By Janet Mona
"Growing up in Vegas, I felt like I lived in two different worlds: one at school, where I spoke English and traded lunch snacks with my friends, and one at home, where I spoke Farsi with my madar bozorg (who I still call “mamani”). I was the only Iranian kid in my tiny, suburban private school, and grew up thinking I was some sort of an alien with kids telling me I was too hairy and ate food that was “abnormal” in comparison to their ham and cheese sandwiches. Eventually, an Islamic school opened up in our town, and my parents enrolled me. This was the year after 9/11, and I was being so ruthlessly ridiculed at the school I was in that they thought it would be best if I mingled with other Middle Eastern kids from town. Suddenly, everyone looked pretty similar to me, and the bullying, for the most part, went away. But I was the only (and I mean only) Iranian girl in the entire school, so while my friends’ families spoke Arabic to each other and became close, I ultimately felt alone again. At home, I felt alone, too. My parents have always had a strained relationship, and I was the black sheep: the “American” kid. I would try to speak Farsi back, and felt like I was being made fun of, or that my words were being picked apart EVERY time I tried to speak. I was too American for my household, and I was too Iranian for the world. Through adulthood I learned a lot more about my family that I think I was always willingly naive about: how conservative they really are, how my dad doesn’t view women the same light he views men, how ever present the generational trauma is. When I came out as a lesbian, it was the cherry-on-top for them when it came to our strained relationship. All of a sudden, I felt what I deep down was afraid of all along: “I’m not allowed to be gay…AND Iranian….” When protests erupted after Jina/Mahsa Amini’s death, I joined in. I asked my girlfriend and my best friend, a gay man, if they wanted to join but told everyone “no pressure, no obligation.” They both came with me, I made BIG signs, and I made sure to include bits of information about the LGBTQ+ community in Iran, and how they deserve their freedom too. For me, it’s azadi for EVERYONE….I learned very quickly this is not the case for many Iranians, unfortunately. I went home feeling proud of myself, for chanting and walking the Las Vegas Strip with our signs, but I also went home feeling even more alone than I had beforehand. I started to feel really defeated and unwanted in my own culture, but at my girlfriend’s insistence I dove more into it as an adult than I had ever before. I remembered how much I loved shirini keshmeshi (those super yummy raisin cookies with the golden, crispy edges), and fesenjoon, and decided to conquer them. She got me a beautiful Iranian cookbook, I went to my local Middle Eastern market and got my raisins and rosewater and got to work. After a day’s worth of slow-cooking and dancing to Arash songs in my kitchen, we ate and watched an Iranian horror film I found on Netflix (Under the Shadow). I started to think about how I could introduce my chosen family to who I am and how I grew up. I started to teach Farsi in Tiktoks online, in an effort to teach my girlfriend and best friend Farsi so we could gossip together in public, which then led to me finding other QUEER Iranians online. I realized that while my local community may be super conservative, we DO exist, we ARE out there. I’ve now connected with so many other queer Iranians who can relate and feel similarly to me, who are disconnected from their not-so-accepting families, who believe in azadi for EVERYONE. At first, when my videos teaching Farsi words attracted some attention, I got a lot of negative comments from very conservative Iranians, which stung because it was people from my culture calling me names: “khejalat bekesh, kesafat hastee” for being a lesbian, for being against the regime in Iran. I almost stopped, until I realize that if we ever want azadi for everyone, I have to move past this, and keep going. If we all gave up because we felt this deep shame for being LGBTQ+, our community can never really begin to heal. I need to heal, so I can confidently pass my culture along to my kids, but do it differently than my parents did: with love, with compassion, and with open arms to every human being on this planet."
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AuthorI'm a lesbian Iranian singer/songwriter/dancer on a mission to build a life I don't ever want to escape. Archives
April 2024
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