Persis M. Karim

PERSIS KARIM was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by her French mother, Evelyne M. Karim and her late Iranian father, Alexander Karim. She grew up feeling a little “different” and spent a good deal of her childhood explaining an identity she couldn't fully grasp. During the 1979 hostage crisis, she had a kind of awakening. After graduating from college at UC Santa Cruz, she felt an immense longing to learn more about her Iranian heritage. In the early 1980s she began learning Persian and got involved with a group of Iranian expatriates who were working to raise American awareness about the Iran-Iraq War. As the 1980s wore on, she felt a longing to become more familiar with Persian language and literature as well as the politics of the Middle East. In 1990 (on the eve of Perisan Gulf War I), she started graduate work at the University of Texas in Middle Eastern studies. She followed her master's degree, with a Ph.D. in comparative literature.