PERSIA IS MY HEART

This is a personal story that extends to a nation. In its author, a young woman in her twenties, member of a great Persian family (her father was adviser of the Shah), Persia has a spokesman comparable to India's Santha Rama Rau. Growing up in a Persia which was forced to modernize superficially, she has known the delight of the bath houses where women meet, and she has shared the hunger of the village folk and the inferior status of women. Her love of people and her pride in her country have deepened her concern for it. Resisting the traditional concept of high class women as pretty painted dolls, she avoided the customary early marriage arranged by the women of the family and secured an education. She started a dress designing shop in Teheran, the profits of which she used to come to America, where she could learn how to make her dream come true. She would open small factories which would enable the village women to gain self respect and perhaps the respect of their men through earning independently for their own families, and to lessen the long winter hunger. Miss Najafi describes with deep love the religious life, the customs, the arts of Persia as they colored her own world. She writes with refreshing candor and warmth a story most pertinent -- the story of a young woman devoted to her country, determined to bring to it the technology and free outlook of the West while helping it to retain its own great spirit.