Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 5/5/08 Section: Student Culture

Media Credit: Arthur Markman Professor Persis Karim (right) hosts informal study sessions with SJSU student Eleanor Lovinfosse, a Middle Eastern studies minor, on the political and social culture of Iran.

Since the beginning of the semester, when Professor Persis Karim offered to guide Eleanor Lovinfosse through an education on the culture of Iran, the student has been in her office twice a week, every week.

"Both of my parents were raised here in the U.S.," said Lovinfosse, a Middle Eastern studies minor, "and they are really open and accepting of other cultures. But they never really made a point to expose me to other cultures, so I was really curious."

Karim assigns Lovinfosse a list of different readings pertaining to Iranian history, politics and literature, and the two engage in discussion, sharing their thoughts on the topics.

"I'm not going on the trip," Karim said, "but I might be able to help her read the map to where she wants to go, and I can make some suggestions to different routes."

Persis Karim, born to an Iranian father and a French mother, said she learned the importance of curiosity when it came to culture and identity from her late father. Now, she works on triggering that curiosity in the students she teaches as an American literature professor at SJSU.

Karim remembers when, as a child, her father, Alexander, used to take her on long walks along the trails of Mount Diablo in San Francisco. She said they'd talk about philosophy and, sometimes, about trees.



"I think for him, walking was a way to connect with the natural world," Karim said.

Karim's father arrived separately from her mother to the United States, both coming from occupied countries that suffered devastating economic problems after World War II, she said.



"He was fascinated with American democracy … inherent in the constitution," she said. "Although he was very disillusioned at the end of his life with what had become of U.S. democracy."

Unlike immigrants who came to the United States in communities, Karim's parents did not make it a primary goal to uphold traditions of their home, leaving Karim and her siblings a great exposure to the American culture.

Growing up among Americans, looking different, and having a foreign name, Karim was labeled as an "outsider." She remembers being asked as a child what she was and answering: "I don't know."

At her high school, she said she was one of only a few ethnic minorities in a neighborhood dominated by white Americans, causing her to gravitate toward students with mixed ethnic backgrounds.



"It was not that we shared anything. It was that we shared the experience of feeling a little bit outside, and sometimes your outsider-ness bonds you to other people who feel outside."

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution erupted and news coverage started depicting Iran in a new light.

Karim was in high school at the time and said she saw the revolution as "an awakening."



"For me, it just aroused questions about what's my relationship to that culture and to those people."

Her father helped her develop an affinity toward the Iranian culture, in different ways, such as reciting poetry verses in Persian on a day-to-day basis.

She remembers him also translating verses by the Persian poet Omar Khayyam and the way his words held "some kind of magic" for her father.



"As I got older and learned Persian, he could share more of his world with me," she said.

Since then, literature has become what Karim calls "the vehicle by which I travel."



She said she started meeting people with interests in literature and culture and who had the same ethnic background as she did.



"You always are looking for your story," Karim said. "You want to read yourself in literature."

As a result, Karim gathered literary work by Iranian-American writers in a book she edited titled "A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian Americans."

She later was impressed to see that within the context of the United States, most of the Iranian-Americans writers were women. She highlighted this in another book she edited titled "Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora."

Karim's curiosity wasn't only Iranian-based, however it was driven by literature.

In 2007, she collaborated with creative writing Professor Kate Evans on the Pomegranate Reading Series, which was held at the Pomegranate Cafe on San Fernando Street.

It was a literary event, where once a month, three featured writers read their works aloud, ranging from poetry to fiction and non-fiction works. Afterward members of the audience could read any of their own writings, as well.

"(Karim) always has a lot of great ideas for trying to think about ways to get people involved and excited - being a literary community together," Evans said.

Karim is now a wife of a Jewish-American man, Craig, with two sons.

She said the time she had spent with her father had shaped her in ways she didn't know were so meaningful before, and she now tries to be that figure for her 5-year-old son, Nikko.



"Sometimes I get very sad, and I wish (my father) was here to see me," she said, "or see my son. My son is a little bit like him, he has that spark - a joy for life and a curiosity."

Karim said she wants Nikko to embrace the diversity in his ethnic background. For now, she said she takes her son for long walks like her father once did a long time ago.

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