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Rachlin, Nahid (1947– )
Rachlin was born in Ahvaz, a small oil-produc-
ing state in southwestern Iran, and raised in a
traditional Iranian family. She came to the United
States at the age of 17 to attend a small college in
St. Charles, Washington, after the Iranian authori-
ties gave her permission to leave the country on
the condition that she attend an all-female college
and one near her brother. Fortunately, she was
able to find a small women’s college close to where
her brother was attending medical school. This
was a dramatic move for Rachlin, who managed
to sidestep the traditional expectation of an Ira-
nian woman to enter into an arranged marriage.
Instead of returning to Iran, she chose to stay in
the States and marry an American.
Her early years adjusting to America as a for-
eign exchange student and the alienation she felt,
further complicated by her own questioning of her
cultural background, make up the crux of her rich
novels. One of the earliest and most prolific Ira-
nian-American authors, she has published three
novels, a collection of short stories, and numerous
essays. Despite the wide acclaim her books have
received, her work has not been translated into
Persian or distributed in Iran because of the con-
troversial topics of her novels. True to the young
rebellious girl who struggled to pave herself a new
path, her works are unabashedly honest about
her personal life and Iranian culture. In her per-

sonal essay, “My Observations on American-Ira-

nian Cultural Differences,” Rachlin attributes her

unconventional ways and early dissatisfaction to

an incident early in her childhood. Her mother,

during her pregnancy with Rachlin, promised her

child to a widowed aunt with no children of her

own. Rachlin was raised in Tehran by this aunt in

a very loving, relaxed atmosphere. This paradise

between foster mother and daughter did not last.

When she was nine, her father came, traumatically

separating her from her foster mother/aunt, and

took her back. She was immersed quickly into her

father’s stern household. She longed for her old

life, but only once a year was she allowed to be

reunited with her foster mother/aunt. This early

trauma offered her, as young as she was, a compar-

ison of two kinds of lifestyles and emotional bonds

within a family. Perhaps as a result, her work lays

bare the very private affairs between husbands and

wives, as well as parents and children. All of this

with a quiet political critique in the background

makes for a deep narrative of people caught be-

tween two vastly different and, on the surface,

conflicting worlds.

Her works include FOREIGNER ( W. W. No r t o n ,

1978), Married to a Stranger (E.P. Dutton, 1983),

Veils: Short Stories (City Lights Press, 1992), and

The HEART’S DESIRE (City Lights Press, 1995). Her

essays have been published in Natural History

Magazine, New York Times Magazine, and in the