Red skateboard baby

Sa‹d Sayrafiezadeh --> reviewed by Paul Hollander -->

Written by an author with an unusual name and ethnic background (American Jewish and Iranian), When Skateboards Will Be Free is a remarkable and moving memoir of growing up with politically obsessed parents. For the most part the Iranian father was physically absent, having abandoned the author and his mother when the boy was only nine months old. He was, nonetheless, a powerful presence in the life of a child who longed for paternal attention and contact.

The memoir is a parable of how political commitments and preoccupations deform and destroy personal relationships and depersonalize the individual beholden to them; more generally, it is a meditation on the problematic relationship between...