I haven't checked the weather yet, but I know it is the perfect day to chat about adult Jewish literature. I'm Sheryl Stahl, thanks for joining me here at nice Jewish books. Today. I am staying close to home in the greater Los Angeles area, and I'm happy to speak with Michael Isaac Shokrian about his book, American playground. Welcome Michael, and can you tell me about your book?
Thank you. Thank you for having me. My book is a work of fiction. It is something that I've worked on for several, several years. It's about an Iranian Jewish family that immigrates from Tehran to Los Angeles in the early 70s. It is semi autobiographical. It's not exactly fact, but it's based on my own experiences. I think it's very funny, and I think it captures a lot of great images and and feeling of Los Angeles in the 70s in general, and the feeling of immigration in particular, and even more particular, the Iranian Jewish movement that started few years later. But, it was early on.
Yeah, I knew about this community in the Los Angeles area, but many people may not. According to Wikipedia, there are about 700,000 Iranians in Southern California, including about 50,000 Persian Jews. So there's usually a push and pull aspect to migration. So what pushed the Jews out of Iran and what pulled them to Los Angeles?
That's a good question, and it's a question that I used to ask my parents all the time. What I think what would push my family to America in 1970 1971 was purely American Dream related, my father was a merchant, and he wanted to join his brothers who had already come here a few years earlier to do business, because they really were raised in this idea that America is the land of opportunity, and anybody that wants to become truly successful would be doing it in America. So that's that's why our family came here in the late 60s and early 70s, of course, six or seven years later, as political upheaval was happening in Iran and it was a religious revolution, a lot of Iranian Jews and a lot of intellectual Iranians, whether they were Jewish or not, decided to flee, decided to leave Iran. Most of them settled in Los Angeles and New York. But I think in Los Angeles, mostly because they had family members already here, or they knew that there was a big Jewish community here. There was definitely a big Jewish community in New York. And as far as the Iranian Jews go, I think they were trying to find a safe haven. So Los Angeles and New York were places that there were more Iranians there than anywhere else in America. And they were international cities, and they had, they had a healthy Jewish population, so I think that's probably why they came.
Yeah, I think that's pretty typical of a lot of immigrant groups, is that as soon as you have some people in a place, then more follow because they know someone there. So wanted to clarify one thing, because we talk about Iranian Jews, but you mentioned in the book, you refer well, that your character always refers to being from Persia. So can you talk about the difference between that? And then we'll get into the actual book.
I think that Persia is a more traditional and older way of referring to Iranians. I think that a lot of Iranians who were born before the 50s and it were raised before the 50s probably referred to it as Persia, referring back to the Persian Empire and to their Persian culture. I think Iran is mostly considered more of a modern slash political term. It was something that the Shah of Iran, when he took over, had consciously made an effort to go away from the Persia part of it, and more into the Iran part of it. So if you see a lot of Iranians born in the 80s or 90s, they might refer to themselves as Iranian Jews. Their parents probably refer to themselves as Persian Jews. But in the end, you know, we're all the same. You know, there's no difference, really. It's just a matter of, you know how you call somebody something? Yeah, older school, old generation refer to themselves as per. Jews,
and probably generations, well, many millennia ago, there was a debate between Babylonian Jews and Persian Jews, and the community has been there 2500 years. It's amazing.
That's right.
So let's go back to your book. It focuses on a boy, I guess his Persian name was Michel, but coming to the States, he chooses Mike, and he goes from being kind of the boss of his second grade class in Iran, he's the leader. The teacher relies on him, and he, with a little bullying, keeps the whole class in line, and then he moves to LA and all of a sudden he is stuck being with the outcasts or the nons in his American school, and he desperately wants to be with the cool kids the pros. So can you talk a little bit about that huge change in status for him?
