I rarely get through a work of nonfiction, but this book was one I could not put down. Moaveni is so honest in her portrayal of her struggles with life straddling two separate and often opposing cultures. Her explanations of the complexities of life in modern Iran were eye-opening, to say the least. I am officially very, very interested in the world she inhabits. A seriously great book. ( )

I kept hoping for this book to draw me in more than it did. Moaveni's observations were interesting enough, but it seemed that the text was rather scattered. For the most part, it was not told in chronological order, but by topic, which she strayed from fairly often. Granted, it's difficult to keep essentially politics and gender issues separated when discussing the Islamic Republic of Iran...so why did she format it like that? I feel I would have gotten more out of her memoir had she addressed her life chronologically as I never had a clear sense of what was happening and when in relation to other events.

It took me what seemed like FOREVER to read this all the way through. It rarely hooked me enough to try to steal more chances to keep reading. Yet I never wanted to give up on it. What kept me going was learning about all the different people she meets along the way, their attitudes (as well as hers towards them), and the roles they play in Iranian or Iranian-American society. These portraits are what provide a more diverse insight into Persian culture. My favorite experiences were those with her grandfather, which in the end provided a beautiful framework to her time in Iran. I also loved his use of poetry as well as the poetry epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, and I am currently hunting down a translation of the Simorgh.

This is not the clearest perspective you'll find on modern-day Iran, but it does provide an intriguing glimpse into a world that's still largely misunderstood by American society. If Moaveni ever went back and wrote a memoir on how Iran has changed in the last ten years, I would read it. ( )

I came so close to giving this five stars, but if I'm being honest with myself, the fifth star would just have been representative of my personal bias toward books with a cultural anthropology bent.

I really enjoyed this book, but am a bit hesitant to recommend it because I can easily imagine the author coming across as whiny and irritating to others. What would be your reaction to a character who is constantly -- seriously, incessantly -- asking herself what it means to be Iranian and obsessing over the ways in which she is not Iranian "enough"? Surprisingly, my answer turned out to be, "Fascinated."

The author grew up in California, the daughter of parents who exiled themselves from Iran after the 1979 revolution. She returned to Iran two decades later and worked there as a journalist. I found her constant parsing of the nature of "Iranian-ness" to be much more interesting in print than I think it would have been in conversation, and it's peppered with first-person analysis of the ways in which young people instigated changes in the system of government through tiny, incremental rebellions -- hence the title. I'm not sure there's a name for this type of change, where you wear lipstick even though it's forbidden until it's de facto permitted. Then you start wearing navy headscarves instead of black, and then maybe medium blue. And it's not just you, it's everyone of your generation, slowly turning the tide.

So, who wants to go visit Tehran with me? ( )

Overall I like the voice of this author. I appreciate her conflicts of "normal" adolescence and young adult-hood of longing for a "home" and stability. She gives a nice summary of the political conflicts at the time, mixed with her personal dealings of the situation.

I bought this book in 2005 and since then I feel like the market of contemporary Iranian/Persian memoires has been saturated. I would like to see more Arab/Arab American perspectives of current events - and not only from those of the Islamic faith. ( )

Azadeh Moaveni was born in the United States in 1976 to Iranian parents. As part of the Iranian diaspora community in Palo Alto, California, Moaveni experienced the pleasures and pains of being part of two cultures; however, she struggled with never quite feeling that she understood her family’s country of origin. In 1999, she moves to Iran to work as a journalist, and to discover her home.

Lipstick Jihad serves as both a personal story of Moaveni’s search for identity and an analysis of Iranian culture and politics at the dawn of the 21st century. Her experiences are at times disturbing, as you might expect, but they’re also sometimes surprisingly funny. Moaveni provides plenty of insights into Iranian politics and culture, which makes it timely reading right now.

This book is, of course, only one woman’s story, and so it’s not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of the situation in Iran. It is, however, a good, comprehensive look at one woman’s journey to discover her home and herself. I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )