is that Persian parents only let their children be professionals. However, Sara’s parents encourage her to follow her dreams. Sara decides to become an actress, largely because of her number-one girl crush, Winona Ryder. Sara’s parents agree to pay for acting classes, and her dad gives up his day off to drive her there and back. In this way, Sara’s parents help her discover she’s a really lousy actor.

Stereotype 2 is that Iranian parents are strict. But Sara’s parents give their children freedom, recalling that young people in Iran go to jail for ordinary teenage activities. Stereotype 3 is that Iranian parents are zealots. Sara’s parents are secular atheists. They cannot understand why their daughters’ Christian friends try to convert them. The traditional part of the Saedis includes their emphasis on wearing modest but fashionable clothing and having good manners. On September 15, 1996, Sara records a conversation with her father about boys and sex and says she feels thankful for her family.

Summary: Frequently Asked Question #2: What do Iranians have against Sally Field?

Sara explains that Iranians resent Sally Field for her role in Not Without My Daughter, a film that Sara calls overtly racist. The film, which depicts an American woman trapped in Iran by a psychotic husband, creates hateful prejudice against Iranian Americans. Sara reports that Sally Field eventually earned back her parents’ approval with the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters.

Summary: Chapter Five: Love and Other Drugs

Sara’s diary entry for August 6, 1996, tells of her reading a story about a teenager who gets hooked on drugs and dies of an overdose. Sara thinks all her friends should read it. Sara’s father often tells her that if she wants to try drugs she should do so at home, where he can look after her. Sara knows her dad’s approach is super cool, but she’s more interested in getting good grades and making her parents proud. She doesn’t mix with the stoners who hang out in Rainbow Park, although a stoner boy named Jonah makes her want to.

One day, Samira and their cousin Leyla get Sara high. After smoking pot, Sara feels so strange she has to lie down. So, Sara gives pot a pass—until she meets Evan Parker and falls hopelessly in love. She agrees to get high with Evan, but there’s no romance at Evan’s house when they get together. Sara and Evan smoke and watch a movie, and then Evan falls asleep. Yet Sara’s romantic obsession with Evan continues. In 1998, her diary records that Evan has quit pot and given Sara his pipe. Kia, Sara’s younger brother, finds the pipe, after which their parents confiscate it.

Analysis: Chapter Four, FAQ #2, & Chapter Five

The memoir genre allows Saedi to continue to humorously debunk stereotypes about Iranians through the lens of her lived experiences, particularly her relationship with her parents and other relatives. Saedi presents several commonly held stereotypes about strict, religious Middle Eastern parents as a contrast to her secular, open-minded Iranian parents. Saedi juxtaposes her parents’ bafflement with some aspects of American culture (such as Sara’s obsession with thrift stores and her American friends’ tendency to argue with their parents) with their trust-oriented parenting methods. By including examples of her parents’ encouragement and openness about topics such as religion, sex, and drugs, Saedi highlights rampant misconceptions about Iranian immigrants. These misconceptions are further highlighted by Saedi’s discussion of the film Not Without My Daughter and its negative impact on Iranian communities around the world. Saedi contrasts the lived experiences of her relatives and other members of the Iranian community with the film’s harmful depictions of Iranian Muslims, particularly men, in order to deconstruct stereotypes and expose how these inaccuracies affect Iranian-Americans going about their everyday lives.

Sara’s relationship to marijuana in her teens reflects her relationship to her family, her social standing at school, and her immigration status. Sara’s father’s unusual attitude about drugs stands in marked contrast to American norms at a time when marijuana was illegal, and it underscores his attempt to allow his daughters freedom while protecting them from harm. Although Sara does not smoke pot with her father, her first experience does occur with her sister and cousin, showing their close family bonds. Her social awkwardness about pot among her school peers emphasizes her adolescent social development. However, her immigration status makes her relationship to illegal drugs different from that of her peers; the stakes are much higher for Sara, as getting caught could result in her family’s deportation. Her relationship to marijuana reflects her split identity, which in some ways resembles that of her American peers and in other ways is distinctly marked by her immigration status.

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