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"content": "\u003cp>Mass \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/10/29/1131830324/india-hijab-iran-protests\">demonstrations\u003c/a> happening in Iran were sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa “Jina” Amini, in a Tehran hospital on Sept. 16, two days after her arrest by Islamic Republic authorities for failing to properly cover her hair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hijab is mandatory in Iran and is enforced by “vice-and-virtue” squads. Iranian officials claim she suffered a heart attack, but witnesses at the police station and her relatives say Amini was severely beaten while she was in custody.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13920137']Videos and posts on social media and independent news reports show the resulting Iranian protests — the largest since 2009 — are being violently and often fatally suppressed by Iranian security forces. Many women and girls at these demonstrations have removed their own headscarves in public and cut or shaved their hair. The images and reports have spurred solidarity protests around the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the uprising in Iran is about much more than mandatory hijab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have put together a reading list that can offer insight into Iranian women and what is happening in their country. This list of 10 books was complied with the help of fellow Iranian friends and family, including journalist and author Nazila Fathi; refugee and migration law expert Parastou Hassouri, comedian Maz Jobrani, and Maryam Haghbin, a Montessori field consultant (and also my cousin). Many are memoirs by women who were forced to flee Iran:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Persepolis (I and II)\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>by Marjane Satrapi, a French-Iranian illustrator and children’s author. The engaging memoir told in comics as well as its film adaptation are about her childhood in Iran and adolescence in Europe — and describe how the four-decade old revolution that toppled the Shah ended up oppressing the public it purported to liberate, especially women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran\u003c/em>\u003c/strong> by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and judge who because of her sex was forced from office in the Islamic Republic — yet remained defiant. This is her second memoir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Iran Awakening: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim her Life and Country\u003c/em>\u003c/strong> by Shirin Ebadi (with journalist Azadeh Moaveni). Her first memoir, chronicling her earlier years and how the Iranian revolution that so many embraced turned into a theocracy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran,\u003c/em> \u003c/strong>by Nazila Fathi, a former \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> reporter who seamlessly weaves her compelling story as a journalist ultimately forced to flee her native Iran with the post-revolution history of her country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran\u003c/em>\u003c/strong> by Haleh Esfandiari, an Iranian-American scholar and former director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The memoir delves into her arrest on false charges and her time at the notorious Evin Prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution\u003c/em> \u003c/strong>by Haleh Esfandiari, who presents interviews with Iranian professional and working women and their dramatic accounts about what has happened to them following the 1979 revolution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Women and Revolution in Iran\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>by Guity Nashat, a historian and researcher who edited this collection of essays featuring various perspectives on the participation of women in the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and its complexities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran\u003c/em>\u003c/strong> by Minoo Moallem, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She analyzes modern Iran and, while critical of the treatment of women, sets aside stereotypes of Islam and Muslims as fanatical and backward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran\u003c/em>\u003c/strong> by Azadeh Moaveni, former journalist who directs the Gender and Conflict Program at the International Crisis Group. This is her second memoir, an engaging account of her personal and professional life in Tehran during the rise of populist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Reading Lolita in Tehran \u003c/em>\u003c/strong>by Azar Nafisi, an English literature professor. 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"content": "\u003cp>For dissident writers fleeing persecution overseas, the United States has long been a safe haven, a place where freedom of expression is tolerated and, even, valued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That suddenly changed earlier this month, with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1117164727/salman-rushdie-condition-stabbing-new-york\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">brutal attack\u003c/a> on author Salman Rushdie at a speaking event in western New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh my God! When I heard that, I was screaming,” said Masih Alinejad, a writer and activist who has criticized the Iranian government. “I was just running corner to corner in my safe house and shouting and just calling my husband, ‘I cannot believe this is happening in America, in New York.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13917567']While literary writers in the U.S. increasingly face online threats, they rarely metastasize into actual physical attacks, said Karin Deutsche Karlekar, who directs the Writers at Risk program at PEN America. Authors routinely make public appearances with little or no security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such was the case with Rushdie. The India-born writer became the target of a Fatwa by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1980s, over his depiction of the Prophet Muhammed in his book \u003cem>The Satanic Verses\u003c/em>, and was forced into hiding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He ultimately emerged and moved to New York. Over time, he began making personal appearances and, in the process, turned into an eloquent proponent of the right to free speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of us who joined this field grew up being sort of galvanized by his case and what had happened to him,” Karlekar said. “And in the decades since, he has really been this sort of stalwart defender of free expression for other writers at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By this year, the dangers he faced appeared to have faded. Then, on Aug. 12, as Rushdie was about to begin a lecture at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/08/14/1117465755/the-chautauqua-institutions-role-after-the-salman-rushdie-attack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chautauqua Institution\u003c/a>, a man rushed the stage and stabbed him repeatedly. The 75-year-old writer was severely injured but is expected to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='forum_201509101000']Police arrested 24-year-old Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, who is said to have pro-Iran sympathies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The viciousness of the attack is forcing speaking venues that regularly host writers to rethink their security procedures, according to an official of one organization that often sponsors lectures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “unless you want to make every event like going to the airport,” it’s difficult if not impossible to completely eliminate risk, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, dissident writers who had come to feel safe in the United States are questioning that assumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Osama Alomar, a Syrian poet who has criticized his government and was forced to flee into exile, lives in a house sponsored by a U.S. human-rights group, where he has felt safe. After the Rushdie attack, he’s not as sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to say it when I was in Syria that I’m worried about freedom of speech in Syria. Now I’m worried about that even here in America,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For journalist and activist Alinejad, an outspoken critic of Sharia law, the attack follows several incidents in which her safety was threatened. Last year, the FBI said it had foiled a plot by Iranian intelligence officers to kidnap Alinejad at her Brooklyn home. On July 28, a man was arrested carrying an AK-47 assault rifle outside her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came the attack on Rushdie, whom she has come to admire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13917750']“To be honest, Salman Rushdie changed my life,” she said. As a teenager in Iran, she was furious at the writer, because she was “brainwashed” by government propaganda, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But when I started doing my own research about him, I was like, ‘This is unbelievable. This is what I believe now, that I have to speak out,'” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the threats against her have made her feel “miserable,” she is resolved to keep writing and speaking out against tyranny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her dream now is to one day appear at the Chautauqua Institution, on the same stage where Rushdie was so viciously attacked this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Exiled+writers+reflect+on+freedom+of+speech+in+America+in+light+of+Rushdie+attack&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For dissident writers fleeing persecution overseas, the United States has long been a safe haven, a place where freedom of expression is tolerated and, even, valued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That suddenly changed earlier this month, with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1117164727/salman-rushdie-condition-stabbing-new-york\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">brutal attack\u003c/a> on author Salman Rushdie at a speaking event in western New York.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh my God! When I heard that, I was screaming,” said Masih Alinejad, a writer and activist who has criticized the Iranian government. “I was just running corner to corner in my safe house and shouting and just calling my husband, ‘I cannot believe this is happening in America, in New York.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>While literary writers in the U.S. increasingly face online threats, they rarely metastasize into actual physical attacks, said Karin Deutsche Karlekar, who directs the Writers at Risk program at PEN America. Authors routinely make public appearances with little or no security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such was the case with Rushdie. The India-born writer became the target of a Fatwa by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1980s, over his depiction of the Prophet Muhammed in his book \u003cem>The Satanic Verses\u003c/em>, and was forced into hiding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He ultimately emerged and moved to New York. Over time, he began making personal appearances and, in the process, turned into an eloquent proponent of the right to free speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of us who joined this field grew up being sort of galvanized by his case and what had happened to him,” Karlekar said. “And in the decades since, he has really been this sort of stalwart defender of free expression for other writers at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By this year, the dangers he faced appeared to have faded. Then, on Aug. 12, as Rushdie was about to begin a lecture at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/08/14/1117465755/the-chautauqua-institutions-role-after-the-salman-rushdie-attack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chautauqua Institution\u003c/a>, a man rushed the stage and stabbed him repeatedly. The 75-year-old writer was severely injured but is expected to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Police arrested 24-year-old Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, who is said to have pro-Iran sympathies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The viciousness of the attack is forcing speaking venues that regularly host writers to rethink their security procedures, according to an official of one organization that often sponsors lectures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “unless you want to make every event like going to the airport,” it’s difficult if not impossible to completely eliminate risk, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, dissident writers who had come to feel safe in the United States are questioning that assumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Osama Alomar, a Syrian poet who has criticized his government and was forced to flee into exile, lives in a house sponsored by a U.S. human-rights group, where he has felt safe. After the Rushdie attack, he’s not as sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to say it when I was in Syria that I’m worried about freedom of speech in Syria. Now I’m worried about that even here in America,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For journalist and activist Alinejad, an outspoken critic of Sharia law, the attack follows several incidents in which her safety was threatened. Last year, the FBI said it had foiled a plot by Iranian intelligence officers to kidnap Alinejad at her Brooklyn home. On July 28, a man was arrested carrying an AK-47 assault rifle outside her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came the attack on Rushdie, whom she has come to admire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“To be honest, Salman Rushdie changed my life,” she said. As a teenager in Iran, she was furious at the writer, because she was “brainwashed” by government propaganda, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But when I started doing my own research about him, I was like, ‘This is unbelievable. This is what I believe now, that I have to speak out,'” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the threats against her have made her feel “miserable,” she is resolved to keep writing and speaking out against tyranny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her dream now is to one day appear at the Chautauqua Institution, on the same stage where Rushdie was so viciously attacked this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Exiled+writers+reflect+on+freedom+of+speech+in+America+in+light+of+Rushdie+attack&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Porochista Khakpour was not trying to be a spokesperson for the Iranian American diaspora. The author tells me over the phone that she’s a fiction writer — a novelist with a love for “lush, maximalist or baroque” sentences that go against the style guides of many mainstream publications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that is hard for people to hear, that you have a book of personal essays out [but] that you don’t necessarily feel passionate about the form,” she says the week before her fourth book, \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em>, is set to be released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those who have followed Khakpour’s many pieces on being Iranian in post-9/11 America over the past decade, this fact may come as a shock. From “\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/opinion/09khakpour-barbie.