Iranian American girls feel shame about being flagged as insufficiently Iranian
Evidence
We knew we had to have a separate outfit to wear, something modest. … And my sister wasn’t allowed [on the Iran Air flight] at first because her [bare] ankles were showing. I felt so guilty, like are we “bad” Iranians? … Did we already mess up and show ourselves as “American” before we even got there? — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 387
Categorization
- SHARE: Passage that would resonate with a Syrian-American friend who has told me the same fear of being read as ‘too American’ at the Damascus border.