They Said They Wanted Revolution, Neda TolouiSemnani
They Said They Wanted Revolution, Neda TolouiSemnani
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They Said They Wanted Revolution
A Memoir of My Parents

Author: Neda Toloui-Semnani

Narrator: Neda Toloui-Semnani

Unabridged: 8 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2022

Synopsis

From a daughter of Iranian revolutionaries, activists, immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers comes a gripping and emotional memoir of family and the tumultuous history of two nations.In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.Conflicted about her parents’ choices for years, Neda realized that to move forward, she had to face the past head-on. Through extensive reporting, journals, and detailed interviews, Neda untangles decades of history in a search for answers.Both an epic family drama and a timely true-life political thriller, They Said They Wanted Revolution illuminates the costs of righteous activism across generations.

About Neda Toloui-Semnani

Neda Toloui-Semnani is an Emmy award–winning writer and producer. She is currently a senior writer at the television news magazine VICE News Tonight, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, Kinfolk, New York, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Baffler, The Week, BuzzFeed, and Roll Call among others. She’s been featured on The Rumpus and This American Life. She was named a 2018 fellow with the Logan Nonfiction Program and a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA fellow in Nonfiction Literature.She holds a master of science in gender and social policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a master of fine arts in nonfiction from Goucher College.She grew up in Washington, DC, and is based in Brooklyn where she lives with a small dog, a large cat, a fat baby, and a man she calls Stretch.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Clif

Back in the 1960s I had some Iranian classmates in college, and in the years since whenever their country was in the news I have often wondered what happen to them—particularly when the Shah was replaced with Khomeini. During the anti Shah demonstrations of the 1970s I wondered how confident the dem......more

Goodreads review by Brittany

A good read intermixing past and present with the challenges that both the writer and her family had to overcome. This book put a lot of insight into what was going on in Iran, the countries nearby and the United States. At times, I had to lookup words and phrases to better understand the author’s p......more

Goodreads review by agata

They Said They Wanted Revolution is a memoir written by Neda Toloui-Semnani, an author and journalist, and a daughter of Iranian revolutionaries and activists. Toloui-Semnani’s father was executed by the Iranian state, which promoted her mother to flee with her family to the US in 1982, while she wa......more

Goodreads review by Carolina

Memories, interview transcripts, official trial notes, journal entries and research come together to tell a story both deeply personal and historically and politically relevant. I really enjoyed feeling I was joining the author on a journey as she tried to piece everything together - even the contra......more

Goodreads review by Emma

ooof This is a very good, very necessary look at the cost of fighting for change- one that comes even when the change is necessary, when it enriches, improves, and even saves lives. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a long time.......more

Quotes

“The book is both richly reflective, informative, and tender in its characterizations…a generous and heartfelt search for personal and familial identity.” —Kirkus Reviews“[Neda] Toloui-Semnani movingly reflects on how disconnected she felt from her Iranian roots while growing up in Washington, D.C., and weaves in diary excerpts and correspondence from her first trip back to Iran, in 2003. The result is an intimate and vital study of the Iranian diaspora.” —Publishers Weekly“Illuminating, poignant. An inspiring read.” —Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

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