Azadeh Moaveni's Identity Struggle

In her memoir, Lipstick Jihad, Azadeh Moaveni tells the story of her outsider status as an Iranian in America and as an American in Iran. Because her struggle to fit in depended on two cultures bent on separating themselves between East and West, she could never successfully mash the two together. But it is her very outsider perspective which becomes her strength, as she is able to separate herself enough to deeply analyze her two "opposing" cultures.

Moaveni discusses her mother's attempts to reconcile the culture clash, saying, "It seemed never to occur to her that values do not exist in a cultural vacuum, but are knit into a society's fabric; they earn their place, derived from other related beliefs" (20). For Moaveni, she and her mother were not immigrants, but exiles waiting to return to Iran once another Iranian revolution overthrows the oppressive Islamic regime.

When she gathers the courage to move to Iran in order to discover if she can fit in in her "country of origin," she learns that such another Iranian revolution is not supported by anyone. As she interviews students, who consider themselves radically political, she learns that their views of progress are more moderate than those of Iranians exiled to America. But as she spends more time in Iran, she discovers the small ways in which Iranians are "taking back their country," for instance the application of lipstick, which remind her of her short-skirted rebellions against her mother back in her Californian childhood.