Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity

by Porochista Khakpour

Overview

From the much-acclaimed novelist and essayist, a beautifully rendered, poignant collection of personal essays, chronicling immigrant and Iranian-American life in our contemporary moment.

Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating culture. Growing up as an immigrant in America means that one has to make one's way through a confusing tangle of conflicting cultures and expectations. And Porochista is pulled between the glitzy culture of Tehrangeles, an enclave of wealthy Iranians and Persians in LA, her own family's modest life and culture, and becoming an assimilated American.

Porochista rebels—she bleaches her hair and flees to the East Coast, where she finds her community: other people writing and thinking at the fringes. But, 9/11 happens and with horror, Porochista watches from her apartment window as the towers fall. Extremism and fear of the Middle East rises in the aftermath and then again with the election of Donald Trump. Porochista is forced to finally grapple with what it means to be Middle-Eastern and Iranian, an immigrant, and a refugee in our country today.

Brown Album is a stirring collection of essays, at times humorous and at times profound, drawn from more than a decade of Porochista's work and with new material included. Altogether, it reveals the tolls that immigrant life in this country can take on a person and the joys that life can give.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525564713
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	708,387
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Porochista Khakpour's debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, one of the Chicago Tribune's Fall's Best, and the 2007 California Book Award winner in the First Fiction category. Her second novel The Last Illusion was a 2014 "Best Book of the Year" according to NPR, Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, PopMatters, Electric Literature, and many more. Among her many fellowships is a National Endowment for the Arts award. Her nonfiction has appeared in many sections of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Elle, Slate, Salon, and Bookforum, among many others. She has been guest faculty at VCFA and Stonecoast's MFA programs, as well as Contributing Editor at Evergreen Review. Born in Tehran and raised in the Los Angeles area, Khakpour currently lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/30/2020

In this wonderful essay collection, novelist Khakpour (The Last Illusion) passionately and wittily explores the writing life and the Iranian-American experience. Not surprisingly, political concerns abound; Khakpour recalls, early in the Trump presidency, hearing of deportations in her majority-Muslim apartment building and encountering rumors that naturalized citizens such as herself—her family left Iran soon after the revolution—would be targeted. She threads memoir throughout, touching on her family life and on her years as “the only Iranian not only in my grade but in the whole elementary school, middle school, and high school.” In recounting the writing of her first novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, Khakpour offers a revealing set of reflections on the travails and joys of being a writer, as she finishes the manuscript and submits it to the publisher, hits assorted prepublication snags, and embarks on the reading and book festival circuit. She also shares the pitfalls of being known as an Iranian-American writer, or, due to her novel’s themes, a “9/11 author.” Lovers of the essay and those interested in immigrant literature will be particularly delighted, but any reader can enjoy Khakpour’s passionate and enlightening work. (May)

Publishers Weekly

In this stirring collection of essays, Khakpour explores her life as a writer and her American experience as an Iranian immigrant, touching on the personal and the political with equal grace.”
—USA Today
 
“A moving collection of personal essays centering the Iranian American and immigrant experience today.”
—Ms. Magazine, May 2020 Reads for the Rest of Us 
 
“Spanning more than a decade, the Iranian-American novelist and memoirist reflects on assimilation and the burdens of being Middle Eastern in today’s America.”
—The New York Times Book Review
 
"Brown Album invites readers to participate in a literary funhouse cobbled from essays, yearning, unabashed weirdness, violence of all sizes, and historical memory. Its pages mirror the everyday tragicomedy lived by diaspora who are too femme, too queer, too smart, too brown, too difficult, and ultimately, too real to belong to the United States."
—Myriam Gurba, Bomb 

“A collection that is by turns raw and wry, witty, and heartbreaking. Above all, it is a fearless reflection of an immigrant searching for home and for herself.”
—Ploughshares 
 
“[Khakpour’s] work is much more expansive than the white literary imagination would have us believe, and this sharp collection of 23 essays is evidence of that.”
—Bitch Magazine, 13 Books Feminists Should Read in May
 
“Marked by her strong voice, relentless pursuit of honesty, and damnation of conventional narratives.”
—The Adroit Journal
 
“The marvelous essays in Khakpour’s collection blend together to form a memoir.... [Khakpour] writes with wit and charm.”
—The National Book Review

“This collection of essays by novelist Porochista Khakpour thoughtfully illustrates what it’s like to be caught between cultures. Brown Album, which compiles more than 10 years of Khakpour’s work, analyzes her identities as both an Iranian-American and as a writer. The pieces range in subject, from the process of writing a novel to the aftermath of President Trump’s election, but all provide fresh insight into one woman’s experience as an immigrant in the U.S.”
—Time, Books You Should Read in May
 
“Provocative pieces that detonate many notions of identity.”
—Kirkus, Best Books for May

"With a focus on race and ethnicity, Khakpour chronicles her gradual coming to terms with her Iranian familial history and delves into the anxiety of being brown skinned in America. Alternately conflicted and confident, excited and anxious, indulgent and exasperated, Khakpour engages with her complex Iranian American heritage with vibrancy and candor."
—Booklist, *starred*

"[Khakpour] documents her survival of white America as an Iranian American; yet, Khakpour seems to ask on every page: Is this all survival is?.... A triumphant entry in the personal essay canon."
—Library Journal, *starred*

"In this wonderful essay collection, novelist Khakpour (The Last Illusion) passionately adn wittily explores the writing life and the Iranian-American experience.... Passionate and enlightening."
—Publishers Weekly, *starred*

