Hamid Dabashi. An Iranian Childhood

Memoirs are effective sources in gaining rare insight into the history of peoples and places where typical primary sources or theoretical analyses lag. That’s why they have become a “house” of their own, to borrow from Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, beside the standard “houses of history,” such as the Annales, Marxist history, and others. Although most academically informed memoirs are useful, one can argue that they are especially valuable in demystifying aspects of non-Western societies. By historically contextualizing personal experiences, as Hamid Dabashi does in An Iranian Childhood: Rethinking History and Memory, memoirs can strengthen our ability to look from the bottom up. Written in four chapters and including a prelude and an epilogue, the book also shares paintings and film posters that contextualize the text better; it is a must-read for those interested in mid-twentieth-century provincial Iran and anyone who wants to take cues about how to successfully integrate scholarship into creative memoir writing.

Social history (medicine) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies