Said Sayrafiezadeh
Said Sayrafiezadeh
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is an American memoirist and fiction writer living in New York City. He won a 2010 Whiting Award for his memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free. His short-story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was short-listed for the 2014 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. He serves on the board of directors for the New York Foundation for the Arts...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
CountryUnited States of America
background barack caused equate fact far hostage iranian name raised similar strange ways white
In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother. His background is far more complicated than his name would suggest. Furthermore, the fact that I was a child during the hostage crisis has caused me to equate being Iranian with being alienated.
change hostage iranian married motivated prior revolution sentiment shortened took united
My sister married an American and took his name, and my brother has shortened Sayrafiezadeh to Sayraf. So now he's Jacob Sayraf, or sometimes Jake Sayraf. He made the change when he was a teenager, prior to the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. So I don't think it was motivated by any anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States.
wake work
I wake when my wife wakes, at 7:30 A.M. I'd like to sleep longer, but she has to go off to work, and I'd be plagued with guilt.
detail hours obscure order originally public socialist united workers york
While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New York Public Library in order to try to get one obscure detail right. For instance, was the Socialist Workers Party originally called the American Workers Party or the Workers Party of the United States?
born brooklyn connection extent home iranian left months nine raised speak
I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. I've never been to Iran, I don't speak the language, and, probably most important of all, my Iranian father left home when I was nine months old. That's the extent of my connection to Iran.
age childhood defined presence superstar until
My childhood was defined by my father's absence. His presence looms so large. Up until the age of 18, he was a superstar for me.
great limited
My characters are not underachievers; they aspire to great things, but they are limited by the world around them.
work
I work in the most non-Communist job. I work for 'Martha Stewart Living.'
I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.
forces iranian record straight suppose
I suppose my Iranian identity is one of the driving forces for being a writer: I want to set the record straight about who I really am.
abandoned exciting imagine immensely man noble unknown
There was something so immensely redemptive and exciting for me to imagine that my unknown father was not just a man who had abandoned me but a noble man of adventure who had no choice.
becoming bus city design drivers edge fired four good job strike studio verge worked year
The year the bus drivers went on strike in Pittsburgh, I was twenty-three and living on the edge of the city in a neighborhood that was on the verge of becoming a ghetto. I had just been fired from a good job as a cartographer in a design studio where I had worked for about four months.
boy existed growing life marked natural pittsburgh since stasis state suffered throughout
Stasis is something that has marked my life since I was a boy growing up in Pittsburgh with my mother. It was the natural state that we existed in. For one thing, she suffered from a debilitating depression throughout my childhood, and depression is nothing if not static.
absolutely authentic bad capitalism experience families purposely refused worst
Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'