12 Sep / If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
Let me know if you’ve heard this one before … because I’m convinced this is one of the most unusual narratives I’ve come across in years! Here’s first love with quite the surprising contemporary socio-political twist!
As the daughters of two best friends, Sahar and Nasrin were destined to spend their young lives together. At 8, Sahar announced that she intended to marry Nasrin. Now at 17, Sahar’s mother has been dead for five years, her father never quite recovered – sometimes, he seems to be as much a missing parent as his beloved late wife. Always a serious student, Sahar dreams she will go to Tehran University and become a surgeon. She never imagined that her regular “study sessions” with Nasrin – filled more with stolen kisses than books – would come to such an abrupt end: beautiful, spoiled, pampered Nasrin is fulfilling her parent’s wishes and getting married in just a few months.
Shocked and desperate, Sahar is willing to do anything to claim Nasrin. When she meets Parveen, a friend of her older (wilder) cousin Ali, she’s inspired to change her entire being for the chance to stop Nasrin’s wedding. Parveen is a transsexual; in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, gender reassignment is not only legal, but the financial costs of changing sex are even covered by the government. After Thailand, Iran has the second highest number of sex change operations in the world! Now Sahar must quickly decide whether first love is worth giving up her identity …
In an essay on her publisher’s website, Sara Farizan talks about writing the book her “inner teenager … wished for years earlier.” Farizan is the daughter of Iranian immigrants who was “deeply closeted until college”; as she thought of her own struggles with her sexuality, she considered “what it would mean for someone like me to grow up in Iran, having the same feelings I had but being unable to express them as openly as I can in the United States.” And so begins Farizan’s intriguing, engrossing, unique debut novel.
Tidbit: DC-area folks! Take note – Sara Farizan is coming to Politics and Prose tonight at 7:00. Click here for more information.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2013