When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood Book

“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.”

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.

Saïd’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. Pinballing with his mother between makeshift Pittsburgh apartments, falling asleep at party meetings, longing for the luxuries he’s taught to despise, Said 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 hostage crisis. The uproar that follows is the first time Saïd hears the word “Iran” in school. 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.

Poised perfectly between tragedy and farce, here is a story by a brilliant young writer struggling to break away from the powerful mythologies of his upbringing and create a life—and a voice—of his own. Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s memoir is unforgettable.

The Barnes & Noble Review

When Saïd Sayrafiezadeh was four years old, his mother informed him that they would no longer be eating grapes. The edict had come from the Socialist Workers Party, to which Saïd 's mom was ardently devoted, in sympathy with the boycott called by the United Farm Workers. As often happens with prohibitions, this one led young Saïd to fixate single-mindedly on the object denied him. After months of being badgered by his demands for grapes, during a trip to the supermarket, Saïd's mother instructed him to eat one grape, reasoning that his desire would be satisfied without violating the boycott. Before long he was spending their trips to the market in the produce aisle, gorging himself with the fruit while his mother shopped, all the while wearing a "Don't Eat Grapes" button on his jacket. Recalling this sanctioned stealing, he observes that the rules he grew up with "had set me in opposition to the rest of the world, where my right was everyone else's wrong, and where my wrong was everyone else's right, and where I would be helpless in ever being able to distinguish for myself which one was which."