3/4: The Global South treks North for the rest of the century: 3/4: A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious by Roya Hakakian
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2023
⏱️ 12 minutes
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3/4: The Global South treks North for the rest of the century:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/world/canada/canada-migrants-immigration.html?searchResultPosition=1
3/4: A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious by Roya Hakakian
https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-America-Immigrant-Curious/dp/0525656065/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1622853677&sr=1-1
Written as a "guide" for the newly arrived, and providing "practical information and advice," Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others. She captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America's crosshairs.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the World. I'm John Bachelors, having a conversation with the author, the |
| 0:09.7 | literary author, Roya Hakakian. She has a new book. It says it's a story both of her |
| 0:16.4 | life and the life of other immigrants around her in these last decades, entitled A Beginner's |
| 0:23.3 | Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious. 9-11, Roya's Native Land, my grandparents' |
| 0:31.0 | Native Land, is Iran. 9-11 was a day in which Iran was back in the story. It's never really |
| 0:36.8 | been out of the story since 1979 for the United States, but back in the story and a scene in Roya's |
| 0:43.2 | book, a man living in Queens who has a view of the skyline of Manhattan as you do in buildings |
| 0:50.6 | and Queens, high rises and Queens. And the skyline can resemble Tehran. He's lonely for his |
| 0:56.9 | native city. And yet the day of the attack, he sees, well, at some point he hears the news and |
| 1:04.9 | then he can see the burning. What is that moment for this man, Roya? Well, the man was my dad and I saw |
| 1:14.3 | something in him that day that changed my view of immigrants in America altogether. My father |
| 1:23.4 | used to sit on the balcony, look at the skyline and write poems about how much he missed Iran and |
| 1:29.4 | how much he missed Iran. And I believe all along that he had not bonded with this country that |
| 1:39.6 | as much as he was grateful about being admitted here, he's still long to return and he didn't have |
| 1:49.2 | the feelings he had for Iran for America. And that day as soon as he saw the smoke in the sky and |
| 1:57.0 | saw on the news that a terrible thing had happened, he put his shoes on, he had macular degeneration, |
| 2:03.7 | so he could hardly see. But he reached for his cane and he made his way out of the apartment. |
| 2:09.7 | When I asked him where he was going, he said he'll be right back, he didn't respond. And then he came |
| 2:16.3 | back with the biggest American flag. He had been able to find at the store around the corner. |
| 2:25.5 | And he hung the flag from the railings of the balcony. Now I have to tell you that I have, |
| 2:32.2 | I had known my father all my life and he had never been one for flags. He had never been someone |
| 2:40.4 | who associated himself with such symbolic things. And yet I saw that he found in himself something |
... |
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