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Islamic Revolution Barbie\u003c/a>,” published in 2009 at the New York Times, to “\u003ca href=\"https://catapult.co/stories/how-to-write-iranian-america\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay\u003c/a>” in 2017 from Catapult, it seems impossible to separate the 42-year-old writer from texts about \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/arts/television/the-persian-ness-of-shahs-of-sunset-on-bravo.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Shahs of Sunset\u003c/a>\u003c/em> — a Ryan Seacrest-produced reality TV show that follows a group of young, wealthy Iranian Americans in Beverly Hills — or the alienation that comes from being a young brown immigrant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13880921\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-1020x1482.jpg\" alt=\"Porochista Khakpour.\" width=\"640\" height=\"930\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13880921\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-1020x1482.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-160x232.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-800x1162.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-768x1116.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Porochista Khakpour. \u003ccite>(Maria Nova)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525564713\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Brown Album\u003c/a>\u003c/em> doesn’t aim to dispel confusion, either. Released May 19, the book compiles Khakpour’s popular essays into one long-form contemplation on living in America as an Iranian. It also begins with a short passage in which the writer states: “[The essays in \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em>] 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.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what’s the reason for repeatedly finding herself in the middle of such discomfort?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think [the essays] had some sort of benefit for the larger audience — Iranian Americans in one sense, but also just largely immigrants,” Khakpour tells me over the phone. “And that audience really needed visibility. These essays were not necessarily revelations in their topics, but they were published in major mainstream venues. And so I think, for my audience, [it] was that visibility that really mattered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outside of Khakpour’s writings, one of the biggest forms of representation of Iranian American culture in American mainstream media is Bravo’s \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em>, where stereotypes of the “Persian prince or princess” with their Mercedes-Benz cars and designer clothing flourish. But, as the writer notes throughout the book, such material excess is less about Iranians than it is about how immigrants assimilate to meet America’s values in money, materials and all things pro-capitalism. Khakpour instead hones in on what it means to be Iranian in America through the show and its stars’ use of “Persian” as an identifier instead of Iranian. (The country changed from Persia to Iran in the 1930s.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the book’s first essay “A New Persian Empire,” she recalls an interview with \u003cem>Shahs\u003c/em> cast member Reza Farahan, who Khakpour asked about the decision. The reality star replied: “Food is Persian, rugs are Persian, cats are Persian, people are Persian. It’s not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed. Mind you, I am very much more Cyrus and Darius than I am Islamic Republic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His reference to long-dismantled dynasties from the Persian Empire is a weighted one, especially considering Farahan was born just a handful of years before Khakpour in Tehran, and just six years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Monarchies of a bygone era — of a time when the dying religion of Zoroastrianism reigned — color Farahan’s explanation, showcasing his perceived divide between Iran’s storied history and the country as it presently stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the TV star and writer were raised in Los Angeles in the years after Ayatollah Khomeini founded the Islamic Republic of Iran — an important similarity to note considering the different vision of Iranian America Khakpour writes in \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> than is seen in \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em>. But rather than hiding behind Farahan and other wealthy “royalists” in “Tehrangeles,” Khakpour’s writings about Iranian America also indict her own state of mind as a budding teen on the outskirts of the more-wealthy Iranian American community. In the same essay where she quotes Farahan, she mentions hiding “inside the American costumes [she] wore — punk, cowgirl, starlet — and took on Persian only when [she] had to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though not entirely incorrect (Persian is, after all, one of many ethnicities in Iran), the confusion around her identity from those unable to find Persia on a map led Khakpour to anxiety. In the essay, she continues as her fractured, former self to those who may have asked “what is Persian”: “\u003cem>It’s the label for Islamic Republic-disliking Iranians! It’s what Iranians who used to be fancy prefer!\u003c/em>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13880919\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 778px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"778\" height=\"1200\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13880919\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1.jpg 778w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1-160x247.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1-768x1185.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 778px) 100vw, 778px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Brown Album.’\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here at the heart of the “Persian vs. Iranian” issue — and arguably \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> on the whole — is a chasm within many Iranians abroad: There remains a longing for a pre-Islamic Republic Iran, one that risks glorification of the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/uncategorized/politics-and-the-press-in-iran-under-the-pahlavis/2536/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">modernization\u003c/a>” efforts under the Pahlavi dynasty, and in turn, hosts a lot of internalized xenophobia and racism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You kind of have to do your own work,” Khakpour said. “I really had to discover Iran again for myself in many ways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of that work for Khakpour was finding and understanding her place among the diaspora. She and her family lived outside of Beverly Hills in modest South Pasadena, more specifically in a condo she calls a “dingbat.” To explain the structure, she recalls a quote in the 1998 film \u003cem>Slums of Beverly Hills\u003c/em>, in which Natasha Lyonne’s character explains the term as “a two-story apartment [building] featuring cheap rents and fancy names. They promise the good life but never deliver.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sitting outside of the community of Iranian Americans in Tehrangeles, Khakpour was neither accepted as a part of the wealthy diaspora, nor in her predominantly white town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All my first memories are from Iran,” she said. “Much of my formative experiences as a child were around the trauma of being new to America. So it’s really hard for me to feel American. Feeling Iranian is much more … me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Struggling to find her footing among her people throughout the early essays in the book, Khakpour’s “The King of Tehrangeles” showcases the divide between her family and the Iranian American diaspora. In the piece, she writes of a job she once had along the glitzy street of Beverly Hills’s famed Rodeo Drive, in a boutique that sold handbags that “cost well over the highest annual income [she] had made at that point.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Down the way and across the street was House of Bijan, a flagship store from the Iranian American designer known for being the man behind the most expensive shop in the world. Recalling the fashion mogul, Khakpour writes: “Bijan beat Americans at their own game … He embodied American overindulgence to the maximum.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khakpour and her family members were “the anomaly of anomalies in L.A.: the poor Iranian[s].” Unpermitted into the appointment-only space, the writer recalls how her parents were both interested in Bijan as a cultural touchstone but horrified by his lavishness. Similarly, in another essay, she notes that while many Iranian Americans of Southern California boasted a level of inherent conservatism that comes with, as she tells me, being “an extreme capitalist,” her parents were wishy-washy in their relations to American politics. Her father, she writes, even bounced from “a love of Reagan to a love of Sanders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get, more than anything from Iranian American readers, when they’re like: ‘Thank you for speaking out about being a poor Iranian,’” she said. “There’s just no representation with that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Khakpour “doesn’t feel connected to a lot of [Iranian American] people,” especially those that fit more closely to the \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em> narrative. But her book points out at least one common idea among Iranians in America, a thread that can be found despite differences in class and politics, in lifestyles and area codes. Between “A New Persian Empire” and Khakpour’s self-described “manifesto” or the title essay that closes out the book, \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> denounces a long-time fable, believed by the Iranian diaspora and those outside the community, that Iranians are the original Aryans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My father talked about that ugly myth occasionally with something like half pride, when he felt Americans were being racist,” Khakpour recalls in her essay, even remembering a time when he told her at the dinner table: “We’re Caucasian, face it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she also remembers him telling her at a young age to choose Asian on census reports, or saying: “We are gandom-gan … which means wheat-colored, the equivalent of brown in Farsi.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what’s the truth?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tale of Iranians as the original Aryans has roots that extend far beyond the Iranian Revolution, even before Persia was renamed Iran in the 1930s. According to Reza Zia-Ebrahimi in a piece for \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/08/post-2.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Tehran Bureau via PBS’s \u003cem>Frontline\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the Islamophobia in Iran, rooted in a deep racism against Arabs, has followed Iranians for centuries. But it was around the 1860s when Iranian intellectuals began searching for a way to distance themselves from Islam, resulting in “self-Orientalization [which] involves an element of shame over traditional Iranian customs and features,” or a “dislocation, the attempt to dislodge Iran from its … Islamic reality and force it into a European one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Echoing the sentiment in a contemporary context, Khakpour said: “One of the issues I have with my parents is that even though they’re Muslim, they’re kind of ashamed of being Muslim, and they don’t really feel connected to Islam … I sort of challenge them on that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This internalized xenophobia and racism rises above the Iranian diaspora, pulling Iranian Americans together in spite of the community’s classes, ethnicities and religions. Are Iranians brown or white? Are we Iranian or are we Persian? Unanimity around these complex questions does not exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what of the diaspora’s spokespeople, like Khakpour, who take up a stance in an effort to bring these difficult conversations to light? To do so is to further alienate oneself from the community. She writes at the start of the final piece: “This is the essay arising from the tweets that resulted in death threats … This is the essay many of my own people would tell me to go kill myself for because I deny the whiteness they claim.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understandably, herein lies the anxiety and discomfort that may come from being seen as a spokesperson for an underrepresented community: When you write your own story, you inherently alienate someone else in their own ideas and emotions tied to the homeland and the host country. At the end of the day, one must remember that \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> is a book of personal essays, emphasis on the personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem we have with all these Iranian American memoirists — and I mean, they’re everywhere — but they’re all women of a certain privilege,” Khakpour said when asked about entering a canon of Iranian American memoirs. “I just got very sick of that one image, because I didn’t fit into it at all. And so, I don’t think there is total solidarity, but I don’t think there should be either. It’s fine to be diverse in that sense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, maybe what it comes down to is not to see Khakpour — or \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em>, or other Iranian American memoirists — as a spokesperson for the Iranian American diaspora, but rather, to see \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> as a pillar within the multitude of individual stories that showcase Iranian diasporic identities. Maybe it comes down to allowing more space in mainstream media for these stories to be told, in order to paint a broader picture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khakpour sums it up well: “What is authentic Iran? I mean, there is no such thing. If you feel like you’re caught between different cultures, I think that’s a very legitimate sentiment that you should feel free to express.