A Jewish Teen In Post-Revolutionary Iran
Author, filmmaker and activist Roya Hakakian is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. Marion Ettlinger hide caption
Author, filmmaker and activist Roya Hakakian is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.
Marion EttlingerIranian-American author, human rights activist and filmmaker Roya Hakakian discusses growing up Jewish in post-revolutionary Iran.
Born to a well-off Jewish family in 1966, Hakakian's family lived peaceably enough in Iran until Islamic fundamentalist leader Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979. As oppression against Jews increased to a boiling point, Hakakian and her family fled in 1984.
Hakakian details her life story in the 2004 memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.
A fellow at Yale University's Whitney Humanities Center and a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Hakakian's most recent film is a documentary called Armed and Innocent, about children caught in wars worldwide.