When Skateboards will be Free

My Reluctant Political Childhood

Said Sayrafiezadeh

The revolution is not only inevitable, it is imminent. It is not only imminent, it is quite imminent. And when the time comes, my father will lead it.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's Iranian-born father and American Jewish mother had one thing in common: their unshakable conviction that the workers' revolution was coming. Separated since their son was nine months old, they each pursued a dream of the perfect socialist society. Bouncing with his mother between makeshift Pittsburgh apartments, falling asleep at party meetings, longing for the luxuries he's taught to despise, Saïd waits for the revolution that never, ever arrives. 'Soon,' his mother assures him, while his long-absent father quixotically runs as a socialist candidate for president in an Iran about to fall under the ayatollahs. Then comes the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979...

The uproar that follows is the first time Saïd hears the word 'Iran' in school, and there he is suddenly forced to confront the combustible stew of his identity: as an American, an Iranian, a Jew, a socialist . . . and a middle-school kid who loves football and video games.

With a profound gift for capturing the absurd in life, and a deadpan wisdom that comes from surviving a surreal childhood in the Socialist Workers Party, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh has crafted an unsentimental, funny, heartbreaking memoir.

First published:: 2009
Published by:: Penguin – Hamish Hamilton
Length:: Hardcover 287 pages

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About the author

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a memoirist, fiction writer and playwright. He is the author of the forthcoming story collection American Estrangement. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times, and his debut story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize.

His short stories and personal essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and New American Stories, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship.