Not Without My Daughter

TLDR: This book is undeniably gripping to read, and this happened to this woman, and it was reprehensible and directly made possible by the Iranian government, whether or not men in other countries are also abusive or whatever other whataboutism you can invent. That being said, the portrayal of the culture of Iran and its average, powerless citizens was obviously heavily influenced by her negative experience with a small group of weird people and should have been handled with more acknowledgement of that, although I think she tries to do so more than she's being credited for.

Reading the reviews of this book is very interesting. I'm giving it a high star score because I read it in all but one sitting and I think as something to read it's great - a fascinating story and well-written. I'm shocked reading people describing Betty as “completely unlikable” etc. What she and Mahtob experienced was undeniably a sick ordeal and yes it was abetted by the Iranian state and religious culture. To call her recounting any of that “propaganda” is crazy as this very much seems to have happened; I'm sure her story would have been debunked by now if not. However with what limited knowledge I have of Iranian culture from reading other books, watching travel shows, etc, I immediately found her sweeping statements about “Iranians” being dirty and terrible cooks and inhospitable to be very weird and hard to believe. I think her husband's family was likely uniquely strange (and, if she was telling the truth, seemingly inbred over generations) and due to her terrible circumstances she never saw much outside of their circle. She does make other, better friends and she praises many people she interacts with away from the family but if this book was written today I doubt she would have been encouraged to lean so hard on the third world stereotypes she applies to the entire country based on her awful in-laws. I also don't really think her perspective was intensely Islamaphobic. She acknowledges that she believes the Christian God and Allah are one and the same and participates in Islamic rituals with some hope and belief in her heart. Of course she criticizes the state-sponsored religious laws that oppressed her as anyone trapped in a theocracy they don't believe in would. In general, I feel you have to view the book through the lens of someone coping with something terrible that was inflicted upon them and likely not being advised particularly well on how to manage her feelings and small “fame”. It was published very shortly after this happened to her when all the wounds and trauma were raw and probably would have benefited from being drafted and then revisited even 5 years later. She also needed money at that time - this book was not written deliberately in the way it should have been.

There are a lot of more subjective things I have personal thoughts about, but what's the point of debating them? It does seem to be buried in later chapters that it was fairly obvious that Moody was becoming unstable and radicalized. When she questions the decision to go on the “vacation”, she quoted him as saying something like “you have to go” in a vicious way. He was obviously having trouble holding down a job, which she acknowledges could have been racially motivated but also seems like it could have been due to malpractice on his part. They basically had to leave Texas because he was gaining a reputation as being radicalized. He was obviously unhappy that their first child was a girl. Her reasoning for why they “had” to go on this trip is extremely weak and strange - if Mahtob went on the trip she wouldn't be forced to go in the future? But it is easy for us to judge all of this not being in her shoes and also living 40 years in the future. As a young woman in 2025, almost all of her decisions leading up to the trip are hard to sympathize with. She should have not gone to Iran with a man she felt she had to hide her birth control from, among other things, but she did and he abused her horrifically. These are things that are interesting to discuss in a book club but imo don't really affect the star rating of a non-fiction book. My main qualms in terms of the quality of the book are with the unnuanced portrayal of the Iranian people as a unwashed, severe monolith.