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Brown Album’ is out May 19 and can be ordered \u003ca href=\"https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525564713\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">here\u003c/a>. More information about the author and the book \u003ca href=\"https://porochistakhakpour.com/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Porochista Khakpour was not trying to be a spokesperson for the Iranian American diaspora. The author tells me over the phone that she’s a fiction writer — a novelist with a love for “lush, maximalist or baroque” sentences that go against the style guides of many mainstream publications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that is hard for people to hear, that you have a book of personal essays out [but] that you don’t necessarily feel passionate about the form,” she says the week before her fourth book, \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em>, is set to be released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those who have followed Khakpour’s many pieces on being Iranian in post-9/11 America over the past decade, this fact may come as a shock. From “\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/opinion/09khakpour-barbie.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Islamic Revolution Barbie\u003c/a>,” published in 2009 at the New York Times, to “\u003ca href=\"https://catapult.co/stories/how-to-write-iranian-america\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">How to Write Iranian-America, or The Last Essay\u003c/a>” in 2017 from Catapult, it seems impossible to separate the 42-year-old writer from texts about \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/arts/television/the-persian-ness-of-shahs-of-sunset-on-bravo.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Shahs of Sunset\u003c/a>\u003c/em> — a Ryan Seacrest-produced reality TV show that follows a group of young, wealthy Iranian Americans in Beverly Hills — or the alienation that comes from being a young brown immigrant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13880921\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-1020x1482.jpg\" alt=\"Porochista Khakpour.\" width=\"640\" height=\"930\" class=\"size-large wp-image-13880921\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-1020x1482.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-160x232.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-800x1162.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1-768x1116.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/Porochista_Khakpour-2020-copy-1.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Porochista Khakpour. \u003ccite>(Maria Nova)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525564713\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Brown Album\u003c/a>\u003c/em> doesn’t aim to dispel confusion, either. Released May 19, the book compiles Khakpour’s popular essays into one long-form contemplation on living in America as an Iranian. It also begins with a short passage in which the writer states: “[The essays in \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em>] 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.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what’s the reason for repeatedly finding herself in the middle of such discomfort?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think [the essays] had some sort of benefit for the larger audience — Iranian Americans in one sense, but also just largely immigrants,” Khakpour tells me over the phone. “And that audience really needed visibility. These essays were not necessarily revelations in their topics, but they were published in major mainstream venues. And so I think, for my audience, [it] was that visibility that really mattered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outside of Khakpour’s writings, one of the biggest forms of representation of Iranian American culture in American mainstream media is Bravo’s \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em>, where stereotypes of the “Persian prince or princess” with their Mercedes-Benz cars and designer clothing flourish. But, as the writer notes throughout the book, such material excess is less about Iranians than it is about how immigrants assimilate to meet America’s values in money, materials and all things pro-capitalism. Khakpour instead hones in on what it means to be Iranian in America through the show and its stars’ use of “Persian” as an identifier instead of Iranian. (The country changed from Persia to Iran in the 1930s.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the book’s first essay “A New Persian Empire,” she recalls an interview with \u003cem>Shahs\u003c/em> cast member Reza Farahan, who Khakpour asked about the decision. The reality star replied: “Food is Persian, rugs are Persian, cats are Persian, people are Persian. It’s not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed. Mind you, I am very much more Cyrus and Darius than I am Islamic Republic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His reference to long-dismantled dynasties from the Persian Empire is a weighted one, especially considering Farahan was born just a handful of years before Khakpour in Tehran, and just six years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Monarchies of a bygone era — of a time when the dying religion of Zoroastrianism reigned — color Farahan’s explanation, showcasing his perceived divide between Iran’s storied history and the country as it presently stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both the TV star and writer were raised in Los Angeles in the years after Ayatollah Khomeini founded the Islamic Republic of Iran — an important similarity to note considering the different vision of Iranian America Khakpour writes in \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> than is seen in \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em>. But rather than hiding behind Farahan and other wealthy “royalists” in “Tehrangeles,” Khakpour’s writings about Iranian America also indict her own state of mind as a budding teen on the outskirts of the more-wealthy Iranian American community. In the same essay where she quotes Farahan, she mentions hiding “inside the American costumes [she] wore — punk, cowgirl, starlet — and took on Persian only when [she] had to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though not entirely incorrect (Persian is, after all, one of many ethnicities in Iran), the confusion around her identity from those unable to find Persia on a map led Khakpour to anxiety. In the essay, she continues as her fractured, former self to those who may have asked “what is Persian”: “\u003cem>It’s the label for Islamic Republic-disliking Iranians! It’s what Iranians who used to be fancy prefer!\u003c/em>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13880919\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 778px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"778\" height=\"1200\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13880919\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1.jpg 778w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1-160x247.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/brownalbum-1-768x1185.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 778px) 100vw, 778px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Brown Album.’\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here at the heart of the “Persian vs. Iranian” issue — and arguably \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> on the whole — is a chasm within many Iranians abroad: There remains a longing for a pre-Islamic Republic Iran, one that risks glorification of the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/uncategorized/politics-and-the-press-in-iran-under-the-pahlavis/2536/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">modernization\u003c/a>” efforts under the Pahlavi dynasty, and in turn, hosts a lot of internalized xenophobia and racism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You kind of have to do your own work,” Khakpour said. “I really had to discover Iran again for myself in many ways.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of that work for Khakpour was finding and understanding her place among the diaspora. She and her family lived outside of Beverly Hills in modest South Pasadena, more specifically in a condo she calls a “dingbat.” To explain the structure, she recalls a quote in the 1998 film \u003cem>Slums of Beverly Hills\u003c/em>, in which Natasha Lyonne’s character explains the term as “a two-story apartment [building] featuring cheap rents and fancy names. They promise the good life but never deliver.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sitting outside of the community of Iranian Americans in Tehrangeles, Khakpour was neither accepted as a part of the wealthy diaspora, nor in her predominantly white town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All my first memories are from Iran,” she said. “Much of my formative experiences as a child were around the trauma of being new to America. So it’s really hard for me to feel American. Feeling Iranian is much more … me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Struggling to find her footing among her people throughout the early essays in the book, Khakpour’s “The King of Tehrangeles” showcases the divide between her family and the Iranian American diaspora. In the piece, she writes of a job she once had along the glitzy street of Beverly Hills’s famed Rodeo Drive, in a boutique that sold handbags that “cost well over the highest annual income [she] had made at that point.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Down the way and across the street was House of Bijan, a flagship store from the Iranian American designer known for being the man behind the most expensive shop in the world. Recalling the fashion mogul, Khakpour writes: “Bijan beat Americans at their own game … He embodied American overindulgence to the maximum.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khakpour and her family members were “the anomaly of anomalies in L.A.: the poor Iranian[s].” Unpermitted into the appointment-only space, the writer recalls how her parents were both interested in Bijan as a cultural touchstone but horrified by his lavishness. Similarly, in another essay, she notes that while many Iranian Americans of Southern California boasted a level of inherent conservatism that comes with, as she tells me, being “an extreme capitalist,” her parents were wishy-washy in their relations to American politics. Her father, she writes, even bounced from “a love of Reagan to a love of Sanders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I get, more than anything from Iranian American readers, when they’re like: ‘Thank you for speaking out about being a poor Iranian,’” she said. “There’s just no representation with that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Khakpour “doesn’t feel connected to a lot of [Iranian American] people,” especially those that fit more closely to the \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em> narrative. But her book points out at least one common idea among Iranians in America, a thread that can be found despite differences in class and politics, in lifestyles and area codes. Between “A New Persian Empire” and Khakpour’s self-described “manifesto” or the title essay that closes out the book, \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> denounces a long-time fable, believed by the Iranian diaspora and those outside the community, that Iranians are the original Aryans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My father talked about that ugly myth occasionally with something like half pride, when he felt Americans were being racist,” Khakpour recalls in her essay, even remembering a time when he told her at the dinner table: “We’re Caucasian, face it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But she also remembers him telling her at a young age to choose Asian on census reports, or saying: “We are gandom-gan … which means wheat-colored, the equivalent of brown in Farsi.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what’s the truth?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tale of Iranians as the original Aryans has roots that extend far beyond the Iranian Revolution, even before Persia was renamed Iran in the 1930s. According to Reza Zia-Ebrahimi in a piece for \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/08/post-2.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Tehran Bureau via PBS’s \u003cem>Frontline\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the Islamophobia in Iran, rooted in a deep racism against Arabs, has followed Iranians for centuries. But it was around the 1860s when Iranian intellectuals began searching for a way to distance themselves from Islam, resulting in “self-Orientalization [which] involves an element of shame over traditional Iranian customs and features,” or a “dislocation, the attempt to dislodge Iran from its … Islamic reality and force it into a European one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Echoing the sentiment in a contemporary context, Khakpour said: “One of the issues I have with my parents is that even though they’re Muslim, they’re kind of ashamed of being Muslim, and they don’t really feel connected to Islam … I sort of challenge them on that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This internalized xenophobia and racism rises above the Iranian diaspora, pulling Iranian Americans together in spite of the community’s classes, ethnicities and religions. Are Iranians brown or white? Are we Iranian or are we Persian? Unanimity around these complex questions does not exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what of the diaspora’s spokespeople, like Khakpour, who take up a stance in an effort to bring these difficult conversations to light? To do so is to further alienate oneself from the community. She writes at the start of the final piece: “This is the essay arising from the tweets that resulted in death threats … This is the essay many of my own people would tell me to go kill myself for because I deny the whiteness they claim.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Understandably, herein lies the anxiety and discomfort that may come from being seen as a spokesperson for an underrepresented community: When you write your own story, you inherently alienate someone else in their own ideas and emotions tied to the homeland and the host country. At the end of the day, one must remember that \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> is a book of personal essays, emphasis on the personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The problem we have with all these Iranian American memoirists — and I mean, they’re everywhere — but they’re all women of a certain privilege,” Khakpour said when asked about entering a canon of Iranian American memoirs. “I just got very sick of that one image, because I didn’t fit into it at all. And so, I don’t think there is total solidarity, but I don’t think there should be either. It’s fine to be diverse in that sense.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, maybe what it comes down to is not to see Khakpour — or \u003cem>Shahs of Sunset\u003c/em>, or other Iranian American memoirists — as a spokesperson for the Iranian American diaspora, but rather, to see \u003cem>Brown Album\u003c/em> as a pillar within the multitude of individual stories that showcase Iranian diasporic identities. Maybe it comes down to allowing more space in mainstream media for these stories to be told, in order to paint a broader picture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khakpour sums it up well: “What is authentic Iran? I mean, there is no such thing. If you feel like you’re caught between different cultures, I think that’s a very legitimate sentiment that you should feel free to express.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Brown Album’ is out May 19 and can be ordered \u003ca href=\"https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525564713\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">here\u003c/a>. More information about the author and the book \u003ca href=\"https://porochistakhakpour.com/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "noura-and-mimis-suitcase-explore-the-iranian-and-iraqi-diasporas",
