The Wind in My Hair

January 15, 2018
In this intense memoir, Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and women’s rights advocate, writes about her life of resistance in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Alinejad chronicles her teenage years in a rural village in the 1990s, pulling pranks as a kind of rebellion against the supreme leader (in a high school Quran-reading competition, she recited an epic poem by Ahmad Shamlou in Persian); as an adult, she became a prominent, globally recognized advocate for women’s rights in Iran. Although she had no college degree, Alinejad became a journalist, and her first significant role as a reporter was covering the Majlis (Iranian parliament), including Mohammad Khatamis’s reelection to president in 2001. Later, she would become a scathing critic of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, publishing a series of damning articles in her column “The Government of Denial” for the National Trust newspaper. Forced into exile in Britain, Alinejad launched My Stealthy Freedom—a Facebook page where women who rejected the compulsory hijab posted pictures of themselves without the head scarf. Women all over Iran risked imprisonment and even their lives and safety to post pictures. Alinejad’s stories of her illustrious career as a groundbreaking journalist challenging the Islamic Republic make for a fascinating narrative.

April 1, 2018
Pointed memoir by an Iranian journalist who has been a longtime advocate of women's rights in the Islamic republic.Alinejad, who has largely lived in exile for years, was born in a village in northern Iran. "I couldn't imagine a better place anywhere else in the world," she writes of her hometown. Born two years before the ouster of the shah, the author never knew the relative freedoms women enjoyed in Iran before the revolution in a state so secular that a law was passed forbidding women from wearing the hijab. "If I was alive then," she writes, "I'd have opposed it not because I believe in the hijab but because I believe in freedom of choice." Such belief drew Alinejad away from her quiet home and into significant events, and she became a news reporter. "The road to expulsion is paved with scoops," she writes. It's the content of those scoops, along with the graft and corruption underlying a regime that is still made up of politicians, that will be of interest to readers, certainly much more than the mundane details of her life and rote observations such as, "I'd always wanted my life to be impactful." Driven from her country, Alinejad became a vocal and highly visible critic of the Ahmadinejad regime--but more, of the entire theocracy, which put her at odds with other members of the opposition: "The reformists didn't want to overthrow the whole regime. They just didn't like Ahmadinejad." Even more visibly, she went on to found a movement against the compulsory wearing of the hijab, which encountered its own difficulties when Western women and men who might have been allies were reluctant to criticize Iran for fear of being labeled as bigots. "I realized," she writes, "I was fighting both Trump's Islamophobia and the Islamic Republic of Iran's misogynist policies."Alinejad's account provides a timely glimpse behind the Iranian curtain.

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April 1, 2018
In this memoir, influential Iranian investigative journalist, political analyst, and activist Alinejad tells her life story and details her experiences with the hijab. She first donned a headscarf at age seven, though she resisted conventional expectations for girls and women. As a reporter, she wrote about corruption before being banned from the Majlis, Iran's legislative body, for an article exposing payouts. She continued to write critically about the administration, and the government encouraged her to leave Iran before the 2009 elections. After Ahmadinejad declared his victory and many Iranians were murdered in rioting and unrest, Alinejad remained abroad and dedicated her work to highlighting victims. Outside of Iran, she enjoyed the freedom from the restrictive headscarf. In 2014, she started the social-media campaign My Stealthy Freedom to bring attention to Iran's compulsory hijab laws, encouraging women to take photos of themselves free from their veils. Although some personal anecdotes read as stream-of-consciousness memories, her descriptions of life as a journalist and activist will captivate readers interested in Iran, international affairs, gender equality, and human rights.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2018

Iranian journalist and activist Alinejad's memoir begins with her childhood in a rural, poor, and conservative village and continues through her emerging political involvement, which leads to marriage, a pregnancy, and eventually her arrest. After months in prison, Alinejad moves to Tehran with her husband and launches a career in journalism covering Parliament and challenging the regime. However, her increasing activism leads to a divorce and then self-imposed exile in London and New York, where she gains recognition for reporting on human rights, greater freedoms for women, and political repression under the Iranian theocracy. Alinejad's professional development includes a glamorous courtship with another Iranian exile, a move to Brooklyn, and international visibility centered on her "My Stealthy Freedom" campaign, insisting that women have the right to choose whether to wear the hijab. Her fast-paced account is richly informative and absorbing, though without much attention to style or craft. VERDICT Alinejad's journey both within and outside of Iran depicts her resilience and determination to lead a full life amid an often repressive society. For all readers interested in women's memoirs and women's rights.--Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018

Arrested for her activism as a teenager, award-winning Iranian journalist Alinejad now lives in Brooklyn and is separated from her son by Donald Trump's travel ban. She founded the viral My Stealthy Freedom movement, which started as a Facebook page on which Iranian women posted their photos without the requisite headscarves.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.