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WORK TITLE: The Lion Women of Tehran
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WEBSITE: https://marjankamali.com/
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COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Born in Turkey.
EDUCATION:University of California, Berkeley, B.A. (English literature); Columbia University, M.B.A.; New York University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and teacher. GrubStreet, writing teacher; Brandeis University, teacher of English literature; Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University.
AWARDS:Indie Next Pick 2019; NPR Best Books of 2019; Prix Attitude in France for The Stationery Shop 2021; Harvard University Iranian Gala Honoree; National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship 2022.
WRITINGS
Contributor of essays and fiction to periodicals and anthologies, including Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books. Evergreen Review, and Tremors: New Fiction.
SIDELIGHTS
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Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, Marjan Kamali grew up around the world in places like Iran, Kenya, Germany, the U.S., Switzerland, and Australia. With degrees from Berkeley, Columbia, and New York University, she is based near Boston, Massachusetts where she teaches writing. She writes about Persian-American families, political turmoil in Iran, friendship, and betrayal. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Kamali’s debut 2013 novel, Together Tea, is a mother-daughter story of generational love and confrontation, set in the mid-1990s in New York. Iranian American Mina is in her mid-twenties and fed up with her mother, Darya’s, matchmaking. A gifted mathematician who had to give up her dreams of being a professor when she was set up in an arranged marriage in Iran, Darya makes spreadsheets for possible husbands for the disillusioned Mina, who would rather paint than finish her MBA. Darya misses prerevolutionary Iran and travels with Mina to visit their homeland on a trip that brings the mother and daughter closer. “Mina and Darya gain sympathy for each other’s struggles. Sparkling dialogue and warm characters make Kamali’s debut novel perfect for book clubs,” declared a writer in Kirkus Reviews. Deborah Donovan remarked in Booklist: “Humor, romance, and tradition all combine in an enjoyable chick-lit tale, Iranian style.”
After writing Together Tea, Kamali told Joanne Carota in Solstice that she was heartened to learn that readers had not known much about the Iran-Iraq war before reading her book and could identify with the characters fleeing the country. She said: “They didn’t think they’d see their own fears and desires in a family from Iran. I am deeply moved when readers see the characters as themselves. I did not know the immigration story could strike a chord for so many. These reactions are heartening.”
Lovers are separated by sixty years in The Stationery Shop, Kamali’s tale of loss and reconciliation. In Tehran in 1953, 17-year-old idealistic Roya meets political activist Bahman Aslan at Mr. Fakhri’s stationery and book shop and fall in love. Bahman proposes and Roya accepts, but Bahman’s mother opposes the marriage, instead selecting for her son a woman politically connected to the shah. Roya and Bahman agree to meet in the town square to elope, but the beginning of a coup d’etat intrudes and Bahman never shows up. Roya moves on with her life, going to school in California, marrying an American, and raising a family. Sixty years have passed when fate brings Roya and Bahman back together, and he has a chance to explain what happened so long ago. A critic in Kirkus Reviews called the book “A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love,” while Martha Waters remarked in Booklist: “Simultaneously briskly paced and deeply moving, this will appeal to fans of Khaled Hosseini.”
Kamali addresses friendship, political upheaval, and opportunities for women in Iran in The Lion Women of Tehran. In the 1950s, seven-year-old Ellie lives a life of luxury until her father dies and she and her mother must move to a poorer part of town. Ellie soon meets Homa at school and they become fast friends. But when Ellie’s mother remarries, they return to their elite life and Ellie loses touch with Homa. In high school, Ellie meets Homa again, but they are very different people—Ellie is looking forward to marriage, while Homa wants to attend university to become a judge to right the country’s wrongs. But over the years, Iran becomes more political, the classes divide, and women are losing their rights. In Booklist, Lillian Dabney remarked: “Kamali’s narrative highlights the struggles of women in Iran and explores relationship challenges between friends and family.” Despite the lack of a plot, “Kamali sustains the reader’s interest by exploring the contrasts and sustained connection between the two central characters,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer.
In an interview with Lauren Feeney at Lexington Observer, Kamali said the inspiration for The Lion Women of Tehran came from reconnecting with her own childhood friend after many years: “I wondered again about the different directions our lives had taken. Here I was, an author in America, and there she was working at a human rights organization in Iran. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the friends we make when we are young shape us. Their influence lasts even if the friendship doesn’t.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2013, Deborah Donovan, review of Together Tea, p. 69; May 15, 2019, Martha Waters, review of The Stationery Shop, p. 31; June 1, 2024, Lillian Dabney, review of The Lion Women of Tehran, p. 30.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2013, review of Together Tea; April 15, 2019, review of The Stationery Shop.
Publishers Weekly, May 13, 2024, review of The Lion Women of Tehran, p. 74.
ONLINE
Lexington Observer, https://lexobserver.org/ (August 14, 2024), Lauren Feeney, “Q&A with Marjan Kamali, Author of The Lion Women of Tehran.”
Marjan Kamali Homepage, https://marjankamali.com/ (November 1, 2024).
Solstice, https://solsticelitmag.org/ (winter 2017), Joanne Carota, “Marjan Kamali Interview.”
Marjan Kamali is the award-winning author of The Lion Women of Tehran, an instant national bestseller, The Stationery Shop, a national and international bestseller, and Together Tea, a Massachusetts Book Award finalist. She is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.
