Thursday, April 4, 2013
Iconoclast
By Gina Nahai
This may be just another useless explanation, the kind of futile attempt at finding meaning and logic that we all resort to in response to grief, but. . .
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Radiate this
By Gina Nahai
In the category of: Too little knowledge can be a dangerous thing
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
In praise of pastrami
By Gina Nahai
You know you’re getting old when every meal starts and ends with an admonition about how food will kill you.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Indigo: Remembering Iran
By Gina Nahai
It gets dark early in winter, so by the time you start to walk home, you’re already dipping into twilight. Your breath is a ribbon of fog against. . .
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Leonard’s story
By Gina Nahai
Years ago, I created a class, “Writer’s Marketplace,” dedicated to the business side of writing. It was inspired by all the. . .
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
You can go home again
By Gina Nahai
On Fridays, the children would line up, all glittery pink shoes and Ninja Turtle T-shirts, and hike up a steep driveway from the preschool yard to. . .
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Thank you, David Rimoin
By Gina Nahai
There’s a country, I know, out in the sapphire glass heart of the universe, where every sick and ailing child has a likeness: One is of the flesh;. . .
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Three Jews walk into a Starbucks
By Gina Nahai
I was sitting in the Starbucks in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C., listening to two men talk about a three-day hike through. . .
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
The myth of the Iranian-American Jew
This one’s for our children — the teens and 20-somethings who were born in this country or who’ve lived here most of their life, who have no. . .
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The bad, the worse and the ugly
By Gina Nahai
A painfully unappealing, unemployed woman in her late 30s with sumo wrestler thighs who wears 10-inch heels and a micro skirt to push around a pink. . .
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Elizabeth Taylor was my aunt
Opinion: Elizabeth Taylor was my aunt
It’s true. Really. The Elizabeth Taylor. She of the many husbands and the showpiece jewels, the on-screen splendor and off-screen grit was, indeed,. . .
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Opinion: Tunisian pizza
By Gina Nahai
There’s a concept in the Persian language – ghessmat – for which no exact equivalent exists in English. It refers to a person’s unrelenting,. . .
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Opinion: Persian Tay-Sachs
In the story, a young prince in an old and distant kingdom is mesmerized with salt.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Opinion: Oh, to be young and stupid again
By Gina Nahai
I was 21 years old, a first-year law student at USC, when I walked by a trailer parked on an empty lot off McCarthy Way on the downtown campus. It. . .
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Opinion: In praise of falsehood
By Gina Nahai
What is it with people telling the truth all the time? I don’t mean under oath, or even in response to a question that has been posed to them...
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Opinion: Culture clash
By Gina Nahai
In case you were too busy watching Congress make a fool of itself last month to have noticed, a parallel, no-less-wrenching debate was raging in the. . .
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Gina Nahai: What Remains
By Gina Nahai
We were exchanging “memorable aunt” stories, and my friend, who’s a trial attorney, had a clear lead over all the rest of us.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Staying true to our own heritage
By Gina Nahai
I once wrote a novel about an Iranian Jewish woman who grows wings and flies away from her husband’s home.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Purple Eyes
By Gina Nahai
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m walking down a busy sidewalk in an upscale neighborhood in Tehran. My mother and her friend have. . .
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
The solitude of the Arab soul
By Gina Nahai
“This,” I thought, “is what the surface of Mars must look like.”
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Tehran to Cairo
By Gina Nahai
It all looks dauntingly familiar — the spectacle on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. People in the streets, buildings on fire, a. . .
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Conspicuous consumption — What don’t we get?
By Gina Nahai
Not long ago, I happened to be standing next to a guy at the Apple store in Century City. I was waiting by the register to pay for a new charger for. . .
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Glitterati no match for ‘This Lovely Life’
By Gina Nahai
May I make a suggestion for a great Chanukah or Christmas gift? Or recommend a selection for your book club? Or offer a proposal for making time. . .
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tales of Iranian nights, and days
By Gina Nahai
Friday night at dinner, we were talking about a guy, a Muslim friend of my grandfather’s, who had — very literally — come back from the dead.. . .