nanthesloth's review
4.0
I really, really enjoyed this one! Iranian culture has always fascinated me, and this book offered a really interesting insight into the country that I hadn't gotten before. Nahid's story was both a tragic and a beautiful one, and seeing the contrast between her happy life in America and Pari's miserable life in Iran was heartbreaking. There's a difference between reading about injustice in the news and actually reading a real person's account of that injustice, and Persian Girls did a fantastic job of making that difference count.
sandyd's review
4.0
A true story that started out slowly, in a gentle kind of way, and then got more complicated and more involved with politics (of Shah era then revolutionary era Iran) and more tragic. Nahid's mother gave her to a childless sister when she was a baby, and then when she was 9 her father decided they should have her back.
She had trouble fitting in with the family after this, but eventually became close to one of her older sisters - only to leave her behind when she convinced her father to let her study in the US like her older brothers did. Pari (the sister) was married to an older man (lots about this practice in this account - it is common at age 9, though marriages usually aren't consummated until around age 14). The second half of the book goes back and forth between Pari and Nahid and their very different lives, and how women are treated in Iran.
She had trouble fitting in with the family after this, but eventually became close to one of her older sisters - only to leave her behind when she convinced her father to let her study in the US like her older brothers did. Pari (the sister) was married to an older man (lots about this practice in this account - it is common at age 9, though marriages usually aren't consummated until around age 14). The second half of the book goes back and forth between Pari and Nahid and their very different lives, and how women are treated in Iran.
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