Marjan’s novels are published in translation in more than 25 languages (22 languages for The Stationery Shop and 10 languages for Together Tea). Her essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Marjan holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University, and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from New York University. Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, she spent her childhood in Turkey, Iran, Germany, Kenya, and the U.S. Marjan is currently the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. She lives in the Boston area with her family.
Marjan Kamali
Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence
www.marjankamali.com
Marjan Kamali is the author of three novels, including The Stationery Shop (2019) — a national and international bestseller translated into 21 languages — Together Tea (2013) — a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist translated into 9 languages — and The Lion Women of Tehran (2024), which comes out on July 2nd.
Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, Marjan spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She received her degree in English literature from UC Berkeley, her Master of Business Administration from Columbia University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University. She is the 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award.
Listen to an interview with the National Endowment of the Arts about Marjan’s work.
Publications
Stationery Shop book cover
The Lion Women of Tehran (novel), Gallery/Simon&Schuster, 2024
"Mina vs. Saddam" (short piece), Evergreen Review, 2023
"Refuge, Gossip, and Revelation on the Private Book Club Circuit" (essay), Literary Hub, 2020
The Stationery Shop (novel), Gallery/Simon&Schuster, 2019
Together Tea (novel), Ecco/HarperCollins, 2013
“Tehran Party” short story in the anthology Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers, The University of Arkansas Press, 2013
“In Iran, Among the Beauty-Obsessed Women,” The Wall Street Journal, 2013
“Immigrant Worries: On the New World Novels of Dina Nayeri and Jessica Soffer,” The Los Angeles Review of Books, 2013
“The Gift,” short story in the anthology Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, The University of Arkansas Press, 2006
Awards
National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship 2022
Harvard University Iranian Gala Honoree
Prix Attitude in France for The Stationery Shop 2021
NPR Best Books of 2019
Indie Next Pick 2019
Pushcart Prize Nominee, Solstice Literary Magazine, 2018
Interview
Marjan Kamali Interview
MARJAN KAMALI
author of Together Tea
Interviewed by Joanne Carota
Carota: You have lived across the globe–Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, U.S., Switzerland, and Australia. How have your global experiences influenced your characters? For instance, in Together Tea mother and daughter, Darya and Mina, shift into Persian-American familial roles. How do you think their relationship would differ if you had chosen to set the entire story in Iran?
Kamali: I think living in so many different cultures has shown me one thing: people are the same everywhere you go. Much as some politicians may want to promote a narrative of a “clash of civilizations,” my experience of living in five continents is that most people want the same things: love, a sense of belonging, safety, and the chance to fulfill one’s potential. The way society expects an individual to fulfill these wants may differ but those differences are more generational than cultural. In Together Tea, Darya grew up in Iran at a time when women fulfilled traditional roles of getting married, having children, and putting aside personal ambition. Darya was raised to believe that parents know best about everything including who is the best life partner for their child. Mina, her daughter, has been steeped in the American—and increasingly global—view of an individual’s will overcoming destiny.
If the novel had been set entirely in Iran, I’m not sure if the mother-daughter relationship would have differed all that much. To be sure, Mina has been exposed to particularly American values of independence and self-discovery that are mystifying to Darya, and the dating culture in Iran would have been much more restrictive for Mina than the dating culture in the U.S. But because Mina is still bound by the values of her parents even in America and because what she’s fighting is more a clash of generations than cultures, the fundamental tension between mother and daughter would still exist even if they’d never left Iran. The irony here is that Darya is arguing for acquiescence to tradition and destiny while at the same time making spreadsheets in Excel to find her daughter the perfect husband. She doesn’t realize (in the beginning of the novel) just how much she is micromanaging the process.
Carota: Initially, writers share symbiotic relationships with their stories, subsequently releasing custody to their readers. Since its publication in 2013, has your understanding of Together Tea shifted by seeing the story through the eyes of your readers?
Kamali: I’ve had direct contact with readers at talks, readings, through emails/letters, and especially at book club visits in person and via Skype. There is nothing like spending a few hours as the author guest of a book club for a writer to truly understand their readers. What I’ve learned from these visits is that there’s a lot in Together Tea that I didn’t even realize I was addressing – so much of it was subconscious. For example, readers often say they love how food is used in the novel to show both the culture and the bonds between family members. I did not set out to include so much food—it’s just impossible for me to write about an Iranian family without including the preparation of food and the huge Persian feasts that occur at parties and family get-togethers! Readers also tell me the book has revealed a lot to them about Iranians and Iranian-Americans. Most did not know about the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, most did not think they’d identify so strongly with characters fleeing a country. They didn’t think they’d see their own fears and desires in a family from Iran. I am deeply moved when readers see the characters as themselves. I did not know the immigration story could strike a chord for so many. These reactions are heartening.
Some reactions are less heartening and show just how far our culture has gone in demonizing immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. I have received a few letters from readers in middle America thanking me because after reading my novel they no longer harbor hate for all Iranians and/or all Muslims; they now see them as humans just like their own families. While I am grateful for these letters, I am also greatly saddened that it took reading a novel to see that. I look forward to the day when that’s not a revelation.
Carota: Solstice Literary Magazine has published an excerpt from your new novel, At the Center of it All. The novel involves coming of age in pre-coup Iran of 1953.
