This is the true story of Shaghayegh “Poppy” Farsijani, an American-Iranian rebellious teenager living a care-free life in Brooklyn, on track to go to college and become a journalist, just as she’d always dreamed of. But when Poppy’s father reevaluates her cultural assimilation at the age of seventeen, he decides she’s becoming too white–and relocates their family to Tehran, Iran. Poppy is wrenched from her life in a liberal American environment and faced with a new and unknown life in a rigid Islamic country. Upon landing, the captain announces that all women aboard must put on their long coats and head scarves before stepping off the plane; but Poppy finds herself frozen. Fear is a mild word to describe what she was feeling.
Her new life in Iran strips her of the Western freedoms she had grown up with, including the freedom to choose her religion, choose who she wanted to date, or choose what she wanted to wear. In public, she wasn’t allowed to wear red lipstick, listen to pop music, dance freely, or show any interest in men–something that proves difficult for a flowering teenage girl.
This diary-like account details the eye-opening, frustrating, and often hilarious true story of how a young woman, during the most formative years of her life, desperately fought to maintain not only her freedom, but her identity. It’s a story of change, fear, hope, and ultimately, triumph. This is the story of how Poppy remained true to herself when the world around her was trying to make her forget who she was.