Incisive.... About which stories we chose to tell about ourselves, and about being brown in a country more blindingly white under Donald Trump.... Provocative pieces that detonate many notions of identity.”
—Kirkus Reviews, *starred*

“Confusing, exhilarating, terrifying, sad, scary, magical.... This book was balm to my Turkish-American soul, and to my cosmopolitan-writer-beyond-nationalism soul. Every page is overflowing with verve and insight and hilarity and brilliance and sadness and historical and cultural specificity. Porochista Khakpour is a treasure.”
—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

  "Porochista Khakpour writes with incandescent gusto! This is an 'album' that masterfully makes use of a full array of styles—political analysis, pop and fashion appreciation, and personal essay. Brown Album is a vital and beautiful book for these days of ugly xenophobia and paranoia."
—Mona Eltahawy, author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls

 “The legendary Porochista Khakpour has created a rigorous, poetic and biting exploration of what it means to be brown, Iranian, female and American in a United States that has spent the last few decades putting these identities under siege."
—Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood, Brothers of the Gun with Marwan Hisham
 
“Splendidly elegant.... A fluid collection of essays that reads like a memoir, it targets—with devastating precision—the internal conflicts, turmoil and sometime agony of being the ‘other’ in an America that has always been, and is perhaps more so today.”
—Hooman Majd, author of New York Times bestseller The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
 
“Brilliant.... What I love most about Porochista Khakpour's writing is her voice: always direct, always passionate, always clear and brave, full of compassion and vulnerability, always open to the world. Brown Album is both a manifesto of survival and a lyric journey.”
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

From the Publisher

★ 05/01/2020

In this new collection of essays, Khakpour (Sick: A Memoir) writes of rises and falls in patterns through career successes and emotional defeats. The pieces wrestle with ideas and inner conflicts, but they also tell candid stories about immigration, illness, whiteness, and the writer's life. In reflecting on her long path to becoming a published author, Khakpour recalls, "It took me a decade to realize that the only truths worth anything in the end were those very details that, in resisting narrative, told the real story." In pieces that standout with numbered paragraphs, Khakpour writes to another young writer, or to her abstracted self. She also divulges resentments and insecurities, and even includes a forbidden essay, one that has never before been published. Throughout, she documents her survival of white America as a Iranian American; yet, Khakpour seems to ask on every page: Is this all survival is? VERDICT Emotions of sorrow, anger, and anxiety loom large in Khakpour's inner and outer experiences in America, but the humor in her reflections keep this book immune from wallowing. A triumphant entry in the personal essay canon.—Sierra Dickey, Ctr. for New Americans, Northampton, MA

Library Journal

★ 2020-03-15
A collection of incisive essays about hyphenated identity.

These essays, writes Khakpour, “are a testament to the greatest and worst experience of my life: being a spokesperson for my people, a role I never dreamed of and never asked for. This is my pigeonhole, and this is my legacy….These pieces are my bridge, and they are my cave.” The author, who has also published two novels and a memoir about her battle with Lyme disease and chronic misdiagnosis, is clearly—and understandably—uncomfortable with the mantle of “Miss Literary Iranian America,” as she sardonically refers to it. In the penultimate essay, “How To Write Iranian America, or The Last Essay,” she traces the arc of her career, from fledgling writer who initially refused to focus on identity to New York Times contributor whose prolific output depends on her ability to “write an essay on absolutely anything for these people, provided that it’s about Iranian America—which it will be.” Consequently, in the Times and elsewhere, Khakpour has churned her way through “Islamic Revolution Barbie,” reality TV with a Persian twist, the Islamic New Year, and other topics to appease the American appetite for the Iranian “other.” In the final, titular piece, which she notes was never intended for publication, the author writes about how, “like a worm,” the essay “grew inside me until it could not be contained.” It’s identity confusion, about which stories we chose to tell about ourselves, and about being brown in a country more blindingly white under Donald Trump. “This is an essay that many of my own people would tell me to go kill myself for,” writes the author, “because I deny the whiteness they claim….I want to remind those who can claim whiteness that they are a very small group.”

Provocative pieces that detonate many notions of identity.

Kirkus Reviews

Porochista Khakpour narrates her own reflections on Iranian-American identity. She interweaves stories of her personal experiences, commentary on important historical moments, and long discussions of terms such as “Persian” and “Oriental.” Khakpour is, by turns, steady, sardonic, and straightforward in her examination of her hyphenated background. As she looks back on the Iranian Revolution, listeners will appreciate her ability to flip between the sarcasm of the confused teenager she once was and the somber seriousness of the adult she is now. For many, this might be a first opportunity to understand the multitude of changes that have faced Iran, Iranians, and the diaspora since the late 1960s. Khakpour helps make some sense of it all in a consistent and measured delivery. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2020 - AudioFile

Porochista Khakpour narrates her own reflections on Iranian-American identity. She interweaves stories of her personal experiences, commentary on important historical moments, and long discussions of terms such as “Persian” and “Oriental.” Khakpour is, by turns, steady, sardonic, and straightforward in her examination of her hyphenated background. As she looks back on the Iranian Revolution, listeners will appreciate her ability to flip between the sarcasm of the confused teenager she once was and the somber seriousness of the adult she is now. For many, this might be a first opportunity to understand the multitude of changes that have faced Iran, Iranians, and the diaspora since the late 1960s. Khakpour helps make some sense of it all in a consistent and measured delivery. M.R. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2020 - AudioFile