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Jasmin Darznik

Goodreads Author

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http://www.jasmindarznik.com

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jasmindarznik

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Fiction, Memoir, Historical Fiction

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January 2011

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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: 4.08 · 11,621 ratings · 1,986 reviews · 8 distinct works • Similar authors

	Song of a Captive Bird 4.21 avg rating — 5,127 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 Bohemians 4.04 avg rating — 3,218 ratings — published 2021 — 7 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 3.92 avg rating — 3,234 ratings — published 2011 — 28 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
	Red Fire: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Wei Yang Chao (Goodreads Author), Jasmin Darznik (Goodreads Author) (Editor) 3.91 avg rating — 34 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
	Cutleaf Reader: Vol. 1 by Keith Pilapil Lesmeister (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Denton Loving (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Kelly March (Editor) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 5 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
	Was wir sahen, was wir träumten: Roman by Jasmin Darznik (Goodreads Author), Andrea Stumpf (Translator) 3.50 avg rating — 2 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
	American Goddess it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	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
	Une fille comme il faut 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

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Saeculum, A Different Measure of Time

Dressed up in Persian garb with my grandmother Aziz in the 1980s

Every March when I was growing up, my grandmother grew sprouts for the Persian New Year, and a feeling of renewal would fall over the house.

In a life thousands of miles away from the home we’d left and still imagined we’d return to one day, this was the first ritual with which we observed our new year, a celebration of the first day o

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Model Citizen: A Memoir

by Joshua Mohr (Goodreads Author)

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Mar 15, 2021 09:47AM

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Jasmin Darznik wrote a new blog post Saeculum, A Different Measure of Time Dressed up in Persian garb with my grandmother Aziz in the 1980sEvery March when I was growing up, my grandmother grew sprouts for the Persian New Yea Read more of this blog post »
Mar 25, 2023 12:30AM · 1 like · like
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik (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
Sep 25, 2022 09:05AM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing The Art of History: Unlocking the Past in Fiction and Nonfiction (Art of...) by Christopher Bram	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 07, 2022 06:15PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Art of History by Christopher Bram. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Art of History by Christopher Bram <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (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
Nov 25, 2021 06:15PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Bohemian San Francisco Its restaurants and their most famous recipes The elegant art of dining. by Clarence Edgar Edwords	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 07, 2021 06:45PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Bohemian San Francisco Its restaurants and their most famous recipes The elegant art of dining. by Clarence Edgar Edwords. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Bohemian San Francisco Its restaurants and their most famous recipes The elegant art of dining. by Clarence Edgar Edwords <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing The Best American Essays 2021 by Robert Atwan	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 12, 2021 09:31PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Best American Essays 2021 by Robert Atwan. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Best American Essays 2021 by Robert Atwan <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem by Daniel R. Day	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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Jasmin Darznik has read How to Read for an Audience: A Writer's Guide (Twice 5 Miles Guides Book 2) by James Navé	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
Excellent and useful I haven’t seen such a thorough treatment of this topic. The authors go far beyond the obvious and offer tips and ideas that even seasoned writers can use. I wish I’d had this book when I started out reading in public!
Aug 15, 2021 09:45AM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of How to Read for an Audience by James Navé. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — How to Read for an Audience by James Navé <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik rated a book it was amazing The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt by Audrey Clare Farley (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
Excellent retelling Chilling account of one woman's trauma with a keen eye toward the wider cultural and political history of eugenics. A real eye opener. ...more
Jul 25, 2021 06:05PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Unfit Heiress by Audrey Clare Farley. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Unfit Heiress by Audrey Clare Farley <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Jasmin Darznik made a comment on The Cowboy of San Francisco Bohemia " Sandy wrote: "I feel like I know him from this and your novel. Thank you for the added dimension." Sandy wrote: "I feel like I know him from this and y ...more "
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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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“Art could survive; even when suppressed, even when outlawed, it could survive far worse fates than fire.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Cover to Cover Ch...: Aths' 100 books in 2011	4	35	Apr 03, 2011 11:12AM
The Seasonal Read...: * Spring Challenge 2013: Tasks	9	713	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	20238	14441	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	57	Jan 30, 2018 09:56AM

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“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
― E.L. Doctorow

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