Confirmation from a Journalist: A Case Study of Azadeh Moaveni’s Orientalist Discourse in Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran

Abstract

Azadeh Moaveni‟s two memoirs, Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran (2005) and Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran (2010), have been praised for offering an objective picture of contemporary Iran, especially due to the fact that they are written by a professional journalist who is also a native informant. The present article argues that these memoirs, in spite of different claims about their authenticity, embody the orientalist discourse of ineptness and backwardness of Iranian people. The article, drawing on theories from Said, Genette, Barth, and Alcoff, among others, maintains that the paratexts and texts of the memoirs, confirm the expectations of many of their western readers and introduce Iranian people as pathetic beings in need of a savior, obsessed with the gratification of their sexual desires with the ultimate dream of living in the West. It is finally concluded that the memoirs can be considered reductionist as they propose some generalizations which do not apply to all sections of Iranian society and their orientalist confirmation can be strongly challenged for the dual reasons that they deny the dynamic nature of Iranian society and reflect only part of the truth about Iran, not all of it.

Keywords

• Memoirs
• Orientalist Discourse
• Paratexts
• Journalism
• Azadeh Moaveni