"title": "'Noura' and 'Mimi’s Suitcase' Explore the Iranian and Iraqi Diasporas",
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"headTitle": "‘Noura’ and ‘Mimi’s Suitcase’ Explore the Iranian and Iraqi Diasporas | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Barely before this month’s New Year’s revelry had quieted, news of the extrajudicial killing of Iran’s Qasem Soleimani by U.S. airstrike dominated the news cycle, and the Middle East was thrust one more into unwelcome focus. And even though the immediate crisis of escalation and threat of war seems to have been brought under some control, there’s no doubt that the reverberations of that action will resonate for years to come: in Iran, Iraq, and worldwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s reverberations such as these that two plays opening this month in the Bay Area are already intricately familiar with. Both \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em>, by Heather Raffo, at Marin Theatre Company, and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em>, by Ana Bayat, at NOH Space, deal explicitly with the long-term effects of immigration on ordinary citizens from the Middle East. Beyond describing reasons to leave, both \u003cem>Noura \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> delve into what it means to survive the process of re-routing, and re-rooting, as immigrants, women, and artists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13873142\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13873142\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-1920x1278.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s production of ‘Noura,’ by Heather Raffo. \u003ccite>(Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Noura\u003c/em>, which opened in previews on Jan. 9, explores the Iraqi-American experience through a quotidian, domestic lens. With a hat-tip to Ibsen’s \u003cem>A Doll’s House\u003c/em>, the play takes place over the Christmas holiday, revolving around an Iraqi refugee family who has just received American citizenship after eight years of waiting. Members of a displaced Christian minority, they’ve settled in New York (where playwright Heather Raffo also lives). As the play progresses, as do the complexities of their relationship to each other, to their selves, and to their adopted home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having performed the role of Noura in the play’s world premiere in 2018, Raffo’s understanding of the character extends beyond the lived experience of growing up with an Iraqi parent. By birthing the role as well as the play, she’s in a unique position of being able to explore Noura’s philosophical layers with a keen familiarity. Through the character, she’s been able to wrestle with her own struggles with the “rugged individualism…of Western American feminism,” and speak to a yearning to use female liberation as a platform for more than self-actualization. Her Noura, an architect, not only juggles the imperative to create with the demands of the domestic, but also the eternal inner conflict of reconciling with a turbulent, dangerous past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13873144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13873144\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Denmo Ibrahim and Valentino Bertolucci Herrera in Marin Theatre Company’s production of ‘Noura,’ by Heather Raffo. \u003ccite>(Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I really wanted to reframe the play (\u003cem>A Doll’s House\u003c/em>) in what does it mean to be actually \u003cem>very\u003c/em> attached?” she explains over the phone. “The question I’m facing in my life isn’t ‘I will just up and leave my family so I can live my life as a full human being’….I can’t do that…most of us wouldn’t want to do that. In this play they are \u003cem>all\u003c/em> Nora Helmer, all post-door slam, all living together, going these are the different ways they’ve chosen to move on, and now what?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not only is Ana Bayat’s solo show \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> a bit of a travelogue, but it’s also well-traveled, having first launched at New York’s United Solo, and following up with appearances at festivals across Europe—including the 70th edition of the Edinburgh Fringe. In the play we first encounter the protagonist as a teenage girl living in Tehran. With shades of Marjane Satrapi’s \u003cem>Persepolis\u003c/em>, Bayat describes the tension and violence of a suppressive state, and its psychological effects on a young woman who’d previously lived in the much more permissive Barcelona.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13873143\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13873143\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-800x530.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-800x530.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-768x508.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ana Bayat in her solo show, ‘Mimi’s Suitcase.’ \u003ccite>(Diaspora Arts Connection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a solo performer, Bayat plays over 25 characters in four languages, including family members, close friends, Republican guards, and immigration officers. Although the action focuses on the time period from 1984 to 2000, as Bayat ruefully notes, the topics of immigration and diaspora that she explores are “very much present in our everyday lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With repercussions of 2017’s so-called “Muslim travel ban” still reverberating worldwide, the protagonist’s struggle to obtain a precious student visa feels as urgent as it must have in 2007, when Bayat first began working on the piece as part of W. Kamau Bell’s notable Solo Performance Workshop. And her lived experience as a child trapped within the borders of a repressive regime gives a singular view into a family that has run out of choices. Her protagonist’s decision to leave Iran emphasizes the divergence of choice between those who can obtain a visa and those who cannot. Or as Bayat elegantly puts it, “sometimes what you choose is not necessarily what you can have.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Political upheaval is not theoretical,” Torange Yeghiazarian of Golden Thread Productions, who is consulting on \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em>, points out. And the undercurrent of the very real dangers faced by their respective protagonists in their home countries gives \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> a vital kinship. But beyond the Middle Eastern diaspora stories illuminated by \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> are larger themes of immigration, family, and home, with broad, cross-cultural implications. In both works we find protagonists who love their families, value themselves, and mourn for their lost opportunities and former homelands, while laying claim to their future—all in the context of an immigration narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ultimately I believe this is a universal story,” asserts Bayat about \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em>. “I’m hoping it humanizes immigrants so we don’t go about life othering. That we realize that at the end of the day…that we have so much in common.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Noura’ has been extended at Marin Theatre Company through Feb. 9. Details \u003ca href=\"http://www.marintheatre.org/productions/noura\">here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Mimi’s Suitcase’ plays at NOHspace, Jan. 23-25. Tickets and info \u003ca href=\"http://www.anabayat.com/mimissuitcase\">here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Barely before this month’s New Year’s revelry had quieted, news of the extrajudicial killing of Iran’s Qasem Soleimani by U.S. airstrike dominated the news cycle, and the Middle East was thrust one more into unwelcome focus. And even though the immediate crisis of escalation and threat of war seems to have been brought under some control, there’s no doubt that the reverberations of that action will resonate for years to come: in Iran, Iraq, and worldwide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s reverberations such as these that two plays opening this month in the Bay Area are already intricately familiar with. Both \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em>, by Heather Raffo, at Marin Theatre Company, and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em>, by Ana Bayat, at NOH Space, deal explicitly with the long-term effects of immigration on ordinary citizens from the Middle East. Beyond describing reasons to leave, both \u003cem>Noura \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> delve into what it means to survive the process of re-routing, and re-rooting, as immigrants, women, and artists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13873142\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13873142\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-800x532.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"532\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-1200x799.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne-1920x1278.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_cast_credit_KevinBerne.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cast of Marin Theatre Company’s production of ‘Noura,’ by Heather Raffo. \u003ccite>(Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Noura\u003c/em>, which opened in previews on Jan. 9, explores the Iraqi-American experience through a quotidian, domestic lens. With a hat-tip to Ibsen’s \u003cem>A Doll’s House\u003c/em>, the play takes place over the Christmas holiday, revolving around an Iraqi refugee family who has just received American citizenship after eight years of waiting. Members of a displaced Christian minority, they’ve settled in New York (where playwright Heather Raffo also lives). As the play progresses, as do the complexities of their relationship to each other, to their selves, and to their adopted home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having performed the role of Noura in the play’s world premiere in 2018, Raffo’s understanding of the character extends beyond the lived experience of growing up with an Iraqi parent. By birthing the role as well as the play, she’s in a unique position of being able to explore Noura’s philosophical layers with a keen familiarity. Through the character, she’s been able to wrestle with her own struggles with the “rugged individualism…of Western American feminism,” and speak to a yearning to use female liberation as a platform for more than self-actualization. Her Noura, an architect, not only juggles the imperative to create with the demands of the domestic, but also the eternal inner conflict of reconciling with a turbulent, dangerous past.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13873144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13873144\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Noura_DenmoIbrahim_ValentinoBertolucciHererra_credit_KevinBerne.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Denmo Ibrahim and Valentino Bertolucci Herrera in Marin Theatre Company’s production of ‘Noura,’ by Heather Raffo. \u003ccite>(Kevin Berne)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I really wanted to reframe the play (\u003cem>A Doll’s House\u003c/em>) in what does it mean to be actually \u003cem>very\u003c/em> attached?” she explains over the phone. “The question I’m facing in my life isn’t ‘I will just up and leave my family so I can live my life as a full human being’….I can’t do that…most of us wouldn’t want to do that. In this play they are \u003cem>all\u003c/em> Nora Helmer, all post-door slam, all living together, going these are the different ways they’ve chosen to move on, and now what?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not only is Ana Bayat’s solo show \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> a bit of a travelogue, but it’s also well-traveled, having first launched at New York’s United Solo, and following up with appearances at festivals across Europe—including the 70th edition of the Edinburgh Fringe. In the play we first encounter the protagonist as a teenage girl living in Tehran. With shades of Marjane Satrapi’s \u003cem>Persepolis\u003c/em>, Bayat describes the tension and violence of a suppressive state, and its psychological effects on a young woman who’d previously lived in the much more permissive Barcelona.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13873143\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13873143\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-800x530.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-800x530.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection-768x508.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/MimisSuitcase-AnaBayat-PhotoCredit-Diaspora_Arts_Connection.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ana Bayat in her solo show, ‘Mimi’s Suitcase.’ \u003ccite>(Diaspora Arts Connection)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a solo performer, Bayat plays over 25 characters in four languages, including family members, close friends, Republican guards, and immigration officers. Although the action focuses on the time period from 1984 to 2000, as Bayat ruefully notes, the topics of immigration and diaspora that she explores are “very much present in our everyday lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With repercussions of 2017’s so-called “Muslim travel ban” still reverberating worldwide, the protagonist’s struggle to obtain a precious student visa feels as urgent as it must have in 2007, when Bayat first began working on the piece as part of W. Kamau Bell’s notable Solo Performance Workshop. And her lived experience as a child trapped within the borders of a repressive regime gives a singular view into a family that has run out of choices. Her protagonist’s decision to leave Iran emphasizes the divergence of choice between those who can obtain a visa and those who cannot. Or as Bayat elegantly puts it, “sometimes what you choose is not necessarily what you can have.