Small Town Iranian-American
On building your community
I was born in Texas and lived there my entire life. My father was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and immigrated to America to pursue a college education. My mother is second generation American, and was born and raised in the north-eastern United States. I grew up on a small ranching community in northwest Texas. Media had never been a large part of my childhood until I reached high school. Growing up, we had dial-up Internet and basic television. Even today I still only have the basic channels. But I loved to go to the movie theater. I used to do odd jobs around the house for money, and I’d always spend it at the movies.
When I attended high school I joined an Academy of Media Arts and Technology. I was able to explore my passions of media arts and learned the production process of a news show and indie films. By the time I had graduated high school I had quite an impressive resume. However, when I got to college my passion for media creation developed into a consuming interest for media and communication studies. I already understood how to make the content, but in college I became interested in how I could use that knowledge to inspire and benefit others.
I attended the University of Texas at Austin for the city. I fell in love with the atmosphere within Austin because it was nothing I had ever seen before and somehow just what I was looking for. The city’s motto is “Keep Austin Weird” which refers to shopping locally and supporting small businesses and local culture. Many people also take the motto to mean be true to yourself and don’t be ashamed of it. Being half Iranian and identifying with many modern Persian traditions while growing up in a small town in Texas, I didn’t find many people I could identify with.
It wasn’t until I moved to Austin that I met a group of Iranian peers and finally had others with similar family traditions. These peers invited me to join some of there other organizations and helped me meet other inspiring artists who wanted to make a difference using media. I began working with local nonprofits doing communications and development work with them. There, I finally began to feel that I was using my skills with media to help others.
This personal narrative was written at the 2016 Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. It exists as part of a digital publication which explores how personal stories and human connections can enable us and others to be more inclusive, responsive, and understanding of migrants and the socio-political-cultural impacts of migration.
