Not Without My Daughter

Not Without My Daughter is an autobiographical novel written by Betty Mahmoody in collaboration with William Hoffer. The book was published in 1987 and soon became a bestseller, and it was ultimately nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Following the structure of a traditional American captivity narrative, the novel focuses on the personal account of Betty Mahmoody, whose first-person narrative describes her experience as an American woman trapped in Iran due to her Iranian husband’s coercive and oppressive actions. The true-life narrative explores themes of cultural clashes, personal resilience, and a mother’s sacrifices to ensure the freedom and safety of her child. Betty Mahmoody received many awards after the publication of Not Without My Daughter, such as the Outstanding Woman of the Year in 1990, the Child Abuse Prevention Services Award, and the America’s Freedom Award. The book solidified her status as a specialist in Iran-US relations, cross-cultural marriage, and international abduction cases. However, despite the novel’s international success, diasporic Iranian voices and academic critiques have since challenged Mahmoody’s memoir, highlighting its reliance on colonial tropes to depict Iranian culture as retrograde, misogynistic, zealous, and unsanitary.

The book’s eponymous film adaptation was released in 1991, further popularizing Mahmoody’s story. Subsequently, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody (Betty Mahmoody’s husband) collaborated with Alexis Kouros and released a documentary titled Without My Daughter in 2002. The documentary sought to challenge some of Betty Mahmoody’s claims in Not Without My Daughter and provided a wider political and cultural context for the story. In 2015, Mahtob Mahmoody, Betty’s daughter, who appears as a character in Not Without My Daughter, published her own account of the experience of confinement and escape from Iran. The novel, its film adaptation, and the various participants’ accounts have provided ample material for the academic exploration of postcolonial tropes.

This study guide refers to the 1989 Corgi Books paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of extreme domestic abuse, confinement, violence toward women and children in public places, and potentially distressing scenes of escape in unsafe conditions. In addition, the book contains scenes of bombardments and their aftermath. The narrative is told from an antagonistic point of view, portraying Middle Eastern and particularly Iranian culture in a negative, stereotypical manner. The novel uses outdated ethnocentric language to describe cultural features and traditions that are distinct from those of the author.

Plot Summary

The events described in Not Without My Daughter take place between 1984 and 1986. In 1984, Betty, an American woman, travels with her Iranian-born husband, Moody, her Iranian-born husband, and their five-year-old daughter, Mahtob, to Iran for a seemingly ordinary two-week vacation to see Moody’s family. However, the trip takes an ominous turn when Moody reveals his true intentions of staying in Iran permanently, leading Betty and Mahtob into a nightmare of captivity and cultural conflict.

As Betty struggles against her discomfort in Iran, she decides to carefully plan her escape from the country with Mahtob. She discovers that under Iranian law, husbands have absolute rights over their wives and children. Betty fears that she will be separated from her daughter and struggles to strategize in a way that will keep her and her daughter safe and together. As she tries different avenues of escape, her advances are constantly hindered by external events and by the resistance of her husband, Moody, who embodies the role of the antagonist character in her account.

As the narrative progresses, Moody has several violent outbursts that culminate in the domestic abuse of Betty and Mahtob. The abuse becomes extreme in Chapter 16, when Betty is also separated from her daughter. Feeling isolated and despairing about her situation, Betty turns to religion for guidance. As a response to her prayers, Moody brings Mahtob back, and subsequently, several occurrences allow her to plan her exit from Iran. With the help of an acquaintance named Amahl, Betty and her daughter finally make their escape from Iran through the country’s border with Turkey. Their ordeal is physically and emotionally grueling, for they must rely on different groups of smugglers to guide them through the escape route. Given that Betty Mahmoody’s account is necessarily limited to her own perspective on the events, the novel’s postscript seeks to provide a broader perspective on the story, underscoring the geopolitical role that the novel has played as a cautionary tale on the international stage.