Of course. First of all, let me just say again that this part is all fiction. I didn't have that kind of life in Iran before I got here, but I didn't have the second part being here. And the idea was that this is a kid who in the beginning of second grade, I mean, as a six year old, or soon to be seven year old, he believed, whether it's accurate or not, that he had the world all figured out, and his place in it was solid. And then he comes to a different country and where he doesn't speak the language, where he didn't make the choice to come, and within a few days, he's in the beginning of second semester of second grade, and he doesn't speak the language. He doesn't know anybody. He doesn't have his backup group of people. He doesn't have anybody to support him. And he's really on his own, and he believes he belongs on a certain hierarchy, and he's going to witness firsthand that that hierarchy no longer exists, but there are hierarchies, and he's going to have to figure out where he fits in. It turns his world upside down, basically, and he tries to figure out which way is up from day one.
And he had been a star student in learning English, but as I know full well, trying to learn other languages, studying and kind of academic knowledge of memorizing vocabulary is nothing like trying to actually hear it spoken at a normal, native rate and being able to respond.
Yeah and that's huge. And, and he figures that out right away. Yes. I mean this, this person, Michel, when he was back in Tehran, he was, you know, he was lucky enough to take English class that which they reserved for the, you know, the big, smart kids. And again, he thought he had his seven words that he was felt solid about, and maybe he thought he was going to use those seven words to get his find his way. But as we all know and we learn a different language, learning seven words on a book completely different than hearing it in action. And I think what I what I was trying to do as a writer, was trying to get really into that sense of, it's almost all oral, it's all sound, and he's just trying to figure out the sounds, and trying to figure out if he can, you know, copy those sounds And repeat those sounds, and hopefully those sounds have meaning to those other people out there. To him they might not have any meaning. No, he's still trying to figure out the difference between what, who and why. So the ruler goes through that process as well of what it's like to actually learn language, you know, learn language that is completely foreign to the person involved. It was chat. It was a child. Was a writer to do that as well, but I thought it was, it would be fun, and thought that I hope I pulled it off.
Well, one favorite thing in the US is miss hearing song lyrics, and so you gave an example of that that he thought "ban Donna ru"n instead of "Band on the run." But he had a lot of similar confusions when he just heard a phrase and didn't know how the words divided out of it, right? You know, it's really tough, and his biggest language tutor was Bugs Bunny,
yes, yes. I think that a lot of people, when when they come to a foreign country, cling on to whatever they can that they feel comfortable with, and they feel like. It's an avenue or a route for them to get to where they want to go. This character picked up on Bugs Bunny because Bugs Bunny was available. He didn't, this character didn't make a lot of friends and didn't have a lot of support, you know, to figure things out on his own. But, you know, television is always there to to, to, you know, help people along when they don't have it. And I personally, I learned a lot of American culture and a lot of English language from radio and television. And I thought those Bunny was it was a perfect character for for this character, for this main character, because he embodied so much of America in its heyday. You know, those cartoons were written in the 40s and 50s. He had a certain street wise vernacular that wasn't going to use in the 70s, but it does hearken back to historical timing in the United States, they just won the war. They felt big, and they spoke in this very confident UPS kind of way. And Bugs Bunny kind of embodies all of that. And I thought he would be a good guy,
and something that he could connect with the other students about too, since Bugs Bunny was, was and still is pretty ubiquitous.
Yeah, yeah. For a while, for a while, and then he finds out that Bugs bunny is not as cool as he thought. So that became a problem for him later on.
Yeah. So one other thing that your book really I got immersed in the the smells and tastes of Persian cooking. You talk a lot about his mother, his maman cooking, and then contrasting that with the smells and tastes of American cooking. So can you talk about the food in Mike's and maybe your life?
