A Year in Middle America

Iranian exchange student writes home. What do her letters reveal about America in 1961?

In 1961 a 17-year-old Iranian girl, was a high school exchange student in Ohio. During that year, she wrote many letters on Aerograms to her family in Tehran. Years later, she discovered that her father had saved every letter.

Now 60 years later, she shares these letters with all the cultural shocks, school challenges, and community victories that tell the story of life in small town 1960s America from the perspective of a teenager from the other side of the globe.