Gina B. Nahai

Gina B. Nahai (farsi: جینا نهایی, born 1961) is the author of Cry of the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, Sunday's Silence and Caspian Rain. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She was also a lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing (MPW) at the University of Southern California.

Quotes

• What do you call that moment when we let go of the conviction, albeit illusory, that life will only grow larger? That the horizon will always expand?
  • The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. (2014)

• Every time I write a book, I’m trying to figure out the answer to a question. By the time I’ve written the book and gone through different drafts, I’ve figured out the answer. With this book, the question was: Is there going to be a distinct Iranian-Jewish culture and community in the United States in the long run? And do we want to assimilate so much that we become part of the larger American Jewish community? And why have we only managed to integrate ourselves to the extent that we have?
  • Interview (2014)

• Every time I do an event, invariably people in there will start asking questions and within minutes, it evolves into people expressing various forms of outrage: at their Iranian neighbor, at their Iranian ex-partner, at their Iranian client. A lot of the things they say about Iranians are true -- some of us are ostentatious, some of us are too clever in business -- but what people don’t realize is that some people in every community are like that. What’s happened with us is we’ve become identified only by our negative traits. We’re all getting blamed for the sins of the few in the community. I think the reason for that is that we are just very visible. We came to America as a big group and from the very start we made our presence known. I think people are reacting to that.
  • Interview (2014)

Interview (2015)

• (why did you choose close third for the POV? Why not first person?) GN: Because I wanted to have a voice that echoed the voice of an observer that wasn’t entirely objective or fair. The voice in the novel has a lot of overtones or judgment, because as a society this is the voice that is constantly defining all of us to each other. Opinions get repeated. I wanted the narrative to have that kind of community voice.

• The only way there will be peace with the Muslim world is if there is an Islamic Reformation the way there was the Christian Reformation. The trouble with Islam is that it has never been adapted to the modern age. It has never had that transition or an adaptation. If we still believed in the Bible the way they did before the Reformation we would still be burning witches. If you did everything you were supposed to do in the Torah a disobedient son would be taken into the city square and stoned to death. People will say that jihad doesn’t really mean to go out and fight with guns and bombs to recreate the caliphate. Well, actually it does. It doesn’t matter how much you wish it didn’t. It’s literal. So what you need are spiritual Muslim leaders to come out and say that this applied a thousand years ago, it doesn’t apply anymore, now we are going to interpret jihad as something internal and peaceful. Unfortunately, there have been some Muslim religious leaders who have tried to create that and they quickly got assassinated, because there are forces with interest in keeping these old interpretations relevant.

• On Israel’s Independence Day every year—it’s called something else there like “the worst day that happened to Arabs”—they have funeral marches in the streets all over the Muslim World and people walking like someone died. They mourn like people in Israel celebrate. Well, every year in Iran, the Jews march in the streets in mourning also because they have to prove to the government that they are not Zionists. Being Zionist is punishable by death but being Jewish under the mullahs is accepted. The Jews live in fear in many ways, but I think they are so used to it that the Jews who stayed compare those dangers with other dangers like being in the West and having your children become Westernized or assimilated or being here and not having a job or being unable to make a living.

• John Rechy taught me everything. He taught me the importance of structure and the importance of clarity. I see that in my own students as well, you know, confusing mystery with vagueness. He taught me the difference.

• I think a lot of people go to writing programs and don’t think of themselves as writers and don’t think of it as a career. Writing is not a hobby!

Interview

• At some point you just begin to take yourself a little less seriously.

• Everything always changes as you write.

• Some readers told me there was a stark difference in the writing in my last book [Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith] between the sections set in Los Angeles and those set in Iran. The Los Angeles sections were harsh and devoid of the magic -- but it's much easier to see the dark parts when they're up close.

• (What do you think is the relationship between Iranian-Americans and Iranians?) It's a pretty close relationship. Of course I'm talking about the Iranians who are conscious of those outside, not those who live far outside the cities in the villages. To those who are conscious there's always been such an incredible relationship between America and Iran. To many it's still The Great White Hope. The "Great Satan" and name-calling and all that was the work of such a small proportion of the people. America is still known as the Land of Good and Plenty. There's a 24-hour AM radio station here in America and you can tell there are people coming here constantly from Iran. There is such little distance and difference between the countries, especially in the minds of the young. The two countries are in almost constant communication, especially with the Internet.

• there's a great resistance in the media to showing anything from the Middle East.

• I used to write in Farsi when I lived in Iran. When I first came to America I wrote in French because my French was better than my English. But I've always liked reading in English. There is a freshness to literature in English. In French there are all these historical and grammatical rules. I also speak Spanish, so having read all these books before in all these languages makes the prose available to me a little richer. I can translate concepts from other languages that don't exist in English.