. . . But politics had seeped from outside the school walls into every classroom. The students had become divided, much like the country, . . .
Do you see similar shades of division in the current U.S. political climate?
Kamali: Yes. It was one thing to write my first novel with much of the backdrop being the Iranian revolution of 1979. I knew in writing Together Tea that many of my readers would remember the time period. The events of 1979 were certainly fresh in my own mind. But in writing my second novel, partially set against the backdrop of the 1953 coup in Iran, I was wading into much less familiar territory. As I researched the political divisions in 1953 Iran, I was surprised that what may have seemed like far-away historical events in a far-away land were actually no different than the divisions we are experiencing right now in contemporary America. In Iran right before the coup, there was the same sense of one side being completely convinced they were right and dismissing and demonizing the other side. There was the same bleeding of politics into just about everything, of families becoming obsessed and divided by their political views.
Irreparable chasms get created when family members are so strongly entrenched in their beliefs. Relationships are broken and while they can be repaired, sometimes the damage is done and the cost is great both personally and for the community. Writing about 1953 Iran showed me how much of the past feeds the present and how political themes/regimes have an eternal recurrence.
Carota: How do you focus on writing and reading when so many urgent developments have taken hold across the globe in the last several months?
Kamali: It’s not easy to focus on writing and reading especially when the political developments threaten your sense of safety and hit so close to home. I see my friends wallow in despair after reading the news and I have been guilty of feeling immobilized and paralyzed by the bad news, too. Many of my author friends feel that being politically active is more important that writing stories right now. But I know that writing stories is being politically active. I come from a country where writers are considered to be agents of political change merely through the act of writing. And aside from writing being a political act, I am also keenly aware that we have to do what we can to save ourselves from despair. Reading the classics and the works of contemporary artists an participating in the great pool of literature brings not just solace but empathy. And we need empathy and understanding now more than ever. So for me, writing and reading are both an escape and a solution. I feel they make me a more balanced empathetic energized person.
Carota: You’ve chosen fiction or perhaps fiction has chosen you. Why is fiction your favorite way to convey story?
Kamali: In the beginning, I chose fiction because I loved to read novels. I was always reading as a child, so much so that I was being told to put a book down the way we tell kids today to put the phone down. When the war between Iran and Iraq began, reading saved me. During the bombing, my family would go down to the basement bomb shelter and my sister and I would get out our paperbacks. We read as the bombs fell.
When the bombing stopped and we went back upstairs, there was always a sense of relief and sometimes a sense of peace. Relief because we had lived to see another day. And peace only because of the grounding and balance and perspective and escape that reading fiction gave us. It was impossible not to emerge from immersion in a good book without that sense of grounding, despite all the upheaval around us. And that sense didn’t come because the stories we read were happy or light. Some were. But some also highlighted the worst of humanity. Reading good fiction showed me that even in the worst periods of history, even through the darkest days, there were these people called writers who captured and shaped the experience into something artistic and achingly beautiful. They strung sentences together and created works of art. It was the power of writers to do this that gave me hope.
Later, when my family moved to America, reading fiction gave me the perspective and depth that I craved in a new culture. The first time I read Toni Morrison, I was blown away by how she could transform the world and make any character’s motives understandable. I began to write fiction to express myself, to work things out, to tell stories that were outlandish and fun. I needed to tell stories. Even now, I cannot get enough of trying to understand the dynamics between people and the motives for their decisions. Reading helps both quench and increase that thirst. Writing does the same with the added benefit of allowing me to connect with complete strangers. The hope is that my work can give a reader the same sense of grounding and beauty that other writers give me.
MARJAN KAMALI is the author of Together Tea (Ecco/HarperCollins) which was a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist, an NPR WBUR Good Read Pick, and a Target Emerging Author Selection. She attended U.C. Berkeley and has an MBA from Columbia University and an MFA from NYU. Her fiction appear in the anthologies Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been and Tremors and her non-fiction has been published in The Wall Street Journal and The LA Review of Books. Together Tea is her debut novel and has been translated into Italian, German, Norwegian, Czech and Slovak. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two children.
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How books are put together.
Marjan Kamali, Exploring Iranian Culture for The Stationery Shop
Megan DeMint
Marjan Kamali, Exploring Iranian Culture for The Stationery Shop
Photo: David E. Lawrence
Photo: David E. Lawrence
In The Stationery Shop, Marjan Kamali tells the story of a romance that reaches far beyond its origins and across the span of the characters’ lives. Amidst growing political turmoil in their home of Tehran, Roya and Bahman do not expect to fall in love amidst the books of their local stationery shop, let alone find their entire lives changed by it. Little do they know, this will also be the year that Prime Minister Mossadegh is removed from power with the assistance of the American government.
Image: Courtesy of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Image: Courtesy of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
In the very first chapter of the book, Kamali reveals the characters in their old age in 2013. “I’m never terribly wedded to one thing, but with the opening I was extremely wedded to it,” Kamali told Spine. “I knew that I wanted the book to start with readers knowing that [these characters] haven’t seen each other for sixty years.”
This idea took shape as a result of one of Kamali’s real-life experiences at a book reading at a nursing home for her previous novel, Together Tea. While there, she met an older Iranian man in a wheelchair. “Organizers kept shushing him and dismissing him whenever he tried to talk.” Kamali felt drawn to the man and later discovered that he had been an important former Iranian dignitary with a rich past full of travel and experience.
