Tehrangeles

Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour

New York. Pantheon Books. 2024. 308 pages.

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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Basmah Sakrani: You’ve mentioned this novel started as a joke in 2011. How did it transform into a real project? What compelled you to tell us these stories about the Milanis?

Porochista Khakpour: I think, eventually, it is hard to dedicate your life to a joke. Once I got deeper into the chapters, I realized if Tehrangeles was going to indeed be my second novel I was going to have to take the project seriously. As it turns out, my real second novel, The Last Illusion, got sold, so I had many more years with Tehrangeles and that in itself made me sort of grow up with it. In the end this book convinced me to give it the best of my attention. This was the first time a project itself convinced me to become interested in it, rather than me initiating the attention. I would put it away and then I’d find myself thinking about it and obsessing even. I am interested in pop culture always, and this was a book that really held a mirror to our pop culture of the last decade and ultimately—when 2020 became its final setting—the pop culture of the early pandemic era.

BS: From the Cardi B impersonators to the K-pop references, pop culture is a vibrant part of this novel. What part of pop culture do you struggle with? What do you love? Did these likes and dislikes work their way into the novel?

PK: I love pop culture and always find myself immersed in it in some way or another. As a journalist my interest was very much pop culture arts and entertainment, so I love when it works its way into my fiction. I can’t imagine it not. I don’t really believe in writers who write realist works set in our day and age, and then omit pop cultural markers.

BS: Tehrangeles appears to be a light read, but you still grapple with very deep issues like race, identity, pandemic politics, and more. In the process of writing this book, were there any emotional barriers you had to overcome?

PK: Those are really the issues I care about the most—I’ve been an activist for chunks of my life. It’s hard for me to ever write anything truly light, so even when I am in a comic mode there’s commentary—while I love satire so much, as it’s always wedded to big issues. I think the biggest barrier I had to overcome was obviously the class one. I find it quite nauseating to think about rich people, much less inhabit them wholly. The way they see the world—especially the pandemic—really horrifies me.

The exceptions to this were Mina and Homa, whose moral compass could still be detected. They were my anchors and that was how I hung in there emotionally. But otherwise I had to use dark comedy to explore some of the worst of our era, and that’s where satire’s irreverence is key. Really using that as a tool, whether it’s to shed light on a problem or as an actual instrument for change, you have to dedicate yourself to truly exploring that other side that you resent.

BS: That’s a neat craft technique—using characters you identify with as emotional anchors to push forward with the ones you don’t. In the acknowledgments you talk about being a Rodeo Drive shopgirl, watching wealthy Iranians buy outrageously expensive handbags. How did that experience find its way into the book? How did it shape your upbringing as an Iranian?

PK: It was a pretty terrible experience, I have to say. I worked almost directly across the street from the famed Bijan store (I’ve written about that in a Salon essay that appeared in my collection Brown Album). I knew the area to some extent, as even we poorer Iranians did sightseeing in that area. The part of LA I was from never got much of the tourist crowd. But when I was growing up, my parents loved to show me the affluent Iranians of LA and what their lifestyles looked like. I never imagined I’d be working among them or actually for them as a young adult. I had worked so many retail jobs at that point but never in an area where Iranians were so visible and in so many ways a desired demographic. Then considering my positioning, which was a presence like theirs except distinctly an outsider one, just being there in a customer service role gave me a unique lens. Iranians don’t always respect their shopgirls, especially when they understand that the shopgirl is also Iranian. They often expressed that they were embarrassed for me. I tried to laugh it off, but what could I do? They were there to buy handbags that cost more than what I made in a year. Anyway, I wish I had known at the time I had this book in me—it would have made the time pass more easily!

BS: I loved that phrasing you just used, about having the book within you. When did you know you were a writer? Was there an aha moment?

PK: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It was the first “thing I want to be when I grow up.” I never had any other interests. At age four, I was saying, “I want to be an author when I grow up.”

BS: I was struck by how the novel began with a poem about Tehrangeles and how it ended with Roxanna’s manic stream of consciousness. I’d love to know the rationale behind this structural choice of bookending the novel.

PK: That first part is meant to be a prologue—“a note to our viewers,” it now says. I wanted it to be like Tumblr poetry at best, although coming from Mina, my most reliable narrator in the book, I also wanted the poem/prologue to have some authority and purpose. And I wanted Mina to introduce the concept of “Tehrangeles” before we entered the destabilizing world of Roxanna and her scams and schemes. The ending was one of my first ideas for the book—the Valley-Girl-stream-of-consciousness mirroring Joyce’s Molly Bloom chapter in Ulysses. It just felt right—it’s actually the first time you get the book on Roxanna’s terms completely and it felt both horrifying and liberating to have her confront identity finally and so thoroughly in the way she does there.

