'Tehrangeles' follows a family of aspiring Iranian influencers in LA

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Once upon a time, author Porochista Khakpour worked as a shop girl in the luxury stores lining Rodeo Drive. She tells NPR's Ailsa Chang how excited she would get when Iranian-American customers came in — but how poorly those interactions would pan out to be. Her new novel, Tehrangeles, explores the story of one such powerful family in LA on the cusp of getting their own reality TV show. And as Khakpour and Chang discuss, it opens a whole lot of questions about whiteness, assimilation and cultural definitions of success.

To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookoftheday

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Prochista Hachpur's novel, Terrangeles, is one of those
0:09.0	novels that, yeah, satirizes and takes some shots at its subject. In this case, it's an extremely
0:14.2	wealthy Iranian family with varying degrees of vapid self-centeredness who are on the cusp of landing
0:20.4	their own reality TV show.
0:22.7	Aspiring Kardashians is who we're talking about here. And like I said, it's easy to take shots
0:27.2	at them. But she also takes these characters seriously and uses them as a way to look at things
0:33.5	that say a lot more about the U.S. as a country. She talked to NPR's Elsa Chang about
0:38.3	interacting with these very types of people as a shop girl in Los Angeles and what's hiding
0:43.6	under the Armani bags and Chanel sunglasses. That's ahead. In the U.S., national security
0:50.2	news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind
0:56.2	closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you
1:01.4	stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:07.2	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:12.5	Two decades ago, author Porichista Khakpur was a Beverly Hills shop girl.
1:18.1	And there were times a certain kind of customer would walk into her store, a wealthy, Iranian who may have shared her blood and culture, but who inhabited a totally different world from her own.
1:29.8	They were the most impeccably dressed people you could imagine. I mean, all black, gold.
1:35.7	Armani seemed to be the favorite. I mean, I would know the minute they walked in that they were one of my people. Yeah.
1:44.0	And so not one of my people. These people are now the
1:47.6	main characters of her new novel called Tehranjulus. It zeroes in on an Iranian-American family
1:53.9	whose massive wealth springs from a snack food empire. They're poised to star in a reality TV show,
2:00.8	which is understandable given that they're one of the very richest families in California and a total hot mess. And somehow the narcissism, materialism, and phobias of these four daughters and their parents offer us a moving version of the Iranian-American story.
2:18.2	Porichita Khakpur joins us now. Welcome.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.