While the elderly man’s life and background are not the basis of the book’s narrative, Kamali’s intense emotional reaction to him, coupled with a desire to explore the history of 1953 Iran, inspired her to write The Stationery Shop.
To research for the book, she read extensively about the history, but was also “lucky because I have access to elders in my family who lived through it. Especially my father, he basically chatted with me about this for many years.” Her father spoke of a stationery shop that he knew in Tehran that served as a hub, selling both books and stationery goods. This is how the stationery shop became the essential location for the couple’s first meeting, and it further illuminates the Iran of the 1950s that Kamali discovered in her research.
“What I didn’t realize was how sort of glamorous Tehran was in the early 1950s, when there was this burst of cafe culture and movies and film. Cinemas were blooming. Publishing was taking off. There was this new class of intellectuals and the young people felt they were on the verge of a new beginning.” The stationery shop in the book serves as a culmination of this history. “That was very key to me, to have this anchor of this place where ideas were exchanged and it was also, from what I learned, quite international. There was a huge, just, opening up. It was a way for Iranians to access ideas from around the world.”
While keeping all of this historical context and setting in mind, Kamali still remained mindful that the fictional narrative did not get too bogged down in the actual history. “One thing I told myself was, at the end of the day, I’m not a historian, I’m not a scholar, I’m not here to educate. I’m a storyteller.” To maintain the book’s character-driven focus, she used the analogy of a painting with a foreground and a background—Roya and Bahman in the foreground, and the events of 1953 in Tehran in the background. “Sometimes they are in harmony, sometimes they are in contrast.”
Despite her focus on story rather than historical education, Kamali did feel a sense of responsibility while writing. “We have so few Iranian characters written about or represented and the ones we do see in the media are painted with a very broad brush. The trickiest part was creating characters who were authentic and real, and being true to nuances that are so often lacking.”
This was one of the many things she kept in mind while writing her characters, who are only seventeen when they meet and fall in love. “Their courtship would have certain constraints due to societal mores and manners. I wanted to be true to how two teens would interact in that time. At the same time, there is this universal young love.”
Kamali guides us through their love and its long-lasting ripple effects, as well as the long-lasting ripple effects of Iran’s political turmoil. Throughout the editing process, Kamali did not remain confined to linear, chronological timelines or a single character’s perspective. A majority of the novel follows Roya; however, readers get a glimpse into a number of side characters’ stories and the ways that they intertwine with Roya and Bahman’s.
“I think the more the author knows, even if it’s not included, hopefully it ultimately shows,” said Kamali. “Sometimes it will strengthen the story.” This is how at least one of the side characters received her own chapter. Kamali wrote a chapter from this character’s perspective to get to know her better and strengthen her own understanding. It wasn’t until her editor voiced a desire to see more of her that the chapter was included in the book.
Throughout the editing and writing process overall, Kamali says, much took her by surprise and it made the writing more emotional. She tries to give this experience to the book’s readers as well. “I chose the order in which to reveal certain things in order to maximize the drama.”
The Stationery Shop came out on June 18 from Gallery Books. You can find Marjan Kamali on Twitter @MarjanKamali or at www.marjankamali.com.
Q&A with Marjan Kamali, author of The Lion Women of Tehran
by Lauren Feeney
August 14, 2024
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Marjan Kamali / Photograph by David E. Lawrence
In The Lion Women of Tehran, the latest book by bestselling author Marjan Kamali, two girls named Ellie and Homa share the joys of childhood, weather the ups and downs of adolescence, and go off to university together. But their friendship is ruptured when one of them betrays the other, until decades later they reconnect in America.
Author Marjan Kamali was born in Turkey to Iranian parents, and lived in Iran for a few years as a child. She now lives in Lexington. LexObserver caught up with Kamali to ask a few questions about the book and how it relates to her own experiences.
LexObserver: Tell us about the inspiration for this story.
Marjan Kamali: After my second book, The Stationery Shop, came out, I had started writing the next one when the pandemic began. As I scrolled Instagram during lockdown, I saw posts from a woman in Iran who was my friend — not just on social media, but once upon a time in real life. We had been best friends in elementary school in Tehran: playing together, doing homework, and sharing dreams and hopes about the kind of women we would one day become. As I looked at my friend’s p`osts and saw her ‘liking’ mine, I wondered again about the different directions our lives had taken. Here I was, an author in America, and there she was working at a human rights organization in Iran. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the friends we make when we are young shape us. Their influence lasts even if the friendship doesn’t. And friendship breakups are just as heart-wrenching as romantic ones. I knew I had to write the story of a broken friendship. So, I started writing The Lion Women of Tehran.
LexObserver: How much of The Lion Women of Tehran is based on your own life?
Marjan Kamali: This story of friendship takes place in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. It is not based on my own life as I wasn’t alive for much of that time period, and I made up the characters of Ellie and Homa. However, of course I drew on a lot of my own emotional experiences. I know what it is like to take comfort in and have the great privilege of having a good friend. I also know what it is like to have that friendship ruptured. So, while I made up the characters of Ellie and Homa, a lot of their emotional dynamic is based on what I know to be true about the joys and challenges of friendship.
LexObserver: Can you talk a bit more about the time you spent in Tehran as a child?
