Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The Plight of the Iranian Jewish Divorcée
By Gina Nahai
A hundred years ago in Iran, my great-grandmother, Tavoos Khanum (later known as Mrs. Peacock), made history by becoming the first Jewish woman ever . . .
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
An Airport, a Vet and a Catch-22
By Gina Nahai
Did you know that, if you’re a member of the United States armed forces, a war injury could be considered a self-inflicted wound? Say you’re . . .
Thursday, November 5, 2009
How to Rescue the Resort
By Gina Nahai
Have you noticed how the people who work in luxury hotels never actually use the word “hotel” to refer to the place? They call it “The . . .
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Let’s Set Our Sights Higher
By Gina Nahai
Two things I learned on the first day of Rosh Hashanah this year: 1. An Iranian Jewish man in Los Angeles recently risked life and limb to save a . . .
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Skid Row Poetry Gives ‘Slam’ New Meaning
By Gina Nahai
A few weeks ago, one of my students, Andrew McGregor, sent me an e-mail to ask if I would serve as a judge at a poetry slam he was staging in Los . . .
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Solving the riddle
By Gina Nahai
In Los Angeles and New York and elsewhere in the West, families who had left Iran "for the summer," to"wait out the troubles" and "return in time for . . .
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
What is art good for?
By Gina Nahai
I wonder every time I go into and out of the office, what art is for? To capture the truth of a person or a thing? To tell that truth in unexpected . . .
Thursday, November 6, 2008
This time, I remember
By Gina Nahai
It's been 30 years since I left Iran, and I still know I'm going back some day, because I have to see that house again, to stand before the yard door . . .
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Yom Kippur Dilemma
By Gina Nahai
We have more synagogues and more freedom to use them here in Los Angeles than we did in Iran, but that doesn't mean we're any closer to fulfilling . . .
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Exile’s gains and losses
By Gina Nahai
I don't know what will become of the legacy of Iranian Jews outside of Iran, how history will judge us in the context of the opportunities we had and . . .
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Troubling (L.A.) Times
By Gina Nahai
Maybe all the layoffs and buyouts have cut just a little too deeply into the newsroom, or Mr. Zell is purposely dumbing down his newspaper in hopes . . .
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Diversity lost
By Gina Nahai
Are we electing a candidate based on his or her ability to lead the country, or are we crowning a king who looks good in pictures and who is above . . .
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Obama? Been there
By Gina Nahai
I don't think Obama is a bigot or malicious. I think he's someone who's risen too high too fast, on the merit of some exceptional oratorical skills . . .
Thursday, January 31, 2008
This being Los Angeles . . .
By Gina Nahai
Last Thursday night at LACMA, I was treated to a reading of my own works by the very talented and beautiful actress Bahar Soumekh, and by UC Irvine . . .
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Cooking lessons
By Gina Nahai
Reflections on cooking, life lessons and mothers and . . .
Thursday, October 4, 2007
‘Live from Tehran’
By Gina Nahai
It's 8 p.m. on a Wednesday, and I'm at the studios of KIRN -- a Persian-language AM radio station on Barham Boulevard near Universal Studios. I'm a . . .
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Elegy for a Dream
By Gina Nahai
The Shah of Iran symbolized, with his youth and his seemingly limitless future, the power and grandeur that, we believed, would one day be his -- he . . .
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Want to hear a story?
By Gina Nahai
Somehow, this most blatant form of self-promotion, this venue that, until a couple of hours ago, had looked to me like a literary meat market, has . . .
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Book Tour Blues
By Gina Nahai
. . .
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Season’s end means mixed emotions for mom
By Gina Nahai
I'm not feeding the homeless, or doing a beach cleanup, or raising money for Hadassah and ORT and the Israel Defense Forces. I'm here because my . . .
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Why is this award different from all others?
By Gina Nahai
When Eric R. Kandel says that this award means as much to him as the Nobel, a chuckle rises from the audience and quickly spills into applause. But . . .
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Becoming American
By Gina Nahai
I'm thinking of the Southern accent, the country-club attitude, the ship-captain husband, trying to figure out how any of that fits in with a story . . .
Thursday, February 22, 2007
My December visit with ‘lady’
By Gina Nahai
When I first started writing, I sat with Khanum for hours at a time, asking questions. I was 21 and on leave of absence from law school. I had no . . .
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Rushdie’s ‘Clown’ No Laughing Matter
By Gina Nahai
Salman Rushdie is at Disney Hall, addressing a near-capacity audience as part of the Music Center's 2006 Speaker Series. He has come this March 1 . . .