Absolutely, we definitely, I don't know if all immigrants are at this I think they probably are, but their their food is huge part of their identity. That's when they are not, you know, at home, when they're in a foreign country, it's one of those markers, you know, for them that reminds them of who they are and where they come from. So Persian cooking in our house was was a constant. We didn't have. We didn't get to go out, you know, to like fried chicken, or McDonald's, or any of those places that everybody in our school went to on a regular basis. And for us, it was just like this. For us that was exotic, but we the cooking was part of my mom's identity in this character this my mom's identity was sort of like solidified and reinforced through her cooking. And of course, the child doesn't appreciate it. He wants to eat junk food like everybody else is eating, and so he doesn't see it as a positive, but I think that hopefully the readers will get a sense of what it's like to be inside of that house, and what it's like to be inside of an immigrant's house, again, where the cooking is so much a part of their identity, of their cultural identity,
and it's really kind of an embarrassment to him, you know, so much so that he throws away his lunch because he doesn't want his classmates to see this, you know, quote, unquote, weird food that his mother sent for him,
Exactly, exactly he he wants so badly to be like everybody else, that anything that resembles something weird or something off, he tries to hide and suppress. You know, there's, there's one scene where he temporarily becomes a lunch monitor, and he gets to bring the lunches at around lunchtime, and he sneaks into people's lunch bags to see, you know, what they have. Maybe he's going to steal the items. And he makes this realization that other people had weird food too. It wasn't just him that had the weird food. And he kind of notices it in passing while he's looking for cookies or cupcakes or whatever reason, looking to steal, but he notices odd foods in those lunch bags as well, and he kind of gets a different globe of his American classmates than he had before.
Yeah. so I wanted to talk about two things about that situation. I know that there were Mexican Americans in the area at the time also, and so one thing that he saw in the lunch bags was Mexican food, which he eventually ended up trying and really liking. And then he got his classmates kind. Lumped him in with the Mexicans just being brown skinned, you're Brown, you must be Mexican. And called him beaner, because if you're Mexican, you must eat beans. So I want to talk more about that, but I wanted to stick on the lunch boxes that he was raised very traditionally, Jewishly, and I know that non Ashkenazi Judaism doesn't have orthodox conservative reform, you know, as as Ashkenazi does, but so they were certainly raised traditional, and he was really shy about he didn't want to steal, even though his the head monitor, lunch monitor was saying that's one of the what he heard as French benefits, but was fringe benefits being the monitor was that you could, you know, NAB something. And he was so he's looking and he's like, No, I can't steal that. You know. No, stealing is bad. Can't steal that. Until he got to the cherry pie, and then all of a sudden he was like, I can atone for it on Yom Kippur, he found something he couldn't resist correct.
I think that, you know, people have those those dilemmas on a daily basis. This is obviously like a little metaphor, but we all have our sets of morals. And I think deep inside, everybody knows right from wrong and find ways to, you know, satisfy an urge or advice and still keep within those morals. And I think sometimes religion, you know whether it's right or not, gives you that option of I'll send now, and there's a mechanism for me to atone for it later, so I'll deal with it later. And that pops up throughout the book is that he does a lot of things that he probably knows he shouldn't be doing, but it would get him to where he thinks he needs to go. And so he justifies a lot of those things by saying, I'm going to tell atone on Yom Kippur. That's when I'm going to take care of all these terrible things that I'm doing, or whatever it is. And of course, the ending is, you know, sort of a Yom Kippur style ending, but yeah, I think, you know, he, he faces that dilemma. I think a lot of people do. They try to figure out how they can be happy within the moral guidelines, but also sometimes they need to be happy going outside of small guidelines, and they have to justify it for themselves somehow.