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Marjan Kamali / Photograph by David E. Lawrence
Marjan Kamali: I only lived in Tehran between the ages of two and five and again between the ages of nine and ten and a half. I wasn’t there very long, but I did live there during a very pivotal time in its history: right after the 1979 revolution and during the first year and a half of the 8-year Iran-Iraq war. I spent many nights in the basement as bombs fell outside. A great escape was reading my mom’s old paperbacks. I became aware of the power authors had to transport me to a different time and place. I was in awe of their superpower and wanted to have that superpower myself.
LexObserver: Your family fled Iran and came to New York after the Revolution. How did your life diverge from your friend’s life after you left in real life? Without giving too much away, how is this reflected in the story?
Marjan Kamali: When my family left Tehran — in a rush and without saying goodbye to my best friend — I arrived in New York at the age of ten knowing I had to live doubly hard for both of us. My friend and I wrote letters on aerograms when I first moved (I still have them!) and kept in touch that way. But, after a while, we stopped writing and lost contact. I became an American, but I still thought (and think) about my friend in Iran. In The Lion Women of Tehran, Ellie moves on to a life in America, but still thinks about her friend, Homa, in Iran. There are certain parallels, but Ellie and Homa’s story is uniquely their own!
LexObserver: Tell us about the title — what do you mean by “lion women”?
Marjan Kamali: The phrase “lion women” is literally translated from the Persian phrase “shir zan.” I grew up hearing this phrase and found it very empowering. It refers to women who are fierce, brave, and unstoppable. There are many lion women in my extended family and I have always been inspired by them.
LexObserver: What message do you hope readers take away from the book?
Marjan Kamali: E.L. Doctorow said that the power of fiction is that it helps us understand not just what happened in history, but also how what happened made people feel. By creating the characters of Ellie and Homa, I hope to show the vibrancy and courage of two girls from Iran who I made up but who are very real to me. It is through story (both the reading and the writing of it) that so many of us find solace, refuge, hope, and understanding. I hope in my characters’ hopes, you see some of yours. I hope from their tale, you sense that all our hearts are one.
Editor's note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Marjan Kamali is an Iranian author based in Lexington, Mass. Born in Turkey, she grew up in several countries around the world before coming to the U.S. Holding a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA from Columbia University and an MFA from New York University, Kamali is the author of two books: "The Stationery Shop" (2019) and "Together Tea" (2013). In addition to writing novels herself, Kamali also teaches writing at GrubStreet and is a Tufts parent. Kamali sat down with the Daily to discuss her work and offer advice to Tufts students.
The Tufts Daily : Why did you become a writer? How did you get there?
Marjan Kamali : I always loved to read. When I was a child I was a bookworm and I loved reading anything I could get my hands on, but especially novels and stories. I grew up before we had the internet, so I really appreciated how books could transport me to a different time and place. I felt like authors had this superpower where they could create this entire world and make it feel real and I wanted to have that superpower ... I always wrote, but as I grew up I started to realize I actually wanted to do it as a vocation.
TD: Do you have a few favorite books from childhood?
MK: So from childhood a book that I really loved was called "The Secret Garden" (1911). Another book I really loved was "A Little Princess" (1905). You know, I read a lot of books as a child that weren't necessarily books or young adult books. I read a lot of the classics, like "Jane Eyre" (1847) and Charles Dickens, a lot of the British classics because that's what my mom had in the house. Definitely loved all of those.
TD: When you write, where do you get that inspiration?
MK: That's such a good question. So, because I do novels, the inspiration for each book can be quite different. For my first novel, which is "Together Tea," I was really inspired because I had been reading books about multicultural experiences and experiences of families immigrating to the U.S., but I felt I had never read a book that kind of reflected the experience of my own family's journey. I was inspired by not having the book I wanted to read, so I wrote it. I wanted to write a story that explored the Iranian American experience. After that book came out everybody was like, "Oh, what's your second book going to be?" And I visited a lot of book clubs for my first book and at one of the book clubs a woman asked me to visit where she worked and she worked at an assisted living center. When I was there I met an elderly man who claimed all these things about his life. He kept saying he'd met the prince of Spain, he traveled with Charles de Gaulle; he kept saying these crazy things, and I just asked him his name. Later on, when I spoke to my dad, and I mentioned this man's name -- it was an Iranian name -- and my dad said "Oh, he was one of our most decorated dignitaries." He had met the prince of Spain, he had traveled with Charles de Gaulle, all of these things. I realized all of these things he had been saying were true, except it wasn't received that way necessarily, so he became the inspiration for my second book, "The Stationary Shop." It opens with an elderly man in an assisted living center. It was an amazing experience.
TD: Do you have a favorite or least favorite thing you've written?
MK: Right now my favorite thing I've written is my second book, "The Stationary Shop" (2019). No offense to my first book, which I will always love. Right now it's my favorite thing I've written because I worked really hard on it and I feel like I grew as a writer a lot, pushed myself and I forced myself to do things I wasn't as comfortable with. I guess my least favorite ... I have so many least favorite things I've written. So many. Like any time you start, often times it's not very good. So I have a lot of things that just aren't my favorite.
TD: What's the most difficult things you've experienced as a writer or in writing your novels?
