I was born in the U.S. Why should anyone who has an unfavorable view of the American government renounce his or her citizenship? Why don't its supporters relinquish their citizenship first?

In my opinion, the continued popularity of these gross distortions of Iran in the U.S. seems to reveal more about certain aspects of America than about Iran. It seems that the popularity of these memoirs is largely due to the fact that, while claiming to do the opposite, they regularly reinforce the dominant representations of Iran in America by constructing an exotic, backward, and barbaric Iran principally based on U.S. archives.

One topic which often brings liberals and conservatives together in the U.S. is Iran. There is a general consensus that the Revolution was the embodiment of backwardness and barbarism.

Americans should know that Iranians are just as decent, human and rational as other human beings. Sadly, the mainstream media in the U.S. regularly fails to recognize and reflect this.

As a child, I used to feel much more American than Iranian. Like everyone else at school, I pledged allegiance to the flag. However, after returning to Iran, sadly, I learned about a very different America, an America that most Americans have no idea exists. For the first couple of years this was hard to accept, and it was really painful in some ways.

Hence, when some members of the Iranian diaspora, especially women at the moment, use different tropes including the trope of the veil and the issue of gender to construct an image of oppression or to describe the 'silenced' Iranian woman, western intellectuals, policymakers, and publishing houses are all quick to introduce them as presenters of the authentic Iranian experience.

By dehumanizing others, among many other things, these people are also aiding the neocons and other forces of darkness to justify more war, more suffering, and more destruction.