Workbook
For Iranian (American) Families
A Workbook on the Distance Between Iran and America, What the Revolution Took, and What You're Reclaiming
Iran changed. You changed. This is where your family names what you are building from both.
Iranian American families — first-generation immigrants who left before or after the 1979 Revolution, and their children and grandchildren — navigating the distance between a homeland that was lost or changed irrevocably and a life built here. Families carrying the weight of displacement, cultural identity, and the question of what it means to be Iranian in America.
The Name It First Experience
Your family carries Iran — the Iran of poetry and saffron and hospitality and ta'arof, the Iran of before or the Iran of after, the Iran of what was lost. You built something here from that. Your children are growing up with a very different relationship to what Iran means. This workbook does not ask your family to resolve the Revolution or agree on Iran's political future. It asks you to name — together and on paper — what Iranian American means in your specific household, what you are carrying on purpose, and what you are reclaiming and building from here. Grounded in Racial Identity Development theory (Cross, Helms), Acculturation Theory (Berry), Intersectionality (Crenshaw), diasporic identity scholarship (Brah, Hall), and research on Iranian American diaspora identity, this workbook gives your family a structure for the conversation. The work is yours to do together. This is where you write it down. You leave with The Iranian (American) Families Agreement.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What has your Iranian American family given you — the culture, the poetry, the specific sense of Iranian identity that survived immigration and continues in your family even across the distance from Iran?
- What is the distance between Iran and America in your family — the gap between what was lost in the Revolution and what is being built here, and what lives in that space?
- What would The Iranian American Family Record say — from your experience — about what the family carried across that distance, what it cost, and what you are reclaiming as your own?
Research basis
Cross (1971, 1991) Nigrescence Model adapted for Middle Eastern/Iranian American identity / Helms (1990) racial identity statuses / Berry (1997) acculturation strategies / Crenshaw (1989, 1991) intersectionality / Brah (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora applied to Iranian diaspora / Hall (1990) Cultural Identity and Diaspora / Naficy (1993) The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles / Moallem (2005) Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister applied to Iranian diaspora gender / cultural frameworks of ta'arof (politeness ritual), taarof, Persian poetry (Hafez, Rumi) as cultural identity anchors, and the secular/religious divide in Iranian American communities / Malek (2015) Iran on the Global Stage / Naber (2012) on Middle Eastern American identity applied to Iranian context / post-Revolution Iranian diaspora identity (Naficy, 1993) / Iranian American identity and the "Persian" identity choice.
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