Good Reads: "Everything Sad Is Untrue"

I know some appreciate and/or are curious about what I've read recently (as I continue my efforts to read one book a month). Here are my thoughts on a book I read in April.

Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri. Non-Fiction, Memoir, Cultural Studies

I had heard positive things about this "both fiction and nonfiction at the same time" memoir from Iranian refugee Daniel (Khosrou) Nayeri prior to reading it. He writes from the perspective of his 12-year-old self and his experience fleeing from Iran after his mother converts to Christianity and has a fatwa imposed on her (the mom, Daniel, and his sister flee while the unbelieving father stays behind in Iran — a pivotal part of the story). Daniel is forced to leave a relative life of luxury and ease as part of a wealthy family (mom is a doctor and dad is a dentist) spending time in Abu Dhabi and Italy as a refugee before settling in Edmond, Oklahoma and living in poverty with an abusive stepfather and a cast of characters straight from most Americans' 12-year-old memories. While not explicitly a "Christian" publication, the story is also explicitly Christian (let the reader understand). Daniel's mother explains her choice of leaving comfort for struggle:

"It’s true and more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home, and the best cream puffs of Jolfa, and even maybe your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise. If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side." (p. 197)

This is where the title comes into play. Everything sad is — eventually and eternally — untrue because of this truth.

I didn't know what to expect when I picked up this book, but I would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone from pre-teens to the oldest of adults. In short, it's filled with profound, and sometimes hilarious, thoughts, often in the form of exceedingly deep thoughts in a single sentence, about what the life of a refugee is and is not. For me, it helps restore some humanity ("A patchwork story is the shame of the refugee") in an age where we breathlessly fret, fearfully demonize, and use a political pawns other humans — made in God's image — seeking life for themselves and their families. 

While it's not a political, cultural, or even, necessarily, "religious" work, it's also all of those things at once. In other words, I think anyone would benefit from reading this book.