Shaming My Red Lips

This is the true story of Shaghayegh "Poppy" Farsijani, an American-Iranian rebellious teenager living a care-free life in Brooklyn, on track to go to college and become a journalist, just as she'd always dreamed of. But when Shaghayegh's father reevaluates her cultural assimilation at the age of seventeen, he decides she's becoming too white--and relocates their family to Tehran, Iran. Shaghayegh is wrenched from her life in a liberal American environment and faced with a new and unknown life in a rigid Islamic country. Upon landing, the captain announces that all women aboard must put on their long coats and head scarves before stepping off the plane; but Shaghayegh finds herself frozen. Fear is a mild word to describe what she was feeling. Her new life in Iran strips her of the Western freedoms she had grown up with, including the freedom to choose her religion, choose who she wanted to date, choose what she wanted to wear, and even the freedom to wear red lipstick. She wasn't allowed to listen to pop music, wear jeans, take dance classes or show any interest in men-something that proves especially difficult for a flowering teenage girl. This diary-like account tells the frustrating, eye-opening, and often hilarious true story of how a young woman, during the most formative years of her life, desperately fought to maintain not only her freedom, but her identity. It's a story of change, fear, hope, and ultimately, triumph. This is the story of how Shaghayegh remained true to herself when the world around her was trying to make her forget who she was.