Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation.

Interview with the Real Tara June. Salambehambeki, this is Leila Shams, host of Learn Persian with Chai in conversation

with a conversation with the real Tara June.

This interview is a little different than the ones we usually do.

Tara is a social media content creator, which is not our general interviewer target.

But she has amassed a massive following on TikTok with almost a million followers,

and even though she just started Instagram a few months ago, she has over 200,000 followers there as well.

Her videos really resonate with people from all over the world, but here's the interesting

thing.

She's Iranian, with an accent, and is a proud Muslim that wears hijab.

The thing that stood out to me is that most of her followers are not Iranian or Muslim,

and most of her fans don't even

comment on the fact that she's an Iranian Muslim, scarved woman. They just focus on her comedy

and relatable stories about her husband and things like eating snacks. If you scroll through her

comments enough though, you'll see some hateful ones, and most of them are from, well,

Iranians. So I really wanted to talk to her and see what her take was on this, where she came from,

how she started, and her relationship to Iranians in the diaspora. She was actually a bit hesitant

to talk to me at first, saying that having her on the podcast would be

controversial for me and likely to bring some unwanted attention, to which I thought,

let's bring it on. We talk about a ton of topics on this conversation and really dive deep into

what it means to be an Iranian woman living in the U.S. and being different than the L.A. stereotype we have of

Iranian woman. I know there will be a lot of opinions on this conversation, but I hope you'll

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