Pantea Amin Tofangchi is an award-winning Iranian-American poet. She is also a pacifist–a hopeful one. Her hope and pacifism, even now–especially now–is born of a childhood to which most U.S.-born Americans can’t relate: amid war. 

Tofangchi, who grew up during the Iran-Iraq War (from September 1980 to August 1988), certainly isn’t mad that Americans have no concept of what her childhood was like–fighting out the front door of her home, looking on nervously as her mother, mid-bomb raid, wraps a blanket around a flashlight to suppress its beam before guiding her children to safety–but she won’t suffer our sustained obliviousness either.