BS: Speaking of Roxanna, her secret about her identity is at the center of this novel. But on closer reading, every member of the Milani clan has their own secret about what they believe to be true about themselves. What’s your secret?

PK: I’ve never been big on secrets. I’m not into mystery and I tend to overshare. These secrets in the book felt so anxiety-inducing to me. To hide things or live a lie just feels very much against my very essence.

BS: Ali becomes Al, Banafsheh becomes Violet. As someone with a “hard to pronounce” name, your handling of this issue in Tehrangeles resonated deeply with me. What’s the wildest way your name has been pronounced? Did you ever want another one?

PK: I’ve heard it all. Truly. I never wanted another name because names in English sounded pretty weird to me too. My name was also unusual to Iranians (it’s an ancient Zoroastrian name, the daughter of Zarathushtra) so I was used to everyone panicking over it.

BS: There are four daughters in Tehrangeles, each a formidable spirit. Which of the four sisters did you enjoy writing the most?

PK: This answer will not seem intuitive but strangely enough, Haylee. She was the most different from me and she really, for a while, had such a villain’s arc. Diving into her scary world of conspiracy theories and then her MAGA ideology was horrifying. But it also became somewhat fun, like writing straight-up horror. I always felt like that about Little Women’s Amy too (whom Haylee is loosely based on). Like Amy, Haylee was deliciously terrible at times and I lived for her sections. I would feel more relaxed when she was centered as I identified with her the least and therefore her wild behaviors were low stakes to me. I got to enjoy her doing things I would never do. Haylee is terribly lost but unapologetically so—she would make a very dangerous adult, so perhaps her saving grace is that she’s barely a teenager.

BS: In a novel about daughters, as a reader, you expect some waxing and waning about mothers and daughters, but it seems a deliberate choice to make Homa Milani a reticent side character. I’m curious to know—why this choice? (Personally, I wanted more of Homa, so I’m hoping for a prequel here!)

PK: I have a sequel I am working on and there is much more of her there. I think the issue with Homa here is that she gets less of the spotlight because that’s honestly her preference. She’d rather not be involved as much as possible. Her husband and daughters are already too much. She likes to mind her own business. So I had to honor her that way. Even though I liked her very much too. I respected her so much actually.

BS: A sequel—that’s exciting! From a novel construction standpoint, how much will Tehrangeles influence the sequel? Will we see a similar setting, suite of characters, voices?

PK: Yes, the Tehrangeles sequel, as I have planned right now, will follow the same characters and same setting but with a different focus in theme. Of course this book has to succeed to some degree for there even to be a sequel, so who knows.

BS: The material world of this novel is lavish, full of luxury brands and high-value experiences. What was your process of diving into this world, to make it so real on the page? How did that vibe with your own lifestyle?

PK: Gosh, I did not know much and had to research a lot. I loved how in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama you were just inundated with luxury brands to the point where the brands became a key element of the prose. I didn’t go quite that far but I wanted the setting to have all kinds of over-the-top labels. In a few instances I barely knew what the thing I was describing looked like. It was a bit of a leap of faith at times. But it was very fun to be sitting on my crappy old IKEA chair or Target couch writing about these young women lounging in their Balenciaga and Chanel on Bentley leather couches and Fendi sofas.

BS: Finally, what’s the one thing you want readers to take away from this novel?

PK: I never really have that “one thing” but I do hope readers see the book as promoting a kind of grace. I do want young people, especially messy young people who find themselves constantly on the wrong side of everything, to feel a bit of hope. I think we live in an era in which most of us, especially young people, are very hard on each other and the fact is nobody has life figured out. The times themselves make it very hard and social media adds even more challenges. I think getting my girls to sincerely explore accountability and then to extend grace and forgiveness was really important to me. I love the idea that people can change—and I believe in it. I’ve seen it happen. So I wanted to let these young people hit their lows and then examine what “rising above” would look like. You don’t need this novel to be a hero’s story. Sometimes just rejecting the temptations of antihero-ness is something. Before you learn to love yourself, first you need to consider turning off the tap of hating yourself.

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POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR was born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area. She is the critically acclaimed author of two previous novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion; a memoir, Sick; and a collection of essays, Brown Album. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, ELLE, and many other publications. She lives in New York City. Find her on Instagram @pchza.

BASMAH SAKRANI writes about diaspora and loss. She is a 2024 Anthony Veasna So Scholar in Fiction, and a finalist for the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction. Her work is featured in The Adroit Journal, Best Small Fictions 2022, Baltimore Review, and more. Basmah works in advertising in New York City. Find her on Instagram @basmahwrites.

Via CRAFT