Yeah, that was one of the things I wanted to bring up, and if it's too spoilery, I can skip past this about the last scene. Okay, so let me ask you about this. So as he just said all through the book, when he does something he knows is wrong, he says he'll atone for it, and at the end of the book, one of his best childhood friends, Shiddeh, is thathow to say her name, Shiddeh, her family ends up moving, and it's been two years, and now he's a little more confident. He's a little bit more ingrained. He has, you know, different groups of friends, and then she appears, and all of a sudden, it's like she wants to tug him back to where he was when he first stepped in, because she doesn't speak English. She doesn't know what's going on. And now she wants him to to guide her. You know that they were best friends, and so she and he knows his way around now, and he has this huge conflict of, is he going to identify with this newcomer who doesn't speak the language? And he goes back and forth. You can almost see the gears turning in his head, and he suddenly gives in Farsi, in Persian, an alphabetic list of all the different parts of his identity and it, it was so beautiful. You know, it's, I don't know if you can say coming of age, because now he's in fifth grade, but it's still coming into himself and, you know, integrating those different pieces and maybe kind of celebrating all of it,
yeah, yeah. I'm so glad that you recognize it inside, because that wasn't this book went through a few different versions, heavy, heavy rewrites, but the ending never changed, because that was, that was my goal, was to. Arrive at that ending. And yeah, it is alphabetical because I remember that when you're when you're going through Yom Kippur, you you do those things where you where you beat your chest, and you admit to all your sins. And those are in Hebrew. They're in alphabetical order so I thought this is his day of atonement, and he does think his intention was to never go back to that place where he was struggling and he was lost and he was, I guess, humiliated and embarrassed, and once he realizes there's no getting out of it, and he can see that his friend, who he's not all his life, is really in need. He He just bites the bullet and he does the thing that he's sort of been avoiding from page two, since page two, he's been avoiding, you know, speaking Farsi or admitting to who he is, or admitting where he comes from, and all that. And then it just all comes spilling out in the end. And you know, he gets, he gets the signal throughout the book. He just doesn't pick it up. Everybody that's around him, from family members on up, except who they are. They know who they are, and they accept who they are and and that's what makes them so cool. He's trying to figure out that formula. And he doesn't realize, you know, that the formula is what Tutor turtle was told by Mr. Wizard, which is "always be what you is, not what you is not." And he had to figure that out, you know, throughout the book.
And he's especially annoyed because his younger brother seemed to be able to do this much easier. So Saeed, also known as precious, also known as Sid, immediately connected with some neighborhood kids, you know, and seemed very at ease with this adjustment.
Yeah. Sid was supposed to be based a little bit on Tom Sawyer's cousin, Sid, who is this character, who he's kind of a smart ass, and he kind of gets Tom Sawyer in trouble a lot, but he's also well adjusted for his own, for his own, for that community. And so I was basing a little bit of that on this character, but, but said they don't fight it as much, and he did have an easier time. You know, he will, he will just go with the flow. He had a much, much easier way of accepting things and enrolling with things. And so Michel really was the contrast. He couldn't figure out how to do that, but when he wanted to leapfrog to the top of the pile, and he didn't want to go through that process, but there was that he used the foil. You see Sid, and then you see Michel, and you're like, there's a way to do it, and then maybe there's a way to struggle. He found the struggle. He didn't find one thing
I alluded to before is that they were raised very traditionally, but when they got here and it came together at Passover, when his mother was sending him with matzah to school, and you know, he couldn't eat any of the snacks that the other kids were eating, that he realized that other kids in his class were Jewish, that it hadn't really connected with him before, and some of them were eating matzah and avoiding hametz, and others were kind of ignoring it. So he's shown these different levels of Jewish observance.
Yeah, you know, there's, there's in Iran, there's one way to be Jewish, and in America, there's a lot of different ways to be Jewish, and everybody is comfortable with their level of it, and that's news to him, and it's new to him. So he really just, you know, sees it all in full display at that basketball game. He sees one guy who he actually admires and thinks that he's going to be older, and he's going to be a mentor, he's going to be something like that. But when that older mentor talks openly about all of the things that he's been trying to not talk about, it kind of shakes him a little bit. But is, is He? Is he a cool guy, like I thought, or is he just as bad as I am? Yeah. And so again, he has to figure out, Where is he going to fit in. These guys are supposedly Jewish, but they're eating cookies, and this guy is definitely Jewish, and he's not, he's actually a cool guy. Do I want to be like him? Can I afford to be like him? Or can I risk being like him? So I, you know, it's this, you know, in America, there's just more of everything, and there's more variety of everything, including variety of how religious you are and how you practice and all that. And so it can be overwhelming. You know, somebody who comes from, you know, one way of doing things, the traditional way of doing things, and then, and then you come to America, and it's the land of opportunity, and it's the land of options. And that can sometimes be overwhelming to a person to figure out, oh, I guess I don't have to do this, but I think this, I can do this way. I can do it that way. And, you know, it's nice. It's good. If you're an adult, if you're a kid, it can be confusing, I guess. And that's what I was trying to convey, is that, you know, there's all these layers. He doesn't have to feel odd because they're all there.
So going back to the land of opportunity, so the father wanted to move there for more opportunities. And at first it seemed for better opportunities to be a merchant. But then all of a sudden, he sees he has the freedom to be anything. He doesn't have to follow this tradition. And you know, when they've had guests over or talking to the neighbors, people have laughed at his jokes, and he decides he wants to be a comic,
yeah, well, that's all fiction, by the way, very happily So, but yeah, I think that I wanted to play with that theme A little bit because, you know, the the book is focused is all seen through the eyes of this seven year old kid. But there are other characters, and there are other personalities and involved, and they all have to they're all going through the same or similar struggles. And yes, you come to America for the opportunity, they stay, for the options. And so when you know most men, I mean, this is not news to anybody, men have a certain role. In the traditional Persian culture, and in most traditional cultures, men have a certain role. Women have a certain role. And tradition demands that you stick to your role, stick, stick to what you're supposed to do, and whether we like it or not, those those roles are very restrictive, and not everybody is comfortable fitting into those roles or being forced into those roles, but you don't even know that. You can question it until something shows itself to you. In this case, America showed itself to Manny Manchurian, and he realized, oh, you know what? I don't have to do. I don't have to be carry all this stuff on my shoulders, and I don't have to be the male model that has been thrust upon me or has been thrust upon humanity, and he discovers EST which we have to be of a certain age, I guess, to know what what est is. It was. There was this self improvement program from the 70s where everybody was trying to find themselves, or to find kids and to get in touch with their, you know, their own identities. It was a big movement in the 70s, and it kind of bled into the 80s a little bit in the 90s. So he discovers EST, and through EST, he discovers, you know, I can be something else. I can I can do other things. I'm still, you know, able to, you know, find myself and identify myself. And so that's what he does. He he tries to step out, not as a unfaithful husband, but tries to step out as a man and explore other roles and other identities. And, you know, with some with some funny results and eventually he does find himself, and he does sort of land where he's supposed to be. I think he
I think he finds a better balance between the different parts of his life. And so you mentioned that this is partially your personal experience. Did you have to do any research to write the book?
Not really. I mean, I did actually research. Asked to remind myself of what it was, where it came from, what it morphed into, and. All that, but, but for the most part, and I did, you know, I did research. I'll tell you, I did research TV Guide to make sure that I had all the programming correct. And I did research Casey, Kasem American Top 40 to know which songs were playing in which seasons, in which years, and all that, but, but other than that, no, I mean, this was based on my experiences and my feelings and my emotions going through those, those first four or five years in America, in elementary school. And then I just, I just, you know, played with it as much as I could, and I and the characters went their own way. And so there was a lot of research done. I mean, I did have to consult my memory about at some point, I had to really, I had to write down what really happened in a separate notebook, just so that I remember for myself what my actual childhood was like. Because I was so deep into this book that I that sometimes, you know, they bled into each other. But other than that, no, I mean, I consulted my my own history and my memory. Now to that's my starting point, right?
