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Jasmin’s 2020 Year in Books

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Jasmin Darznik

Goodreads Author

Website

http://www.jasmindarznik.com

Twitter

jasmindarznik

Genre

Fiction, Memoir, Historical Fiction

Member Since

January 2011

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/jasmindarznik

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There comes a point when the secrets you've kept most hidden become the stories you must tell. I was born in Iran and moved with my family to the U.S. when I was five. Even after earning a PhD in English from Princeton, I never considered becoming an author. But accidentally finding out about my mother's secret life changed that. In 2011, I published my first book, The Good Daughter, which tells the story of how my mother was married at thirteen and forced to give up a child, a half-sister I never knew. That book changed my life. Since then I have been in pursuit of lost or forgotten stories--and the pleasure of disappearing into other worlds through writing.

HOW I STARTED WRITING
I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Nothing in my first-generati There comes a point when the secrets you've kept most hidden become the stories you must tell. I was born in Iran and moved with my family to the U.S. when I was five. Even after earning a PhD in English from Princeton, I never considered becoming an author. But accidentally finding out about my mother's secret life changed that. In 2011, I published my first book, The Good Daughter, which tells the story of how my mother was married at thirteen and forced to give up a child, a half-sister I never knew. That book changed my life. Since then I have been in pursuit of lost or forgotten stories--and the pleasure of disappearing into other worlds through writing.

HOW I STARTED WRITING
I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Nothing in my first-generation immigrant background supported it, and so much impeded it. Still, I was a reader. As a child I left my small town library with novels stacked up to my chest and under my chin. I’d go home and luxuriate in the possibility of disappearing into different worlds. Beyond that was the twenty-room motel my parents bought when we came to America, a place of struggle and uncertainty. Books were my way out.

But writing? Even as I hacked away at the prohibitions and doubts set down by my family, it still seemed impossible. I was expected to do something practical. When I decided to get a PhD in American literature, as far as my family was concerned it was as if I’d run away with the Grateful Dead. As detours go, it was a useful one. As I read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on the Road, I found myself profoundly moved by the feeling these writers weren’t just telling me a story—they were telling me who they were.

Having grown up in a family where telling people who you were could be, and often was, regarded as a betrayal, these works were both a revelation and a provocation. That was a beginning, a very important one: to discover voices that spoke to me with an intimacy I rarely experienced in real life.

Still, I might never have crossed over from reading to writing if I hadn’t bumped into my parents’ next-door neighbor one afternoon when I was back home from graduate school. This was about fifteen years ago. We got to chatting and she told me she’d just published a book.

Hold up! I thought. Writing seemed like such an exalted profession. I’d never known a writer in real life. And now, suddenly, I did: the woman next door. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to ask my neighbor how she’d done it. She told me she’d enrolled in a creative writing workshop through our local independent bookstore, Book Passage, and that’s where she got her start.

That same day I walked over to Book Passage and I signed up for a spot in the writer’s workshop my neighbor recommended. My classmates, mostly women, were strangers to me, people I’d likely never have met in any other context, even though ours was a small community. But once a week, Fridays, 6 to 9 pm, we were kin, bound together by our common love of stories and an urgent, if muted, desire to speak and to be seen.

For two years, I showed up at that workshop every Friday night, pages in hand, heart kicking against my chest as I read for my allotted ten minutes. It was a time of discovery, in some ways the sweetest time of my writing life so far. I wasn’t writing to publish anything, though that might have shimmered as a distant dream; I was wholly taken up by the urge to make something beautiful and to connect with other people.

That’s what got me started, and what keeps me going to this day. ...more

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Average rating: 4.07 · 6,737 ratings · 1,185 reviews · 5 distinct works • Similar authors

	Song of a Captive Bird 4.21 avg rating — 3,664 ratings — published 2018 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life 3.91 avg rating — 2,997 ratings — published 2011 — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Bohemians 4.24 avg rating — 41 ratings — expected publication 2021 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	American Goddess 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Red Fire: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Wei Yang Chao (Goodreads Author), Jasmin Darznik (Goodreads Author) (Editor) 3.91 avg rating — 35 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Wilde About San Francisco

Oscar Wilde photographed by Napolean Sarony during the New York leg of his 1882 American Tour

He arrived in San Francisco wearing a white sombrero, black velvet coat and velvet waistcoat, and a pair of pointy shoes.

