Interview by Basmah Sakrani, CRAFT
In a writing workshop during my undergraduate years in Pakistan, we were asked to share our favorite books and why we liked them. I talked about Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, and the author’s masterful depiction of diaspora stories, the quiet moments of reckoning about identity and home. And though it’s been nearly fifteen years, the negative reaction of another student has stayed with me. I was met with condescension and derision, classification of South-Asian literature in English by writers living outside of South Asia as “ethnic lit” and “diaspora lit.” There was discussion about how this type of writing did not reflect the true realities of South Asianness and was over-the-top with mentions of mango and monsoons. At the time, I did not possess the clarity of thought to argue back, to posit that the diaspora experience was an indelible part of the South-Asian experience, to assert that literature which illustrated the nuances of those who moved away was as relevant as literature about the ones who stayed. But I believed it deep down, and over the years, that belief has strengthened.
As I read Porochista Khakpour’s Tehrangeles, I thought about that classroom interaction again and again—it made me want to travel back in time and hold up Tehrangeles as proof of diaspora stories that are rich and full and funny and relatable. With the Milanis, Khakpour has created a family of Iranian-American characters who are flawed yet appealing, their imperfections making them as accessible as our own family members. In Roxanna’s hubris and Violet’s irrational sweet tooth, I saw myself. In Haylee’s gullibility, I recognized my fourteen-year-old niece. In Mina’s dedication to justice, I met my sister. In Homa’s retreat away from her boisterous family, I thought of my mother.
“I love the idea that people can change,” Khakpour tells me in this interview, “and I believe in it.” That is her lasting message to her readers, an infectious one that makes me want to believe that the student who decried diaspora fiction all those years ago now understands its importance in the literary canon—one that Khakpour has enriched with this delightful novel.
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