MK: With both of [my novels], the most difficult part was the middle. I think for a lot of writers that's when they give up because when you start a long term project like a novel, it's different from writing a short story or an essay or a poem. It's a very big unwieldy project. Sometimes you're excited in the beginning, you get going, but then in the middle oftentimes novels hit a wall where you feel you have no idea what you're doing, you have no idea where the story is going, you don't even know if it's any good. A lot of people give up, but that's when you should actually push through.
TD: Do you have any unique or important tips you share [with your writing students]?
MK: I always tell them there are no mistakes in the first draft. When you start doing a first draft, perfection is your enemy because a lot of people want their work to be good. Which makes sense, we all do, but it's not going to be good right away. You just have to give yourself permission to have a bad first draft and accept that you can't make a mistake as long as you're writing in your first draft. You can always go back and fix things, change things, add things, subtract things. That's something I definitely always say.
TD: How did you get into teaching at GrubStreet?
MK: When I first moved to the Boston area I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I literally googled writing organizations in the Boston area, and GrubStreet came up. At first, I attended the big annual writing conference called the Muse and the Marketplace. I attended a few other things, like seminars, here and there. Once my first book had come out, by then I was really involved with GrubStreet. I knew a lot of people there, and I was asked to teach there. It was after the first book came out that I was asked to teach.
TD: Do you have a preference between writing or teaching? Or do you enjoy the balance?
MK: I like both. They're very different. I think ideally one would feed the other. So for example when I was writing "The Stationary Shop" (2019), I was also teaching "Writing the Novel." It was really interesting because for each of my classes I would have to create these craft lessons. When I would put the lesson together and I was teaching my students about something, sometimes it would trigger something I needed to do in my own writing. I think any teacher will tell you that they learn a lot from their students. It was cool to have that exchange. I think the students also appreciated that they were being taught by somebody who was in the trenches. I wasn't theoretical, I was doing it too.
TD: Do you have any advice for Tufts students, either in general or for those interested in going into writing?
MK: I think it's really important to read and read a lot. With our culture today with social media and the internet, it's easy to read in shorts spurts, like read something on Twitter or something in a little article online. But I would recommend that Tufts students take the time to unplug and just read novels. I'm a big big advocate for reading longer works and just immersing yourself in them. I think if you want to be a writer, that's the best thing you can do. Read widely.
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"Local author Marjan Kamali on how she got into writing, advice to students - The Tufts Daily." UWIRE Text, 3 Mar. 2020, p. 1. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A616017138/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=24ec9b97. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
Kamali, Marjan TOGETHER TEA Ecco/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $14.99 5, 21 ISBN: 978-0-06-223680-7
Career, love, happiness--for Mina Rezayi, everything becomes a gently humorous negotiation between her Iranian heritage and her American hopes, between her mother and herself. Mina, who would rather be an artist than finish her MBA, flinches at the thought of another Sunday tea with a Mr. Possible. But she cannot disappoint her mother, Darya, a gifted mathematician, who, in pre-revolutionary Iran, had dreamed of becoming a professor. An arranged marriage to Parviz, whom she eventually came to love deeply, and three children, however, dashed those plans. After escaping the oppressive Islamic regime and making a home in America, Parviz works hard, earns an American medical license and brims with irrepressible optimism. He channels his enthusiastic you-can-do-it attitude into convincing Darya to start a Saturday afternoon math camp. With only two other members--Yung-Ja and Kavita--the club is the highlight of her week, and the women engage in complex mathematical acrobatics as well as competing over whose homeland has suffered the worst upheavals. Sighing with exasperation, Darya even allows Parviz to register her for a night class on spreadsheets, where she meets Sam, who's just a friend, right? Constructing complex graphs, charts and spreadsheets, Darya evaluates potential husbands for Mina. So far, her matchmaking efforts have been thorough yet unsuccessful. But one Sunday, Mr. Dashti comes to tea. And Mr. Dashti looks strangely relieved when Mina rejects him. His unexpected reaction intrigues Mina, and she begins to dream about returning to Iran. Maybe there she could resolve her own identity crisis. To her surprise, Darya decides to accompany her. Deftly threaded memories of Iran and of the revolution's effects on their family enrich the story as Mina and Darya gain sympathy for each other's struggles. Sparkling dialogue and warm characters make Kamali's debut novel perfect for book clubs.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Kamali, Marjan: TOGETHER TEA." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2013. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A322002857/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8894e895. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
Together Tea
Marian Kamali, Ecco, $14.99 trade paper
(256p) ISBN 978-0-06-223680-7
Kamali's debut, set in the mid-'90s, is the story of Darya and Mina Rezayi, mother and daughter in a family that emigrated to the U.S. from Iran after Mina's grandmother was killed by an Iraqi bomb. One of three children trying to live up to their parents' expectations, Mina would rather paint than finish her MBA. But mostly she wishes her mother, a frustrated mathematician, would stop creating spreadsheets of eligible Iranian-American men, who have so far all disappointed her. Darya's husband embraces the can-do American spirit, but she misses prerevolutionary Iran, with its emphasis on family and tradition, and accompanies Mina on a visit to their homeland. The book's second part takes place in Tehran, but during the revolution and the early years of the war with Iraq. Kamali's lyrical writing is particularly vivid here, and warm, as with the many descriptions of tarof, a Persian verbal tradition. Although there are differences in Mina's and Darya's American experiences, the author effectively evokes the pull both women feel toward Iran. She creates empathy for a people forced to live one life in public and another privately. Agent: Wendy Sherman, Wendy Sherman Associates Literary Management. (June)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
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"Together Tea." Publishers Weekly, vol. 260, no. 17, 29 Apr. 2013, p. 107. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A328528075/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1be2f2db. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
Together Tea. By Marjan Kamali. June 2013.256p. Ecco, paper, $14.99 (9780062236807).
