Concealed is an amazing memoir. So often I find that memoirs are really authors’ ego trips, and they never derive any life-changing conclusions from their stories. Concealed avoids that trap quite nicely.
Of Persian Jewish descent, Esther grows up in Queens, New York during the 1960s. Her family immigrated from Mashad, Iran, where life even in the twentieth century, remained rather medieval. Her parents had to practice Judaism “underground” while maintaining the appearance of being Muslims. Eventually, they fled Iran for New York City. Their exit involved escaping via Afghanistan and India where they waited for clearance to move to the United States.
The book brought to mind stories in the news recently in which studies supported the idea that the effects of trauma can reverberate down the generations through epigenetics. These epigenetic changes modify the expression of our genes without changing our DNA code itself. In response to changes in the womb, genes are turned on or off by tiny chemical tags are added to or removed from our DNA, affording a method of adapting without a permanent shift in our genome. Certainly centuries of living underground while facing pogroms could affect Amino’s family, causing the behaviors of her father and mother.
Her father is a silent man, rarely showing affection unless a child is ill. Then he becomes the doctor he wished he could have been. He expects his daughter to marry early to a man twenty years her elder, thus her education is a waste of time. He dislikes the looseness of American culture. Her mother is the polar opposite, always demanding, wanting preferential treatment because she was an orphan. While embracing all that is American (including designer clothing), she encourages Esther to find her own way. When she does, however, the mother demands her daughter’s full attention.
Esther ultimately must work her way through this conflicting childhood and decide what to retain of her Persian culture and what to dismiss. She grapples with her identity while remaining devoted to her family. The most amazing thing is that, through investigating the distant past, Esther is able to reconcile with her parents, a remarkable achievement. Through her own work in therapy, she is able to become an integrated person.
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