It is unfortunate that I read this pukapuka directly after having read the masterly What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, a writer of extraordinary talent and insight, so that it could not but suffer by comparison. But even had I read The Girl from Revolution Road directly after John Boyne’s ghastly A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom – easily the worst book I’ve read this year – I still don’t think I would have been particularly impressed.

It’s a shame because I really wanted to like it. The Girl from Revolution Road is a collection of personal essays by Iranian-Kiwi filmmaker Ghazaleh Golbakhsh. Golbakhsh moved to Tāmaki Makaurau from Tehran with her whānau to escape the war when she was a child. Her essays are mostly on the theme of being an immigrant and the complex double sense of home that entails. It is a well-travelled topic to which Golbakhsh doesn’t seem to have much to add. She almost seems aware of this lack: “My journey is not uncommon, not just for others who have grown up in similar circumstances, but for most people in general, growing up and finding their place.” She writes about feeling out of place as a brown girl in racist Aotearoa, which has only a very small Iranian population, but then also feeling like an outsider on her visits back to Iran: “The hijab felt like an invading force stuck on my head.”

I was surprised when I worked out that Golbakhsh must be about my own age – nearly 40 – because the prose style reminded me of undergraduate essays with their penchant for sweeping generalisations: “Dictatorships rely on oppressing their people through the most mundane ways in order to keep the fear apparent in everyday life. That’s possibly why nail polish is still outlawed.” Upon arriving back in Iran as an adult: “A slight tang of something old hangs about possibly symbolising the oppressive atmosphere.” I was particularly struck by the wholesale pronouncements Golbakhsh makes about her fellow Iranians: “Iranian women do not age … Iranians are always wary of everything and anything … Iranians adore gardens and picnics … Persians do not do things by halves … [Iranians] love nothing more than to boast about their traditions … Iranians, not unlike many Asian groups, are tribal … stretching the truth comes naturally [to Iranians in the diaspora] as does outright lying”. This seems especially odd since elsewhere in her pukapuka she argues that ethnic stereotyping is lazy and can be dangerous, given the international context of violent Islamophobia.

At one point, Golbakhsh gets a job as a waitress in a strip club, seeking to “experience everything in life” in order to turn it into art – but then quits after her first shift, concluding that such places are “devoid of meaning”. It’s an odd little anecdote in what is, tonally, quite a strange pukapuka. Golbakhsh tackles big, timely topics – including the Islamophobia we have here in Aotearoa – but her comments, while unarguable, make for a curiously flat reading experience. “To be nationless and rootless with no rights is a distressing thought … It seems as though no matter how many individuals, groups and organisations come forward and challenge extremism, every now and then we are pushed back.”

Overall, The Girl from Revolution Road feels like a pukapuka that was hurried through the publication process as a knee-jerk reaction to the terror attacks in Ōtautahi. Rather than reading it, I recommend instead watching the short documentary series Golbakhsh made about Muslim New Zealanders, This is Us. All the videos are free to watch online (on the Radio New Zealand Youtube channel) and the individual stories they tell are warm, nuanced and insightful. It is in this medium that Golbakhsh really shines.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Heritage