Joining a growing list of Middle Eastern American immigration novels is Kamali's lively debut about one Iranian family making the difficult adjustment to life in the U.S. Parviz and Darya; their 10-year-old daughter, Mina; and her two older brothers carne to New York City in 1982, when Iraq began dropping bombs on Iran. Fifteen years later, Darya has given up her dream of becoming a mathematician, using her skills, instead, to calculate statistics pertaining to available Iranian bachelors for Mina, assigning points for everything from good teeth to graduate degrees. Mina is exasperated with her mother's matchmaking, and disillusioned with business school. She concludes she desperately needs a break, and tells her parents she wants to journey to Iran and rediscover the country they left behind. Darya wants to accompany her daughter, so off they go---hoping to reaffirm Minas roots and perhaps strengthen their relationship as well. Kamali perfectly captures the sights, sounds, and smells of Tehran as relatives celebrate with one extravagant party after the other. Humor, romance, and tradition all combine in an enjoyable chick-lit tale, Iranian style.--Deborah Donovan
Donovan, Deborah
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association
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Donovan, Deborah. "Together Tea." Booklist, vol. 109, no. 17, 1 May 2013, p. 69. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A332021967/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7cdaef25. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
Kamali, Marjan THE STATIONERY SHOP Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $26.00 6, 18 ISBN: 978-1-9821-0748-2
Sixty years after her first love failed to meet her in a market square, Roya Khanom Archer finally has the chance to see him. But will he break her heart again?
Back in 1953, she was a 17-year-old schoolgirl, raised in a progressive home in Tehran, where her father encouraged Roya and her sister, Zari, to take advantage of the recent reforms that allowed women to go to university. While he hoped she might become a chemist, Roya loved escaping into novels, which sent her to Mr. Fakhri's stationery and book store every Tuesday afternoon. There she first sees Bahman Aslan, a breathless young man already well-known as a political activist. Kamali (Together Tea, 2013) sets Roya and Bahman's love against the tumultuous days of Mohammad Mossadegh's rise and fall as prime minister of Iran, infusing their affair with political passion and an increasingly frantic sense of the shortness of time. Tuesday after Tuesday, the couple falls more deeply in love, and Bahman soon proposes marriage to Roya. While Roya's family welcomes Bahman--although Zari warns Roya that his heart cannot be trusted--Bahman's emotionally volatile mother refuses to accept the engagement, because she has already chosen Shahla, the daughter of a man closely allied with the shah, for her son. Roya determines to weather her future mother-in-law's storms, but when Bahman and his family disappear, she can only turn to Mr. Fakhri for help. Although he cannot tell Roya where Bahman has gone, Mr. Fakhri offers to exchange secret letters between the lovers. The plan works, and the two even plan to elope, but Bahman does not show up in Sepah Square. Sixty years later, Bahman's confession will finally expose the secrets that cast shadows over the lovers so long ago.
A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Kamali, Marjan: THE STATIONERY SHOP." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A582144161/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7c73f7a1. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
The Stationery Shop. By Marjan Kamali. June 2019. 320p. Gallery, $27 (9781982107482).
In 1953 Tehran, seventeen-year-old Roya meets the idealistic, politically active Bahman in a stationery shop, and the two quickly fall in love and become engaged, much to the disapproval of Bahman's class-conscious mother. They plan to marry in a civil ceremony, but a coup d'etat on the day of their wedding scuttles their plans, and Roya later receives a letter from Bahman ending their engagement abruptly. She immigrates to America to attend college shortly thereafter, marrying an American and settling in Boston; it is there, sixty years later, that she meets Bahman again and the two former lovers are able to at last piece together the truth behind their doomed romance and the forces that kept them apart. Kamali (Together Tea, 2013) paints an evocative portrait of 1950s Iran and its political upheaval, and she cleverly writes the heartbreak of Roya and Bahman's romance to mirror the tragic recent history of their country. Simultaneously briskly paced and deeply moving, this will appeal to fans of Khaled Hosseini and should find a wide audience.--Martha Waters
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Waters, Martha. "The Stationery Shop." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 18, 15 May 2019, p. 31. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A589800192/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=433a2995. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
The Lion Women of Tehran. By Marjan Kamali. July 2024. 336p. Gallery, $28.99 (9781668036587); e-book (9781668036600).