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Political upheaval is not theoretical,” Torange Yeghiazarian of Golden Thread Productions, who is consulting on \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em>, points out. And the undercurrent of the very real dangers faced by their respective protagonists in their home countries gives \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> a vital kinship. But beyond the Middle Eastern diaspora stories illuminated by \u003cem>Noura\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> are larger themes of immigration, family, and home, with broad, cross-cultural implications. In both works we find protagonists who love their families, value themselves, and mourn for their lost opportunities and former homelands, while laying claim to their future—all in the context of an immigration narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ultimately I believe this is a universal story,” asserts Bayat about \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em>. “I’m hoping it humanizes immigrants so we don’t go about life othering. That we realize that at the end of the day…that we have so much in common.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Noura’ has been extended at Marin Theatre Company through Feb. 9. Details \u003ca href=\"http://www.marintheatre.org/productions/noura\">here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Mimi’s Suitcase’ plays at NOHspace, Jan. 23-25. Tickets and info \u003ca href=\"http://www.anabayat.com/mimissuitcase\">here.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When Ana Bayat returned with her family to Tehran in the 1980s, after a childhood spent in Barcelona, she found herself in a country drastically different than the Iran she remembered from the early 1970s. In her one-woman show \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em>, Bayat tells the story of those teenage years in post-revolutionary Iran: a time of new cultural rules and the quiet resistance to them. Throughout, she weaves together themes of resilience and identity, playing 27 different characters and performing in English, Spanish, French and Farsi (with English subtitles). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> was originally developed in a 2007 workshop hosted by W. Kamau Bell, and recently won “Pick of the Fringe” at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As tensions mount between the United States and Iran, and as the United States detains Iranian travelers at its borders, the play provides a window into Iranian history and migration. Bayat, now living in the Bay Area, performs \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> for just four performances, on Jan. 23–25, at Theater of Yugen in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatreofyugen.org/venue-calendar/2020/1/23/mimis-suitcase\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When Ana Bayat returned with her family to Tehran in the 1980s, after a childhood spent in Barcelona, she found herself in a country drastically different than the Iran she remembered from the early 1970s. In her one-woman show \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em>, Bayat tells the story of those teenage years in post-revolutionary Iran: a time of new cultural rules and the quiet resistance to them. Throughout, she weaves together themes of resilience and identity, playing 27 different characters and performing in English, Spanish, French and Farsi (with English subtitles). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> was originally developed in a 2007 workshop hosted by W. Kamau Bell, and recently won “Pick of the Fringe” at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As tensions mount between the United States and Iran, and as the United States detains Iranian travelers at its borders, the play provides a window into Iranian history and migration. Bayat, now living in the Bay Area, performs \u003cem>Mimi’s Suitcase\u003c/em> for just four performances, on Jan. 23–25, at Theater of Yugen in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"http://www.theatreofyugen.org/venue-calendar/2020/1/23/mimis-suitcase\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sahbakia.com\">Sahba Aminikia\u003c/a> hadn’t planned on dancing when he stopped by Club Deluxe in the Haight to unwind and hear a little jazz three years ago. But the band was swinging, and before long, he found himself boogieing with a young Italian woman. The Iranian-born composer was in a very good place in his career, teaching at the Academy of Art University while writing music performed by top-flight ensembles around the world, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksR92_KJaC4\">Kronos Quartet\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a break in the music, the woman related a fantastical story about an organization teaching circus arts to children who’d fled war and repression in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Forcefully struck by the unlikely vision, Aminikia set out on a quest that ultimately led him to give up his secure academic day job in San Francisco in order to establish the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mightycause.com/FlyingCarpet2019\">2018 Flying Carpet Festival\u003c/a> in the remote southeastern corner of Turkey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://muzikhane.org/fcf\">Flying Carpet\u003c/a> returns for its second year Aug. 18-24, and Aminikia isn’t going alone. Drawing on his vast network of friends and colleagues, he’s recruited musicians, composers, and technicians from the Bay Area and far beyond to bring music to children unmoored by some of the world’s most harrowing conflicts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This young Italian woman started telling me about her sister who was a clown in a refugee camp,” Aminikia recalls. “That wasn’t exactly true. It’s not a refugee camp, but she forwarded me the Instagram account of this NGO called \u003ca href=\"https://heryerdesanat.org\">Sirkhane\u003c/a>, which means ‘House of Circus’ in Turkish and Arabic. I saw this incredible footage of a parade going through the most distant Kurdish villages. It was so mesmerizing and totally out of place, this crazy event happening somewhere where people are dealing with real issues and pain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since he was already heading to the region to visit his family for Nowruz (Persian New Year) in March, Aminikia decided to take a detour to Mardin, the ancient town in southeastern Turkey where Sirkhane is based. The situation was tense upon his arrival, with tanks patrolling the streets of a city that was part of the Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BCE. Undaunted by the military presence, children quickly surrounded Aminikia “and every one of them wanted to sing,” he says. “I started to record them, and then I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not a great time for an American citizen to be recording.’ As I was leaving, the children were running after the car, still singing. It wasn’t a choice any more. I wanted to be involved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=NKF7AF3-QFc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Returning to San Francisco, Aminikia left his job at the Academy and put out the word that he was looking for artists to help launch Flying Carpet in September, an absurdly abbreviated schedule for organizing an international arts festival. The plan got a major boost and cash infusion of $100,000 when he won a grant competition from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, which allowed him to help cover traveling expenses. But it was Aminikia’s guileless wide-eyed pitch, a dream of bringing music to dispossessed kids, that proved most persuasive, says \u003ca href=\"http://www.helennewby.com\">cellist Helen Newby\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A member of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.amaranthquartet.com\">Amaranth Quartet\u003c/a>, Newby got to know Aminikia when hers was one of several groups that performed his music as part of \u003ca href=\"https://kronosquartet.org/kronos-festival-2017\">Kronos Festival 2017: Here and Now\u003c/a>. Dubious about Flying Carpet when he approached her, she agreed to participate but was unsure of whether it would actually come to pass. “Lo and behold, I ended up getting a plane ticket in the mail,” she says. “I went into it not knowing a ton about what was going to happen. I knew it would involve working with kids and some performing, but it was taking a leap a faith. I thought, ‘I’ll regret it if I don’t.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She spent two weeks in the region, mostly in a village near the border with Syria, working with middle school kids in a choir that Aminikia created. Though there was a translator, the language barrier meant she was “always trying to find activities that didn’t require too much verbal interaction,” she says. “We had an instrument petting zoo. The first week was mostly doing these workshops with the kids, but the second week we were doing a lot more performing and rehearsing, with the occasional surprise concert: ‘By the way, you’re performing tonight for hundreds of people.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The experience proved impactful: after participating in Flying Carpet last year, Newby is heading back to Turkey again in August. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGOCeL8uBnw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aminikia’s empathy for displaced children stems partly from his familiarity with unbridled government power. While visiting his family in Iran back in 2012, he was recording sounds for a piece commissioned by Kronos Quartet when three Revolutionary Guards abducted him at gunpoint and accused him of being an American spy. The guards beat him and put a gun in his mouth while forcing him to attest to his Baha’i faith (a religion \u003ca href=\"https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/16/iran-arrests-harassment-bahais\">actively repressed\u003c/a> by the Iranian government). Expecting summary execution, Aminikia was instead left on the outskirts of Tehran, stripped of his clothes and his eyes burning with mace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the artists who heeded Aminikia’s call bring their own experiences with dislocation. In the summer of 2017 Yugoslavian-born composer Aleksandra Vrebalov had watched thousands of refugees cross Serbia on their way to Germany. “When you witness it, seeing people sleeping in parks and walking on highways trying to get to a better life, it’s an amazing, painful thing to see,” she says. “I was very motivated to contribute to Flying Carpet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A world renowned composer with deep ties to the Bay Area, Vrebalov arrived in Mardin with a detailed array of expectations about what she would teach—expectations that she quickly discarded upon taking stock of the bare-bones situation. Traveling to one of three centers run by Sirkhane every day, she learned to adapt to the needs of the children who came to a workshop. The trait they all shared was an overwhelming desire for attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I got there I realized these kids were so energetic and intense,” she says. “They lived through hardships that we only read about, and the amount of energy and kind of connection that they wanted to establish individually with the guest artists was so humbling and moving. You can’t possibly do it. We invented music games where everybody could engage in some communal sense and a lot of energy would be spent. I taught for many years at different levels, and the kind of engagement and creativity that the circumstances demanded, I haven’t had that anywhere else.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcRBoPANZe8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the open call for artists to participate in this August’s Flying Carpet closes, Aminikia is busy reinventing the festival, looking to make it sustainable. Artists involved this year are paying their own way to Turkey. He’s drawing more on artists who live in the area, so that masters in traditional Kurdish, Turkish and Syrian music are featured in the festival, reflecting back to kids aspects of their own cultures. The festival includes an ensemble from Iran made up of fellow Baha’is “coming by bus 15 hours from Tehran, and first they have to get to Tehran,” he says. There are eight acrobats from Brazil who are fundraising to pay their own way to Turkey, two choreographers from Istanbul and a magician from the U.K. who works in refugee camps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When talking about his vision for the Flying Carpet festival’s future, Aminikia sounds almost blissful to have stepped off the ordained path for a composer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This place kills your ego,” he says. “You see the actual needs of people who are hungry and in need of education. You start analyzing yourself about your expectations. Artists in the West don’t feel appreciated and useful. But in many ways this is a very American idea. Mardin is a house on the hill. And we’re determined to build something that will last.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Sahba Aminikia's Flying Carpet Festival Brings Music to Refugee Children in Turkey | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sahbakia.com\">Sahba Aminikia\u003c/a> hadn’t planned on dancing when he stopped by Club Deluxe in the Haight to unwind and hear a little jazz three years ago. But the band was swinging, and before long, he found himself boogieing with a young Italian woman. The Iranian-born composer was in a very good place in his career, teaching at the Academy of Art University while writing music performed by top-flight ensembles around the world, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksR92_KJaC4\">Kronos Quartet\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During a break in the music, the woman related a fantastical story about an organization teaching circus arts to children who’d fled war and repression in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Forcefully struck by the unlikely vision, Aminikia set out on a quest that ultimately led him to give up his secure academic day job in San Francisco in order to establish the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mightycause.com/FlyingCarpet2019\">2018 Flying Carpet Festival\u003c/a> in the remote southeastern corner of Turkey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://muzikhane.org/fcf\">Flying Carpet\u003c/a> returns for its second year Aug. 18-24, and Aminikia isn’t going alone. Drawing on his vast network of friends and colleagues, he’s recruited musicians, composers, and technicians from the Bay Area and far beyond to bring music to children unmoored by some of the world’s most harrowing conflicts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This young Italian woman started telling me about her sister who was a clown in a refugee camp,” Aminikia recalls. “That wasn’t exactly true. It’s not a refugee camp, but she forwarded me the Instagram account of this NGO called \u003ca href=\"https://heryerdesanat.org\">Sirkhane\u003c/a>, which means ‘House of Circus’ in Turkish and Arabic. I saw this incredible footage of a parade going through the most distant Kurdish villages. It was so mesmerizing and totally out of place, this crazy event happening somewhere where people are dealing with real issues and pain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since he was already heading to the region to visit his family for Nowruz (Persian New Year) in March, Aminikia decided to take a detour to Mardin, the ancient town in southeastern Turkey where Sirkhane is based. The situation was tense upon his arrival, with tanks patrolling the streets of a city that was part of the Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BCE. Undaunted by the military presence, children quickly surrounded Aminikia “and every one of them wanted to sing,” he says. “I started to record them, and then I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not a great time for an American citizen to be recording.’ As I was leaving, the children were running after the car, still singing. It wasn’t a choice any more. I wanted to be involved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/NKF7AF3-QFc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/NKF7AF3-QFc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Returning to San Francisco, Aminikia left his job at the Academy and put out the word that he was looking for artists to help launch Flying Carpet in September, an absurdly abbreviated schedule for organizing an international arts festival. The plan got a major boost and cash infusion of $100,000 when he won a grant competition from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, which allowed him to help cover traveling expenses. But it was Aminikia’s guileless wide-eyed pitch, a dream of bringing music to dispossessed kids, that proved most persuasive, says \u003ca href=\"http://www.helennewby.com\">cellist Helen Newby\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A member of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.amaranthquartet.com\">Amaranth Quartet\u003c/a>, Newby got to know Aminikia when hers was one of several groups that performed his music as part of \u003ca href=\"https://kronosquartet.org/kronos-festival-2017\">Kronos Festival 2017: Here and Now\u003c/a>. Dubious about Flying Carpet when he approached her, she agreed to participate but was unsure of whether it would actually come to pass. “Lo and behold, I ended up getting a plane ticket in the mail,” she says. “I went into it not knowing a ton about what was going to happen. I knew it would involve working with kids and some performing, but it was taking a leap a faith. I thought, ‘I’ll regret it if I don’t.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She spent two weeks in the region, mostly in a village near the border with Syria, working with middle school kids in a choir that Aminikia created. Though there was a translator, the language barrier meant she was “always trying to find activities that didn’t require too much verbal interaction,” she says. “We had an instrument petting zoo. The first week was mostly doing these workshops with the kids, but the second week we were doing a lot more performing and rehearsing, with the occasional surprise concert: ‘By the way, you’re performing tonight for hundreds of people.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The experience proved impactful: after participating in Flying Carpet last year, Newby is heading back to Turkey again in August. \u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/dGOCeL8uBnw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/dGOCeL8uBnw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Aminikia’s empathy for displaced children stems partly from his familiarity with unbridled government power. While visiting his family in Iran back in 2012, he was recording sounds for a piece commissioned by Kronos Quartet when three Revolutionary Guards abducted him at gunpoint and accused him of being an American spy. The guards beat him and put a gun in his mouth while forcing him to attest to his Baha’i faith (a religion \u003ca href=\"https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/16/iran-arrests-harassment-bahais\">actively repressed\u003c/a> by the Iranian government). Expecting summary execution, Aminikia was instead left on the outskirts of Tehran, stripped of his clothes and his eyes burning with mace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the artists who heeded Aminikia’s call bring their own experiences with dislocation. In the summer of 2017 Yugoslavian-born composer Aleksandra Vrebalov had watched thousands of refugees cross Serbia on their way to Germany. “When you witness it, seeing people sleeping in parks and walking on highways trying to get to a better life, it’s an amazing, painful thing to see,” she says. “I was very motivated to contribute to Flying Carpet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A world renowned composer with deep ties to the Bay Area, Vrebalov arrived in Mardin with a detailed array of expectations about what she would teach—expectations that she quickly discarded upon taking stock of the bare-bones situation. Traveling to one of three centers run by Sirkhane every day, she learned to adapt to the needs of the children who came to a workshop. The trait they all shared was an overwhelming desire for attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I got there I realized these kids were so energetic and intense,” she says. “They lived through hardships that we only read about, and the amount of energy and kind of connection that they wanted to establish individually with the guest artists was so humbling and moving. You can’t possibly do it. We invented music games where everybody could engage in some communal sense and a lot of energy would be spent. I taught for many years at different levels, and the kind of engagement and creativity that the circumstances demanded, I haven’t had that anywhere else.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/XcRBoPANZe8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/XcRBoPANZe8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>As the open call for artists to participate in this August’s Flying Carpet closes, Aminikia is busy reinventing the festival, looking to make it sustainable. Artists involved this year are paying their own way to Turkey. He’s drawing more on artists who live in the area, so that masters in traditional Kurdish, Turkish and Syrian music are featured in the festival, reflecting back to kids aspects of their own cultures. The festival includes an ensemble from Iran made up of fellow Baha’is “coming by bus 15 hours from Tehran, and first they have to get to Tehran,” he says. There are eight acrobats from Brazil who are fundraising to pay their own way to Turkey, two choreographers from Istanbul and a magician from the U.K. who works in refugee camps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When talking about his vision for the Flying Carpet festival’s future, Aminikia sounds almost blissful to have stepped off the ordained path for a composer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This place kills your ego,” he says. “You see the actual needs of people who are hungry and in need of education. You start analyzing yourself about your expectations. Artists in the West don’t feel appreciated and useful. But in many ways this is a very American idea. Mardin is a house on the hill. And we’re determined to build something that will last.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Diaspora in Bloom: Assyrian-American Art on View in San Jose",
"headTitle": "Diaspora in Bloom: Assyrian-American Art on View in San Jose | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>How much do you know about Assyrians? For many Americans, it’s news we have members of the ancient Middle Eastern ethnic group living here in the U.S. today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Members of the Assyrian diaspora are spread out all over world, most in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. But conflicts \u003ca href=\"https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2019/0410/In-northeast-Syria-a-Christian-community-fights-for-survival\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">modern\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00b7r71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ancient\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_genocide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in between\u003c/a> forced hundreds of thousands of predominantly Christian Assyrians to move further afield, and the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau estimate roughly 100,000 live in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.svlg.org/about-us/our-staff/nardin-sarkis/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nardin Sarkis\u003c/a> works in government relations at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. He estimates 10,000 Assyrians live in this region alone. So it was he got to chatting with fellow Assyrian-American \u003ca href=\"https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/about/our-team/akadina-yadegar/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Akadina Yadegar\u003c/a>, who works at Plug and Play Tech Center, about the dearth of modern Assyrian art in museums and galleries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ancient art there’s plenty of. The Assyrian Empire of Mesopotamia flourished some 4,000 years ago. At its peak, the empire stretched from Cyprus to Iran, from present-day Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and eastern Libya.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assyrian kings spent some of their fabulous wealth on palaces full of art, including iconic, muscular stonework. Archeologists continue to pour over the details of of the empire’s sophisticated bureaucracy, detailed in durable clay cuneiform tablets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pa54hWROpQ][aside postID='news_10796779,news_2359,forum_2010101859436' label='Related Coverage']All of that said, Assyrians didn’t stop making art after that empire collapsed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither Sarkis nor Yadegar is a professional art curator. But they wanted to show their own community and the wider Bay Area community that Assyrians have “more to offer” the world of visual arts than their admittedly impressive heritage from ancient times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The goal for the exhibit itself is to elevate the modern over the ancient, celebrate present Assyrian artists who are looking at contemporary issues,” explains Yadegar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These two Millennials went looking — where else? — on Instagram, and found artists like \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/atra.givarkes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Atra Givarkes\u003c/a> of Orange County, who gives neo-Aramaic calligraphy a bright, pop art face lift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13859296\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13859296\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy.jpeg\" alt=\"Tablet Series by artist Atra Givarkes\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1074\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy.jpeg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-160x84.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-800x419.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-768x403.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-1020x535.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-1200x629.jpeg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-1920x1006.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tablet Series by artist Atra Givarkes \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Megan White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.estherestheresther.com/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Esther Elia\u003c/a> of San Francisco, who works in multiple mediums. Some of her most striking contributions to this show include paintings she based on her family’s photographs from the early 20th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elia explores the refugee experience both as a psychological journey for generations of Assyrian-Americans, and as an emotionally laden lens through which to view the current state of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States and Western Europe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Assyrians that were forced out of their lands and came to America for a new life as so many do; came as refugees and look what we’ve created. We’ve created art. We’ve created culture to give back to our community,” Sarkis said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13859297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13859297\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM.jpeg\" alt=\"Artist Esther Elia writes, "The picture shows my great-grandfather side by side with his brothers, all refugees fresh from Iran. While in Denmark recently, a taxi driver helpfully informed us that 'the refugees ruined Sweden.' What he said as pragmatic fact struck me as a personal rejection of my own people. It ultimately led me to ask, 'At what cost does the happiest place in the world maintain itself?'" Acrylic on canvas, 2018.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1916\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM.jpeg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-160x150.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-800x749.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-768x719.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-1020x954.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-1200x1123.jpeg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-1920x1797.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist Esther Elia writes, “The picture shows my great-grandfather side by side with his brothers, all refugees fresh from Iran. While in Denmark recently, a taxi driver helpfully informed us that ‘the refugees ruined Sweden.’ What he said as pragmatic fact struck me as a personal rejection of my own people. It ultimately led me to ask, ‘At what cost does the happiest place in the world maintain itself?'” Acrylic on canvas, 2018. \u003ccite>(Rachael Myrow/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to argue, observing more than 30 works of painting, photography, pottery, graphic design and video in this exhibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took the two amateur curators a year to put \u003cem>Diaspora in Bloom\u003c/em> together. Naturally, I ask if they’re game to do something like this again. Yadegar pauses for a moment, smiling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s possible,” she replies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Diaspora in Bloom: \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Assyrians in the 20th Century & Beyond\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>runs June 1, 7, 8 & 14: 6pm-9pm and June 2,9 & 15 noon-4pm at \u003ca href=\"https://www.artarkgallery.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Art Ark Gallery\u003c/a> in San Jose. For more information, click \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.artarkgallery.com/current.