It was the spring of 1882. Oscar Wilde was twenty-seven years old, not yet a well-known writer but already a style icon and terrific wit. By the time he arrived at the ferry crossing in

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THE BOHEMIANS Pub Date
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The Bohemians will be published on April 6, 2021.

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The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free

by Paulina Bren

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Mar 02, 2021 08:25PM

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Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood

by Donald Bogle

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Jul 27, 2020 12:52PM

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Jasmin Darznik is currently reading The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free by Paulina Bren	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 02, 2021 08:25PM · 1 like · like
Jasmin Darznik and 3 other people liked Cat's review of The Bohemians: "I absolutely LOVE historical fiction when the author has done their homework and accurately based the story on a timeline and events that actually happened. Jasmin Darznik definitely completed her thesis before putting pen to paper for this enthralli" Read more of this review »
Mar 02, 2021 06:52AM · see review
Jasmin Darznik and 1 other person liked Alena's review of The Bohemians: "This is a fictionalized biography of Dorothea Lange's youth, her beginnings as a photographer. We know her for her the portraits of the Great Depression, but she started photographing the social elite in San Francisco. Its 1918, Dorothea Lange just ar" Read more of this review »
Feb 26, 2021 08:25PM · see review
Jasmin Darznik liked Michael McGuire's review of The Bohemians: "A total delight. I was hooked on Jasmin Darznik's "The Bohemians" from the moment the protagonist, photographer Dorothea Lange, caught her first glimpse of San Francisco Bay: "splendid and sparkling, the low angle of the sun catching it and setting i" Read more of this review »
Feb 26, 2021 08:25PM · see review
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing The Tradition by Jericho Brown	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Glorious, searing poems by an incandescent soul. I recommend watching Brown read his work. His presence is transfixing.
Jan 09, 2021 10:24AM · 3 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Tradition by Jericho Brown. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Tradition by Jericho Brown <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Nov 24, 2020 09:53AM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik voted for Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir as Best Memoir & Autobiography in the Semifinal Round of the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards. Cast Your Vote
Nov 14, 2020 07:40AM · like
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Gold Mountain, Big City: Ken Cathcart’s 1947 Illustrated Map of San Francisco’s Chinatown by Jim Schein	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is an unforgettable treasure trove of a book. The photographs of San Francisco in the 30s and 40s, particularly those of the city's Chinatown, are some of the most evocative I have seen. I love the big format of the book and the inclusion of map ...more
Oct 24, 2020 03:24PM · 1 like · like · see review
Jasmin Darznik is currently reading Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee in Best Nonfiction	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 24, 2020 03:23PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 24, 2020 03:22PM · 1 like · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Quotes by Jasmin Darznik

“I was a woman and I couldn't speak with the voice of a man, because it was not my voice - not true and not my own. But there was more to it than that. By writing in a woman's voice I wanted to say that a woman, too, is a human being. To say that we, too, have the right to breathe, to cry out, and to sing.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

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“We only lose ourselves by looking back.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

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“Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Cover to Cover Ch...: Aths' 100 books in 2011	4	35	Apr 03, 2011 11:12AM
The Seasonal Read...: * Spring Challenge 2013: Tasks	9	710	Apr 19, 2013 07:31PM
The Seasonal Read...: 20.6- Seasoned Reader- Alexandra's task: Messing Around	67	117	May 20, 2013 02:48AM
The Next Best Boo...: The Title Game	20241	14300	May 30, 2013 12:53PM
500 Great Books B...: Brina's 2018 Reading Women Challenge	5	24	Jan 18, 2018 05:40AM
Historical Fictio...: Publisher Giveaway	19	56	Jan 30, 2018 09:56AM

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