Homa and Ellie meet as children in the city of Tehran and form a seemingly unbreakable bond. Each has hopes and dreams of the future. Homa longs to become a judge so that she can right wrongs and create a more equitable community. Ellie learns the art of translation, but dreams of a kind husband and a large brood of children. Despite these differences, they become lifelong friends. Coming-of-age over three decades, the friends must also navigate their country's tumult, which includes social injustice, class divide, immigration disruptions, and the loss of women's rights. Kamali (The Stationery Shop, 2019) places food center stage with vivid descriptions, from the perfect New York pizza slice to traditional savory Iranian dishes, immersing readers in the culinary delights of Iranian cuisine especially--readers will virtually taste the food on the page. As these two remarkable women strive to overcome the hardships they face and fight for their rights, Kamali's narrative highlights the struggles of women in Iran and explores relationship challenges between friends and family. "Women. Life. Freedom."--Lillian Dabney
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
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Dabney, Lillian. "The Lion Women of Tehran." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 19-20, 1 June 2024, p. 30. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804018154/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=71f188e0. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
The Lion Women of Tehran
Marjan Kamali. Galler y, $28.99 (336p) ISBN 978-1-66803-658-7
The insightful latest from Kamali (The Stationary Shop) chronicles the decadeslong friendship of two Iranian women whose lives are upended by their country's political upheaval. After seven-year-old Ellie's father dies from tuberculosis in 1950, she and her mother are forced to move to a smaller apartment in one of Tehran's poorer neighborhoods. At her new school, Ellie befriends a spirited classmate named Homa. Several years later, Ellie's mother remarries and they move to a better neighborhood, causing the girls to lose touch. Ellie later attends a prestigious high school and is mortified when Homa, who she now views as uncouth, becomes her classmate and greets her in front of her new friends ("Homa was my past. My two worlds were not supposed to collide"). They eventually rekindle their friendship, but are once again divided when Homa is imprisoned for protesting the shah in 1963. Later sections follow a married Ellie in 1981 New York City, where she receives a desperate letter sent by Homa from Tehran. Though there's not much of a plot, Kamali sustains the reader's interest by exploring the contrasts and sustained connection between the two central characters. This will resonate with fans of women's fiction. Agent: Wendy Sherman, Wendy Sherman Assoc. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"The Lion Women of Tehran." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 19, 13 May 2024, p. 74. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799108744/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e9e8ac5b. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
Kamali, Marjan THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (Fiction None) $28.99 7, 2 ISBN: 9781668036587
A lifetime of friendship endures many upheavals.
Ellie and Homa, two young girls growing up in Tehran, meet at school in the early 1950s. Though their families are very different, they become close friends. After the death of Ellie's father, she and her difficult mother must adapt to their reduced circumstances. Homa's more warm and loving family lives a more financially constrained life, and her father, a communist, is politically active--to his own detriment and that of his family's welfare. When Ellie's mother remarries and she and Ellie relocate to a more exclusive part of the city, the girls become separated. They reunite years later when Homa is admitted to Ellie's elite high school. Now a political firebrand with aspirations to become a judge and improve the rights of women in her factionalized homeland, Homa works toward scholastic success and begins practicing political activism. Ellie follows a course, plotted originally by her mother, toward marriage. The tortuous path of the girls' adult friendship over the following decades is played out against regime change, political persecution, and devastating loss. Ellie's well-intentioned but naïve approach stands in stark contrast to Homa's commitment to human rights, particularly for women, and her willingness to risk personal safety to secure those rights. As narrated by Ellie, the girls' story incorporates frequent references to Iranian food, customs, and beliefs common in the years of tumult and reforms accompanying the Iranian Revolution. Themes of jealousy--even in close friendships--and the role of the shir zan, the courageous "lion women" of Iran who effect change, recur through the narrative. The heartaches associated with emigration are explored along with issues of personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good (no matter how remote it may seem).
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.
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"Kamali, Marjan: THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A793537173/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=48bd825b. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.
The Lion Women of Tehran
By Marjan Kamali
HISTORICAL FICTION
"Writing about Iranian women has been a central theme of my life," Marjan Kamali says in the author's note to The Lion Women of Tehran (Gallery, $28.99, 9781668036587). On the heels of The Stationery Shop and Together Tea, Kamali continues this pursuit with the riveting saga of the friendship between Ellie and Homa, which begins in 1950 in Tehran, when the girls are 7, and continues through 2022. The events of their lives are interwoven with Iran's recent history, including the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the 1979 Revolution and the violence and brutality of the following fundamentalist regime.
After Ellie's father dies suddenly, Ellie and her mother move to a new neighborhood, where she meets Homa. Ellie's mother likes to constantly remind her daughter that they are descendants of royalty and is horrified by their new surroundings, as well as Ellie's new friend: Homa comes from a poor family, and her father is in j ail for opposing the monarchy. Ellie, however, loves Homa's warm, welcoming household, and wishes Homa's family was her own. Their class difference, along with Ellie's mom's disapproval, drives a wedge into the girls' friendship. At one point, Ellie muses that Homa "would always see me as too privileged, too shallow, too rich."
Kamali closely examines how the country's changing regimes have affected women's rights, bringing the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody (after allegedly violating the mandatory hijab law) into the novel's conclusion. From an early age, Homa hopes to become a lawyer who crusades for change and women's freedom, but the government as well as an accidental betrayal by Ellie cruelly sidetrack those plans. Kamali writes deftly of the intersection between personal and political issues. She also excels at exploring the bonds of female friendship, as well as the changing and complex nature of mother-daughter relationships, especially in terms of heritage, family shame and secrets.
Reminiscent of The Kite Runner and My Brilliant Friend, The Lion Women of Tehran is a mesmerizing tale featuring endearing characters who will linger in readers' hearts.
--Alice Cary
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 BookPage
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Cary, Alice. "The Lion Women of Tehran." BookPage, July 2024, p. 21. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A796653126/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a60a081f. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.