My Persian Paradox: Memories of an Iranian Girl
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Narrated by:
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Julie John
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By:
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Shabnam Curtis
About this listen
On a cold night in 1978, seven-year-old Shabnam Shahmohammad clung to her mother in a Tehran apartment while the sounds of gunshots rang out in the street: The Iranian Revolution was at hand. She and her family survived that night, but as the Islamic fundamentalists took the power over, she grew up watching her father take his beloved books away to burn, his friends be arrested and disappear, and women like her mother grow ever more marginalized. Confused by her father’s communist ideology, her mother’s conservative religious beliefs, and the regime’s oppressive rules, she developed a deep longing to live a different life.
Finding herself being married at 19, she naively dreamed to team up and discover an adventurous life. When she gave birth to a daughter whose future, she realized, mattered more to her than her own, she had to find a way to unlock her little girl’s possibilities. She longed to emigrate, but with Western countries’ embassies mostly absent from Tehran, options for escaping Iran were limited.
My Persian Paradox: Memories Living Under Tyranny and Dreaming of Liberty is a tale of resilience facing oppression and dictatorship along with fighting with narrow traditional and restrictive cultural rules. This memoir is a journey of self-discovery, mother-daughter relationship obstacles, forbidden love, and the universal desire for freedom.
©2019 Shabnam Curtis (P)2020 Shabnam CurtisListeners also enjoyed...
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Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.
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Deeply meaningful important read
- By A.M.Rousseau on 12-21-21
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My Time Among the Whites
- Notes from an Unfinished Education
- By: Jennine Capo Crucet
- Narrated by: Jennine Capo Crucet
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Raised in Miami and the daughter of Cuban refugees, Crucet examines the political and personal contours of American identity and the physical places where those contours find themselves smashed: be it a rodeo town in Nebraska, a university campus in upstate New York, or Disney World in Florida. Crucet illuminates how she came to see her exclusion from aspects of the theoretical American Dream, despite her family's attempts to fit in with white American culture - beginning with their ill-fated plan to name her after the winner of the Miss America pageant.
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Empowering
- By elvia on 10-23-19
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The Inheritance
- A Novel
- By: JoAnn Ross
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard - and for a family they didn’t ask for.
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Great story a few little quirks
- By Dawn Starostka on 09-15-21
By: JoAnn Ross
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The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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The Shop on Blossom Street
- By: Debbie Macomber
- Narrated by: Linda Emond
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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There's a little shop on Blossom Street in Seattle called A Good Yarn. You go there to buy knitting supplies and patterns, and now it's offering a knitting class. The first lesson: how to knit a baby blanket.
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Shop on Blossom Street
- By Christine on 07-30-05
By: Debbie Macomber
What listeners say about My Persian Paradox: Memories of an Iranian Girl
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Brenda
- 02-12-24
Tell the rest of the story!
I wanted to know what happened to her and her daughter and when her daughter got to come to the USA. The book would’ve been better if she had gone into what it was like for them to come to the United States. 
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- Jackie Clark
- 01-29-21
Spectacular listen!!
I have enjoyed listening to a lot of books but this one deserves a great review and recommendation.. it just came out this week January 25, 2021 and it has me glued to the story and reader! What an amazing story of this beautiful woman.
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- Anonymous User
- 06-19-21
Poor a cup of tea and tell me your story
Reading this book (listening on Audible in my case) is like sitting down with a friend, taking a cup of tea and listening to her life story. I loved listening to the honest and simple way she gives you very precise historical facts seen by a woman in Iran. A must read, for men and women who should remember that freedom must never be considered as granted.
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- Sally S.
- 07-12-22
Cliffhanger. Awful.
The story has a vague conclusion if any at all. Absolute WASTE OF TIME. Central character a narcissist and example of just how to pawn your child off to grandparents. Awful. Just awful.
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