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>How much do you know about Assyrians? For many Americans, it’s news we have members of the ancient Middle Eastern ethnic group living here in the U.S. today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Members of the Assyrian diaspora are spread out all over world, most in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. But conflicts \u003ca href=\"https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2019/0410/In-northeast-Syria-a-Christian-community-fights-for-survival\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">modern\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00b7r71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ancient\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_genocide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in between\u003c/a> forced hundreds of thousands of predominantly Christian Assyrians to move further afield, and the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau estimate roughly 100,000 live in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.svlg.org/about-us/our-staff/nardin-sarkis/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nardin Sarkis\u003c/a> works in government relations at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. He estimates 10,000 Assyrians live in this region alone. So it was he got to chatting with fellow Assyrian-American \u003ca href=\"https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/about/our-team/akadina-yadegar/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Akadina Yadegar\u003c/a>, who works at Plug and Play Tech Center, about the dearth of modern Assyrian art in museums and galleries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ancient art there’s plenty of. The Assyrian Empire of Mesopotamia flourished some 4,000 years ago. At its peak, the empire stretched from Cyprus to Iran, from present-day Armenia and Azerbaijan to the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and eastern Libya.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assyrian kings spent some of their fabulous wealth on palaces full of art, including iconic, muscular stonework. Archeologists continue to pour over the details of of the empire’s sophisticated bureaucracy, detailed in durable clay cuneiform tablets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>All of that said, Assyrians didn’t stop making art after that empire collapsed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither Sarkis nor Yadegar is a professional art curator. But they wanted to show their own community and the wider Bay Area community that Assyrians have “more to offer” the world of visual arts than their admittedly impressive heritage from ancient times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The goal for the exhibit itself is to elevate the modern over the ancient, celebrate present Assyrian artists who are looking at contemporary issues,” explains Yadegar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These two Millennials went looking — where else? — on Instagram, and found artists like \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/atra.givarkes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Atra Givarkes\u003c/a> of Orange County, who gives neo-Aramaic calligraphy a bright, pop art face lift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13859296\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13859296\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy.jpeg\" alt=\"Tablet Series by artist Atra Givarkes\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1074\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy.jpeg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-160x84.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-800x419.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-768x403.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-1020x535.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-1200x629.jpeg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/DSC_0619-Copy-1920x1006.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tablet Series by artist Atra Givarkes \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Megan White)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.estherestheresther.com/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Esther Elia\u003c/a> of San Francisco, who works in multiple mediums. Some of her most striking contributions to this show include paintings she based on her family’s photographs from the early 20th century.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elia explores the refugee experience both as a psychological journey for generations of Assyrian-Americans, and as an emotionally laden lens through which to view the current state of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States and Western Europe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Assyrians that were forced out of their lands and came to America for a new life as so many do; came as refugees and look what we’ve created. We’ve created art. We’ve created culture to give back to our community,” Sarkis said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13859297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13859297\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM.jpeg\" alt=\"Artist Esther Elia writes, "The picture shows my great-grandfather side by side with his brothers, all refugees fresh from Iran. While in Denmark recently, a taxi driver helpfully informed us that 'the refugees ruined Sweden.' What he said as pragmatic fact struck me as a personal rejection of my own people. It ultimately led me to ask, 'At what cost does the happiest place in the world maintain itself?'" Acrylic on canvas, 2018.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1916\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM.jpeg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-160x150.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-800x749.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-768x719.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-1020x954.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-1200x1123.jpeg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Photo-Jun-06-10-28-50-AM-1920x1797.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist Esther Elia writes, “The picture shows my great-grandfather side by side with his brothers, all refugees fresh from Iran. While in Denmark recently, a taxi driver helpfully informed us that ‘the refugees ruined Sweden.’ What he said as pragmatic fact struck me as a personal rejection of my own people. It ultimately led me to ask, ‘At what cost does the happiest place in the world maintain itself?'” Acrylic on canvas, 2018. \u003ccite>(Rachael Myrow/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to argue, observing more than 30 works of painting, photography, pottery, graphic design and video in this exhibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took the two amateur curators a year to put \u003cem>Diaspora in Bloom\u003c/em> together. Naturally, I ask if they’re game to do something like this again. Yadegar pauses for a moment, smiling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s possible,” she replies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Diaspora in Bloom: \u003c/strong>\u003cstrong>Assyrians in the 20th Century & Beyond\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cem>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>runs June 1, 7, 8 & 14: 6pm-9pm and June 2,9 & 15 noon-4pm at \u003ca href=\"https://www.artarkgallery.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Art Ark Gallery\u003c/a> in San Jose. For more information, click \u003cstrong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.artarkgallery.com/current.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here\u003c/a>\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "making-iran-and-oakland-feel-like-the-same-place",
"title": "Making Iran and Oakland Feel Like the Same Place",
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"content": "\u003cp>Upon entering the darkness of \u003ca href=\"http://aggregatespacegallery.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aggregate Space Gallery\u003c/a> (ASG) in West Oakland, I’m immediately greeted by a bright, LED-lit image of two women’s profiles in a video installation titled “Although the Wind.” No detailed information is given — the two women face one another nearly motionless in a white room — and it feels impossible to discern who or where the artists are. In the video’s still, bare frame, viewers watch as both women blow air in and out of their mouths, cheeks puffed and breath heavy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The piece opens \u003cem>Eleven and a Half Hours\u003c/em>, a ongoing video exhibition at ASG centered on expression of resistance, action, and politics in the everyday lives of two Iranian and American women. A collaboration between Tehran-based artist \u003ca href=\"http://www.shirinabedinirad.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Shirin Abedinirad\u003c/a> and Oakland-based artist \u003ca href=\"http://www.dionneleestudio.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dionne Lee\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Eleven and a Half Hours\u003c/em> focuses on striking similarities between the two women’s everyday lives — despite their difference in location, culture, and race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13808331\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"'A Use for Rope or String,' Shirin Abedinirad and Dionne Lee.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13808331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-960x640.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-240x160.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-375x250.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Sirocco VIII’ by Shirin Abedinirad and ‘A Use for Rope or String,” by Dionne Lee. \u003ccite>(Aaron Rosenstreich)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I started doing a lot of video installations for my own artistic practice, and for this [exhibit] I wanted to continue that journey,” curator Shaghayegh Cyrous tells me. “I thought, maybe I can create a platform for an Iranian and American [to collaborate], especially after the travel ban. Maybe I can create an opportunity to go deeper into what’s going on in the daily life of two women and artists — two totally different persons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cyrous took on the project as a culmination of her participation in ASG’s annual gallery exhibitions internship, a program that trains emerging artists who want to learn about a curatorial practice or expand their understanding of a non-profit/artist-run space. Conrad Meyers, director of ASG, also notes that a key focal point of the exhibit is its confounding of the Iranian and American space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He shares, “A lot of [Cyrous’s] earlier ideas were about blurring lines between the two cultures, and making it feel like a conundrum…making Iran and Oakland feel like the same place. I really responded to that.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13808332\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"'Before Getting On With the World Again,' Shirin Abedinirad and Dionne Lee.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1200\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13808332\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--1180x1770.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--960x1440.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--240x360.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--375x563.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--520x780.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the-.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Before Getting On With the World Again,’ Shirin Abedinirad and Dionne Lee. \u003ccite>(Aaron Rosenstreich)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Throughout the exhibit, Cyrous also interlaces the law of inertia and how it determines movement — or lack thereof — in the world around us. “Although the Wind,” for instance, was inspired by the act of blowing into a flame, and the two possible consequences — the flame either rising, or dying out. For her, the idea of “stop or go” represented by the piece was a demonstration of Newton’s First Law in the exhibition, especially as it pertains to resistance. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[In a project for Jim Campbell], I was…filming people’s daily lives, researching their movement, and how that movement was created,” she explains. “I thought it was interesting that the law of inertia existed everywhere. Things that are moving stay moving unless a power stops them. So that’s resistance in a different version, I would say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a simplistic glance, the exhibit doesn’t necessarily read as overtly political; most pieces in the exhibit feature abstract imagery, such as Abedinirad’s broken reflection of herself in the Caspian Sea. Rather, Cyrous hopes for the juxtaposition of the two artists’ work, side by side, to challenge stereotypes associated with American and Iranian identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, visitors to ASG are often unable to discern which piece of art came from which artist. Cyrous shares that people actually often mistake Lee’s “A Use for Rope or String” (a repeating film of Lee playing Cat’s Cradle with a string) with Abedinirad’s “Sirocco VIII” (a snippet of Abedinirad’s bare lower legs), since many viewers don’t expect to see an Iranian woman in high heels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meyers also adds, “I think something that came up very early on was putting a black woman and an Iranian woman that cannot leave her home on video screens — that was a political act [in and of itself]… So, in this case, it was really about creating a sensation that we’re looking at a phenomenon in this exhibition. And that phenomenon is this idea of living with resistance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Eleven and a Half Hours’ is at Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland through Sept. 23. \u003ca href=\"https://aggregatespacegallery.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "At Aggregate Space Gallery, Shaghayegh Cyrous curates a synergy of cultures.\r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Upon entering the darkness of \u003ca href=\"http://aggregatespacegallery.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aggregate Space Gallery\u003c/a> (ASG) in West Oakland, I’m immediately greeted by a bright, LED-lit image of two women’s profiles in a video installation titled “Although the Wind.” No detailed information is given — the two women face one another nearly motionless in a white room — and it feels impossible to discern who or where the artists are. In the video’s still, bare frame, viewers watch as both women blow air in and out of their mouths, cheeks puffed and breath heavy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The piece opens \u003cem>Eleven and a Half Hours\u003c/em>, a ongoing video exhibition at ASG centered on expression of resistance, action, and politics in the everyday lives of two Iranian and American women. A collaboration between Tehran-based artist \u003ca href=\"http://www.shirinabedinirad.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Shirin Abedinirad\u003c/a> and Oakland-based artist \u003ca href=\"http://www.dionneleestudio.