(Paperback)
ABBAS TASHAKKORI,
Independently Published (Publisher)
Ships within 12-14 days
Free Shipping in IndiaInternational Edition
Travel with the author from an ancient culture struggling with rapid sociopolitical changes that frequently clashed with traditional ways of life, to a world on the other side of the ocean in which you become an immigrant. Start from the world of a nine-year-old boy living in a slum on the side of the Bahmanshir River --across from the vibrant industrial city of Abadan- sharing his dreams of living on the "good" side of a river that separated his supportive closed-knit but poor community from the alluring material comforts and modernity of the other side. Find yourself emotionally engaged in the symbolic reappearance of that idealized side --that is itself marred in contradictions-- throughout the book, in stories occurring from 1950's Iran to 2020's United States.
Using a story-telling style, an experienced social researcher weaves a colorful tapestry of times and places that the reader can vicariously experience; from childhood fears, anxieties, and dreams of breaking away from poverty to major life-changing moves that required taking significant risks, often incurring considerable emotional costs. The author takes you with him from a paradoxically very beautiful and utterly impoverished place, through a fast-changing world in which he had to adapt to major cultural and socio-political shocks, including a revolution, Iran-US hostage crisis, a devastating war, immigration, and change of his citizenship.
At an academic level, this is a first-hand case study of how the "homeless mind" develops over time when individuals experience alienation (cultural homelessness, Berger, 1973) as a consequence of socio-cultural change, modernization, and social/geographic mobility. The book ends with a personal analysis of the emotional burdens of immigration, longing, guilt, anxiety, loneliness and depression, leaving it up to the reader to decide which side of the symbolic river was/is the "good" one.
