Interview | Navied Mahdavian, author of This Country, Searching for Home in (Very) Rural American
Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
Chai & Conversation
4.9 • 548 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
So excited to share that Navied Mahdavian's incredible debut graphic memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America is NOW OUT and available for purchase! And to celebrate, I’m so excited to share with you all the conversation I had with Navied after reading his incredible his work.
The book is set in rural Idaho where Navied moved with his wife and dog in November 2016- yes, the month Trump got elected. I could NOT put the book down and enjoyed reading it immensely- it brought up so many issues we all think about so much, like issues of identity, language, culture, being “others”- I had so many questions for Navied and feel so lucky I got to sit down and ask him some of them. He’s delightful to talk to, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
Related Links:
Navied Mahdavian on Instagram
Navied's comic about Iran
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Learn Persian with Chaiin Conversation, Growing Up Idunee interview with Navid Mahdavion, |
| 0:30.3 | a cartoonist and writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker since 2018. |
| 0:36.0 | He is the author and illustrator for the graphic memoir, |
| 0:39.1 | this country, searching for home in very rural America, which is what we talked about in |
| 0:44.8 | this interview. We discussed his cultural identity growing up and what in the world led him |
| 0:50.2 | to live for three years in a tiny, tiny, tiny town in Idaho during the peak of Trump era. |
| 0:57.3 | I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him and hope you enjoy this interview with Navid. |
| 1:02.3 | Navid Math, Avian. Thank you so much for talking with me today. |
| 1:05.8 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:06.8 | Yeah, so we tried to do this a couple weeks ago and we were having technical difficulties. |
| 1:12.1 | But on the last time we spoke, I did this beautiful monologue about how much I enjoyed reading the book because I just come off of the experience. |
| 1:21.0 | But don't worry, I haven't forgotten. |
| 1:23.6 | Navid is the author of this country coming out September 12th, which is when this podcast will be |
| 1:29.9 | released, but I had a wonderful experience with a pre-released copy of this book where I just could |
| 1:36.9 | not put it down. And if you haven't experienced that in a while, when you just get lost in a book, |
| 1:42.1 | I highly recommend it. So thank you so much for writing |
| 1:45.7 | this wonderful novel. Yeah, thank you for reading it. I recommend actually for everyone to read |
| 1:51.7 | this book before listening to this discussion, because I'm going to try to ask for some of the |
| 1:57.0 | questions that came up while I was reading it and after I had read it, because there's a lot of |
| 2:00.9 | questions that come up. But first of all, can you kind of explain, give us a little synopsis of what |
| 2:07.0 | this book is about and why you wrote it? The book is about the three years I spent in super duper |
| 2:12.7 | rural Idaho. Trump had just been elected. It's 2016. I was living in the Bay Area with my wife Emily, |
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