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dionne Lee\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Eleven and a Half Hours\u003c/em> focuses on striking similarities between the two women’s everyday lives — despite their difference in location, culture, and race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13808331\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"'A Use for Rope or String,' Shirin Abedinirad and Dionne Lee.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13808331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-1180x787.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-960x640.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-240x160.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-375x250.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/A-Use-for-Rope-or-String-D-520x347.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Sirocco VIII’ by Shirin Abedinirad and ‘A Use for Rope or String,” by Dionne Lee. \u003ccite>(Aaron Rosenstreich)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I started doing a lot of video installations for my own artistic practice, and for this [exhibit] I wanted to continue that journey,” curator Shaghayegh Cyrous tells me. “I thought, maybe I can create a platform for an Iranian and American [to collaborate], especially after the travel ban. Maybe I can create an opportunity to go deeper into what’s going on in the daily life of two women and artists — two totally different persons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cyrous took on the project as a culmination of her participation in ASG’s annual gallery exhibitions internship, a program that trains emerging artists who want to learn about a curatorial practice or expand their understanding of a non-profit/artist-run space. Conrad Meyers, director of ASG, also notes that a key focal point of the exhibit is its confounding of the Iranian and American space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He shares, “A lot of [Cyrous’s] earlier ideas were about blurring lines between the two cultures, and making it feel like a conundrum…making Iran and Oakland feel like the same place. I really responded to that.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13808332\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--800x1200.jpg\" alt=\"'Before Getting On With the World Again,' Shirin Abedinirad and Dionne Lee.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1200\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13808332\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--1180x1770.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--960x1440.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--240x360.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--375x563.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the--520x780.jpg 520w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/09/Before-Getting-on-With-the-.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Before Getting On With the World Again,’ Shirin Abedinirad and Dionne Lee. \u003ccite>(Aaron Rosenstreich)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Throughout the exhibit, Cyrous also interlaces the law of inertia and how it determines movement — or lack thereof — in the world around us. “Although the Wind,” for instance, was inspired by the act of blowing into a flame, and the two possible consequences — the flame either rising, or dying out. For her, the idea of “stop or go” represented by the piece was a demonstration of Newton’s First Law in the exhibition, especially as it pertains to resistance. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[In a project for Jim Campbell], I was…filming people’s daily lives, researching their movement, and how that movement was created,” she explains. “I thought it was interesting that the law of inertia existed everywhere. Things that are moving stay moving unless a power stops them. So that’s resistance in a different version, I would say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a simplistic glance, the exhibit doesn’t necessarily read as overtly political; most pieces in the exhibit feature abstract imagery, such as Abedinirad’s broken reflection of herself in the Caspian Sea. Rather, Cyrous hopes for the juxtaposition of the two artists’ work, side by side, to challenge stereotypes associated with American and Iranian identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, visitors to ASG are often unable to discern which piece of art came from which artist. Cyrous shares that people actually often mistake Lee’s “A Use for Rope or String” (a repeating film of Lee playing Cat’s Cradle with a string) with Abedinirad’s “Sirocco VIII” (a snippet of Abedinirad’s bare lower legs), since many viewers don’t expect to see an Iranian woman in high heels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meyers also adds, “I think something that came up very early on was putting a black woman and an Iranian woman that cannot leave her home on video screens — that was a political act [in and of itself]… So, in this case, it was really about creating a sensation that we’re looking at a phenomenon in this exhibition. And that phenomenon is this idea of living with resistance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Eleven and a Half Hours’ is at Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland through Sept. 23. \u003ca href=\"https://aggregatespacegallery.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "iranian-born-composer-sahba-aminikia-bridges-worlds-in-extreme-times",
"title": "Iranian-Born Composer Sahba Aminikia Bridges Worlds in Extreme Times",
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"content": "\u003cp>As a western-trained classical musician who grew up in a musical household filled with traditional Persian music, I have a special place in my heart for any artist who draws upon their own heritage while creating a relevant voice in our increasingly complex and plural world. Iranian-born composer Sahba Aminikia is just that kind of artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/01/18/first-100-days-art-in-the-age-of-trump/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12667846\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1.jpg\" alt=\"100Days_300x300z\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1.jpg 300w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-240x240.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-50x50.jpg 50w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the middle of rehearsals for the 10 works that Aminikia composed, arranged and presented at \u003ca href=\"http://kronosquartet.org/kronos-festival-2017\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">last month’s annual Kronos Festival\u003c/a>, airports across the country were rocked by chaos and protests in response to President Trump’s travel ban against refugees and visa- and green card-holders from seven Muslim-majority countries — including Aminikia’s own home country of Iran. Aminikia, a refugee himself, came to the United States in 2006 to study music, a pursuit inconceivable in Iran given his Baha’i faith. (One of Iran’s religious minority groups, the Baha’i face serious discrimination and are deprived of basic human rights, including the \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/27/bahai-student-expelled-iranian-university\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">right to education\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Aminikia, the ban felt not only personal, but against all he holds dear in America. “It’s inhumane and has nothing to do with the human values that this country holds,” Aminikia told me. “We are going through an extreme time and if I can create that [cultural] bridge, that serves my purpose as a human being.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12867059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1438px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12867059\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_.jpg\" alt=\"Sahba Aminikia in rehearsal with Kronos Quartet's David Harrington.\" width=\"1438\" height=\"809\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_.jpg 1438w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1438px) 100vw, 1438px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sahba Aminikia in rehearsal with Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington. \u003ccite>(Omid Zoufonoun)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Kronos Performing Arts Association commissioned Aminikia to compose a 30-minute sacred work to stand as a centerpiece of the Kronos Festival, Aminikia reached out to the founding director of the Afghanistan National Music Institute to suggest a collaboration combining the recorded voices of more than two dozen Afghan students with live singing by the San Francisco Girls Chorus. The result was ‘Music of Spheres,’ interwoven with the four string voices of the Kronos Quartet. To bridge worlds on opposite sides of the globe, Aminikia immediately went about selecting Persian lullabies for the project because, he says, “Everyone, no matter what nationality you are coming from or what color you are, or what culture you come from, you are always bound to lullabies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the conductor of the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, I had recently spoken to Aminikia about commissioning an orchestral work specifically because he embodies exactly that kind of Janus-like figure, straddling multiple cultural realities, paying them respect while maintaining his own voice as kind of musical bridge. Before our own collaboration would come to fruition, I was able to capture Aminikia in the video above, bridging these voices with the Kronos Quartet in a symbiosis that is rare to find, and impossible to force into creation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"Q.Logo.Break\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As a western-trained classical musician who grew up in a musical household filled with traditional Persian music, I have a special place in my heart for any artist who draws upon their own heritage while creating a relevant voice in our increasingly complex and plural world. Iranian-born composer Sahba Aminikia is just that kind of artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/01/18/first-100-days-art-in-the-age-of-trump/\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12667846\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1.jpg\" alt=\"100Days_300x300z\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1.jpg 300w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-240x240.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-50x50.jpg 50w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/100Days_300x300z-1-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the middle of rehearsals for the 10 works that Aminikia composed, arranged and presented at \u003ca href=\"http://kronosquartet.org/kronos-festival-2017\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">last month’s annual Kronos Festival\u003c/a>, airports across the country were rocked by chaos and protests in response to President Trump’s travel ban against refugees and visa- and green card-holders from seven Muslim-majority countries — including Aminikia’s own home country of Iran. Aminikia, a refugee himself, came to the United States in 2006 to study music, a pursuit inconceivable in Iran given his Baha’i faith. (One of Iran’s religious minority groups, the Baha’i face serious discrimination and are deprived of basic human rights, including the \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/27/bahai-student-expelled-iranian-university\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">right to education\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Aminikia, the ban felt not only personal, but against all he holds dear in America. “It’s inhumane and has nothing to do with the human values that this country holds,” Aminikia told me. “We are going through an extreme time and if I can create that [cultural] bridge, that serves my purpose as a human being.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12867059\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1438px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12867059\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_.jpg\" alt=\"Sahba Aminikia in rehearsal with Kronos Quartet's David Harrington.\" width=\"1438\" height=\"809\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_.jpg 1438w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-960x540.jpg 960w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-240x135.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-375x211.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Sahba.David_-520x293.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1438px) 100vw, 1438px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sahba Aminikia in rehearsal with Kronos Quartet’s David Harrington. \u003ccite>(Omid Zoufonoun)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Kronos Performing Arts Association commissioned Aminikia to compose a 30-minute sacred work to stand as a centerpiece of the Kronos Festival, Aminikia reached out to the founding director of the Afghanistan National Music Institute to suggest a collaboration combining the recorded voices of more than two dozen Afghan students with live singing by the San Francisco Girls Chorus. The result was ‘Music of Spheres,’ interwoven with the four string voices of the Kronos Quartet. To bridge worlds on opposite sides of the globe, Aminikia immediately went about selecting Persian lullabies for the project because, he says, “Everyone, no matter what nationality you are coming from or what color you are, or what culture you come from, you are always bound to lullabies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the conductor of the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, I had recently spoken to Aminikia about commissioning an orchestral work specifically because he embodies exactly that kind of Janus-like figure, straddling multiple cultural realities, paying them respect while maintaining his own voice as kind of musical bridge. Before our own collaboration would come to fruition, I was able to capture Aminikia in the video above, bridging these voices with the Kronos Quartet in a symbiosis that is rare to find, and impossible to force into creation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"Q.Logo.Break\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
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},
"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"planet-money": {
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"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/reveal300px.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 16
},
"link": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
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},
"science-friday": {
"id": "science-friday",
"title": "Science Friday",
"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Science-Friday-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"snap-judgment": {
"id": "snap-judgment",
"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
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