Do you have any projects in the works that you would like to mention,
I am working on a couple of different things. You know, of course, before I wrote this novel, my work was mainly in short stories. So I still work in that short form format, but I do have a novella that I've been working on, sort of as a side dish to this novel, and I have two other pieces that I'm trying to finish up. But of course, being a lawyer and a father and a husband and the publisher, sometimes it takes a lot of hat wearing, and some things get lost in the shuffle, and so for the past, I would say, 60 days or so I haven't been able to work on those things. I mean, they're all in different stages of completion, so I'm not worried about that. But, you know, it is kind of a new and interesting sensation to be in this mode of getting your book out into the world and making sure that people see it and read it and all that. So that's that's a new thing for me. But once, once this book has found its place, I tend to go back and finish those other things. I think one of them is definitely a novel, and I think I already have a collection of short stories that I'd like to finish up and publish as well.
Sounds good I look forward to seeing whatever new projects come out. So is there anything you would like to bring up about the book that I didn't think to ask about?
I don't think so. I think you actually covered it pretty well. I mean, I think I'd like people to know that it's funny. It's a I think it's a funny book, but I think it's also a very heartfelt book that more than just immigrants can relate to. I think that the experience of going through elementary school is tough for everybody, whether you're local or whether you're a foreigner, or whatever it is, it's just, it's finding yourself and identifying yourself and, you know, accepting who you are. Yeah, I think is a universal feeling. And so I really did want to have the playground be a metaphor for what we all go through all the time, trying to fit in, trying to find a place, trying to get along, but also being true to who we are as it is.
So it is time for tikkun olam, if you would like to either using the book as a jumping point or really anything at all, send out a call for action for chicken alum for repairing the world. What would it be?
I think that religion is a wonderful thing, and I was raised in a religious home, and I'm proud of that. I worry about religion as dogma versus religion as teachings, and I hope that people will remember that the books of Moses were written by people and we should not ever let religion blind us of the humanity that we all need to experience and also to recognize and everybody around us. So if there's a call to action, I guess I would say, let's all remember that we all. Always learning, and we don't know everything, and let's not lose our humanity for our neighbors and our brothers and sisters and everybody around us. We are humans first, I think, and I hope that we can use religion to promote that part, promote the humanity part, and not the dogma part, which I think happens a lot, especially right now.
Yes, very much so. So all right, thank you for sharing that. So if someone would like to contact you, what is the best way?
Best way is to I mean, I have a website which is M I shop leon.com S, H, O, K, R, a n.com, https://www.mishokrian.com/ and that website has all of my other writings that have been published. It has links to buying the book. It has a contact link where people can send emails. I'm also the publisher of the Thieving Magpie, which is the publisher of this book. The feeding Magpie is a quarterly magazine that does fiction and poetry and art and photography. And you can always contact me at editor at feeding magpie.org, and you should visit the site, because it's got some fantastic work by some very talented artists from all over the world, and I'm very proud of that population as well.
All right, I will check that out. So thank you very much. Michael Shokrian, for talking to me about American playground.
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it
My pleasure. If you are interested in any of the books we discuss today, you can find them at your favorite bordened brick or online bookstore or at your local library. Thanks to Di Yan Ki for use of his Freilich which definitely makes me happy. This podcast is a project of the Association of Jewish libraries, and you can find more about it at www.jewishlibraries.org/niceJewish books. I would like to thank AJL and my podcast mentor, Heidi Rabinowitz, Keep listening for the promo for her latest episode.
This is Lee Wind, author of the Gender Binary is a Big Lie. I'll be joining you soon on the Book of Life podcast, and I'd like to dedicate my episode in pretty much the same way I dedicated my book for everyone reading this or listening to this of every gender you belong.
The Book of Life is the sister podcast of nice Jewish books. I'm your host. Heidi Rabinowitz and I podcast about Jewish kid. Lit join me to hear my conversation with Lee Wind, author of the Gender Binary is a Big Lie @bookoflifepodcast.com you
