Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran

I picked up this book by accident, and have had a very hard time putting it down. Bird's eloquent descriptions of the places she visited leave stunningly vivid imagery in my head, and her conversations with everyday Iranian's are very interesting, seem honest, and gives non-Iranian readers a much needed glimpse into life inside the Islamic Republic. Bird herself brings up the excellent point that no matter how many people one speaks with, a concrete reality about life Iran (or any place for that matter) really does not exist. Instead reality is a patchwork of many many different opinions from many many different people.

However excellent the above point is, Bird seems to go somewhat against her own words by inserting an overly judgmental tone at a large number of points in the book, even going as far was outright complaining (thank goodness only in her narratives) about the Iranian lifestyle that she willingly chose to put herself into in order to write this travel log. The book really could have done without Bird's philosophical and often rhetorical musings and personal opinion on such topics as "why oh why can't Musilms, Christians and Jews just get along!" or "why oh why are Iranian's so hung up over life in America? I just don't get it! *sigh*". One of the larger sections of this (very annoying) sort, are her musings about her parents' work as missionaries during the 1960's. Bird constantly goes on about how unfair she thinks it is that Christian missionaries would dare to force their religion on Muslims, with a tone that gives me the impression that she thinks she is a superior person for thinking like that.

These unnecessary insertions give me the sense that Bird sees herself as better than both Iranians and American's. Better than Iranian's because she does not live in what she concludes is an 'oppressive' society, and better than American's because she lived in Iran, has traveled 'oh so bravely' there, and is thus enlightened by the fact.

I only give this book three stars, as the above issues sometimes seriously distracted from what would have been an incredible book had they not been there. For the most part, Neither East or West is filled with amazing descriptions and conversations, and things I didn't know about Iran, despite having heard many stories form my fathers side of the family, who lived there for quite sometime when he was younger.

If you can stand the author's narcissistic attitude and outright whiny complaints that appear every so often, but not so often as to ruin the entire book, I highly recommend Neither East nor West.

The lovely and bright American Christiane Bird's descriptive account of her late-1990's exploratory trip into Iran, where her father once worked as a physician, is partly a travelogue (in the good sense of the term) and partly a report on conditions in what remains into its third decade an Islamic republic. Bird's accounts are much more centered upon the people she meets in Iran than they are on the geography, architecture and the like, and the book is the better for that. Above all else Bird concentrates on women in modern Iran, and tells of the progress they've managed to make even in the face of repressive legislation that still places them very much in the category of second-class citizens. Her time spent among female university students from wealthy northern Tehran, young women who have lived the entirety of their lives knowing no other system of government than that of the late Ayatollah Khomeini's fundamentalist regime, was the best part of this book. In private many of these women dress, think and act in astonishingly western ways and in public have hopes of entering fields few westerners would feel are open to Iranian women, including medicine and even management of some of Iran's largest corporations. But as Bird also shows, Iran remains a police state in which violations of Islamic law can and routinely do merit Medieval punishments. Iran is a nation filled with underlying dissent, radicalism, hate, and a noticeable inferiority complex. It is also a place where for good or otherwise family ties carry over into multi-generational extensions beyond anything seen in our fragmented American homes.

If there is one thing I'll note as a possible criticism of Bird's incredibly interesting book it is her willingness to excuse all the "Death to America!" rhetoric she encounters among Iranians of all ages and backgrounds. As I read and re-read her descriptions of even the most progressive college students engaging in this chant, a national institution it seems, I could never quite decide if Bird was brushing this attitude off as harmless noise, or if she was truly telling it like it was when she'd write of how students and everyday Iranians would almost apologetically tell her, "Oh, it's nothing personal, we hate your evil government, not you as an American." Maybe Iranians truly feel that way, but hasn't it been attitude of bigots through time to claim to hate a race, or religion, or a people, and yet to love certain individuals within it?

There's no denying Iran is a richly textured nation with an intricately layered culture and many perfectly kind and good people within it, and Bird showed that very well, but I do wonder how far Americans or anyone in today's global society can go in excusing citizens of a country whose favorite collective chant calls for the destructive of another nation. All that aside, I have never read a book that made me feel more like I was actually experiencing today's Iran first-hand. Christiane Bird is great!

This was a very interesting travelogue but it's a bit longwinded and the author is a little too accomodating of Iran's questionable cultural and political practices. The book really gets going after about 200 pages, when the author leaves Tehran and the endless rounds of visiting mosques, religious shrines, martyres' shrines, historic mullahs' homes, etc., all the while being forced to trudge around with entire Iranian extended families. When they say "family" is important in Iran be advised that family does not mean the nuclear family but mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, sons, daughters, daughers/sons-in-law, cousins, babies, family friends, etc. I would have gone crazy having to endure the entourages that accompanied the author on even the most mundane jaunts. The author seems to take it all in stride, which is my biggest complaint with the book as a whole. There's an awful lot to question about the current political and social structure of Iran but the author treads very delicately in this area. In fact, she appears almost seduced by Iranian propaganda as she is constantly finding the bright side to controversial practices and is always quick to muse about all the ills of western civilization. She raises controversial issues, but pretty much lets the people she meets off the hook by not pushing for real explanations and not pointing out both factual inconsistencies and fallacies in their logic. I realize this wasn't a political book, but the Iranians the author meets have no qualms about voicing their opinions of America and the West and I believe the author is a little too accomodating.

I've read several personal-point-of-view books about Iran recently, and I have a lot of respect for this one. I rate it as an honest book because Ms. Bird is very clear about her personal standards, background and feelings and where they come from. She doesn't pretend to be objective; she's giving one person's perspective. In particular, she includes her own reactions even when she knows that readers will find them unsympathetic. How much more can you ask?

I enjoyed reading it very much, and I think many others will find it an interesting view of an interesting country

I am Persian and I found this book to be very informative, although it's not an easy read. It could use a considerable amount of editing and I found a lot of the things she said to be somewhat inaccurate. Other times it's as if it goes on rambling. She mentions over and over again how little farsi she knows and how the Iranians know even less english, so I found that while writing her conversations, she probably had to improvise a lot and I wonder if she really understood what people were trying to tell her. Overall, it's not a bad book. I did learn some more stuff about my own culture, but I think her frame of mind is still very "American"- you know what I mean. She wrote several times about how frustrated and irritated she would get with some of the culture clashes there, but if you are going to do something like this, you just have to accept things the way they are- thus not becoming frustrated or irritated. I was surprised that she travelled alone for parts of it. I'm Iranian, and even I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that.
I would recommend Terrence Ward's Searching for Hassan before this.