By Hasti Jafari, Center Graduate Research Fellow
At long last, the transition from the COVID-19 outbreak to reflecting and processing our collective trauma has arrived, and Porochista Khakpour’s chaotic, sparkly, and most-recent novel is the perfect way to do just that. The plot of Tehrangeles follows an ultra-rich LA-based Iranian immigrant family’s version of the pandemic which involves conspiracy theories, eating disorders, mega-parties with Britney on the guestlist, as well as queer closets, and secrets of all shapes, colors, and sizes, including the suspicious shade-wearing family cat that adorns the cover of Khakpour’s 2024 novel.
Born in Tehran and raised in Los Angeles, Khakpour is known for her explorations of identity and displacement in her bold, raw, and deeply introspective books of both fiction and nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in prestigious publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. Her books include Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007 –a New York Times Editor’s Choice), The Last Illusion (2014), Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity (2020), and Sick: A Memoir (2018). Khakpour’s writing–in both fiction and nonfiction–showcases her talent for tackling complex and challenging subjects through her unique, incisive, and non-conforming voice.
Khakpour says that she, herself, had a rather crazy experience with COVID-19 and it became the mechanism for channeling her latest writing. “I had received some encouraging news about my health in February 2020,” she said (she had had very challenging experiences and periods with Lyme disease as documented in her book, Sick). I had exactly one month to be somewhat well when the entire world was also in its before-times. Tickets to Europe were cheaper than tickets to LA from NYC around then, so I decided to fly to Europe to see family and friends in March 2020. It was a crazy time to be traveling. I watched the lights go out on the Eiffel Tower, London go from ease to panic, Edinburgh transform overnight. . . when I arrived back to JFK airport they were taking our temperatures in line,” she says. But dealing with chronic illness and having been bedridden for many years, Khakpour was better equipped than most to handle what was coming in the pandemic. She says the worst was dealing with the loss of seven of her friends due to COVID-19 and its fallout and complications.
Khakpour identifies a fascinating coincidence between the writing of her most recent novel Tehrangeles and the writer, Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women; both writers were advised by men in the publishing industry to write “more realistic pieces with more women characters.” Khakpour began Tehrangeles by writing a parody of such a request and the result became a novel in a genre, she said, “she wouldn’t normally write.” The result is an intellectually stimulating, playful, and daring novel that reflects her distinctive style and voice.
The driving engine of Tehrangeles is the second oldest of the Milani sisters, Roxanna-Vanna or “Roxi”: the messiest, most unapologetic teen influencer imaginable. In order to familiarize herself with Roxi’s generation, Khakpour had to immerse herself in their natural habitat: TikTok and the rest of social media and take their concerns seriously. The most challenging part of it for her, she says, was doing research on MAGA-based conspiracy theories and paranoid ideologies because the youngest Milani sister “descends into MAGA-land” at one point. To Khakpour, Roxi is a typical “Persian Princess” often seen and well-depicted in the Iranian diaspora, particularly on social media. Khakpour points out that we are living in an era where we see a lot of white nationalism and pushback against “wokeness.” “I think with Roxi, she tends to sway the way culture sways–she’d do anything to be popular. And so does the diaspora, all too often. I think there are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, our diaspora, in this era, feels to me, very lost. The way new monarchists behave online for example. All the normalization of all kinds of bigotry. It’s very sad. And yet perfect for satire of course,” she adds. In her character, Roxi, Khakpour portrays her flashy sense of fashion, her secret nationality and party-throwing tendencies in the middle of a pandemic, which are also the perfect opportunity to reflect on shame. “It’s both horrifying and liberating to witness her completely dismiss not one, but two cultures” that, as Khakpour beautifully puts it, “shame young women heavily.”
Given how characters like Roxi are often portrayed in the media, it’s also incredible how endearing this character ends up being, despite her insufferable traits, especially considering she has a dark homophobic side to her, to the horror of Mina, her closeted queer sister. Mina, the liberal, intelligent, chronically-ill third daughter, is the voice of reason in all the insanity that is the Milani lifestyle, and says the author, the most similar character to Khakpour. “I think I would be most like Mina if I was a young person today. I tend to be online constantly, I love K-pop, and, of course, queerness. I really wish I had grown up in this era. I think a lot more of us would be non-binary. Just the option to live outside the binary seems so liberating,” she adds. Mina’s exploration of her queerness adds yet another satisfactory layer of breaking free of shame. “I believe in Mina so much,” Khakpour says.
Homa, the mother of the family who never fully adapts to her new life in the US, offers an incredible opportunity to explore themes surrounding immigration and the experience of the Iranian diaspora. “Being an immigrant and refugee in the 1980s was not easy and very much shaped me. I’ve only been an American for half my life—exactly half, as I was sworn in here in Brooklyn at age 23. I very much recall learning English in elementary school and fighting to fit in, and, of course, I recall the rampant xenophobia in the US. I think some young people today are unaware of that era and so they don’t really have a sense of the struggles of those of us who are older. The trauma is very particular to a few specific generations, but it has, of course, tainted so much all the way down,” Khakpour says. Capturing Homa’s voice, Khakpour courageously writes an entire section of the book in Persian knowing full well that a large number of her readers won’t understand the language. Homa’s story is a tribute to the adversities she and other immigrants face. Khakpour’s essay collection Brown Album explores these themes of alienation, belonging, and un-belonging in greater depth with both poignancy and humor.
For the Iranian community a lot has happened since the start of the pandemic, amidst all the changes. Khakpour’s process, however, hasn’t changed much. “I’ve never really had a break from adversity, whether political and personal,” she says. “The intersections between them have been ongoing, as has my ability to write through and with them. I think every writer needs to know how to do this or else the world will break you,” she adds. Khakpour is optimistic and even expresses the possibility that Tehrangeles will have a sequel. “I worked on it well into when the #womanlifefreedom movement was happening and protests were erupting daily in Iran, and throughout the world. That whole movement will be the subject for my sequel, which I’ve already begun,” she says. There is also the exciting prospect of Tehrangeles being adapted for the screen. Khakpour’s latest project, at the moment, is writing a memoir about her beloved dog, “Cosmo” who sadly recently passed away (pictured with Khakpour). As for Tehrangeles, it is available for pre-order and will be out June 11th for anyone who wants to wash away the memory of the actual 2020 with a more shimmery and glitterier version of the dark year.
We congratulate Khakpour on her latest literary achievement, and hope you’ll follow her on Instagram @pchza; to learn about her other projects and books, go to her website at: porochistakhakpour.com.
With a Trace: Documenting and Sharing the Experiences of the Iranian Diaspora 