Americanized: List 4

by Sara Saedi
In this memoir, Sara Saedi describes her shocking discovery as a young teen that she was an undocumented immigrant and her journey to getting a green card.

This list covers Chapter 10–Chapter 12.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5
40 words 30 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inevitably
    in such a manner as could not be otherwise
    Inevitably, over the course of wherever we were driving to, their hands would find their way back to each other again.
  2. commiserate
    feel or express sympathy or compassion
    They co-ran their luggage business, which meant they spent their days at work together and then spent their evenings at home commiserating over dissatisfied customers or certain suitcases that were damaged beyond repair.
  3. overbearing
    expecting unquestioning obedience
    Back in Tehran, my mom was only nineteen and had spent the last year begging her overbearing father to send her to university in London.
  4. dalliance
    the act of delaying and playing instead of working
    He worried my mom and her brother would form an unholy alliance and do whatever the hell they wanted with the understanding that neither would report their dalliances to their parents.
  5. relent
    give in, as to influence or pressure
    After a lot of persuading, he finally relented and my mom started making arrangements to move to Europe.
  6. halitosis
    offensive breath
    If my mom decided that Ali didn't live up to his photographs or that he was an ogre with halitosis and no discernible sense of humor, she could have politely refused to marry him.
  7. discernible
    perceptible by the senses or intellect
    If my mom decided that Ali didn't live up to his photographs or that he was an ogre with halitosis and no discernible sense of humor, she could have politely refused to marry him.
  8. allay
    lessen the intensity of or calm
    My mom admits that nerves were part of the equation but says her doubts and anxieties were allayed by the excitement of starting a life with my dad.
  9. imposing
    befitting an important, distinguished, or powerful person
    My grandfather had an imposing presence, but he was a devoted father and was well respected by his peers.
  10. cold feet
    timidity preventing the continuation of a course of action
    Meanwhile, my dad landed at the Atlanta airport eager to reconnect with his wife, only to be told that the flight from Heathrow had gotten in two hours earlier and there was no Shohreh Saedi on the plane. He had no idea what was going on. Was it cold feet?
  11. unrequited
    not returned in kind
    When sixteen-year-old me, who'd suffered from chronic bouts of unrequited love, looked at them, all I could wonder was, Will I ever be this happy?
  12. discombobulated
    having self-possession upset; thrown into confusion
    And that's precisely why I was left emotionally discombobulated when I found out that my parents had secretly gotten divorced.
  13. kismet
    fate or fortune
    Maybe it was kismet, but they spotted an elderly Iranian man dining with his son and decided to rope them into their kooky divorce plan.
  14. amicable
    characterized by friendship and good will
    I would like to let the record show that Ali and Shohreh probably had the most amicable divorce in the history of divorces.
  15. arbitrary
    based on or subject to individual discretion or preference
    Even though they were willing to try anything, I'd personally reached peak frustration levels at our country's complex and seemingly arbitrary immigration laws.
  16. polygamy
    having more than one spouse at a time
    My great-grandfather was a full-fledged polygamist. The man was totally shady.
  17. enamored
    marked by foolish or unreasoning fondness
    He was the romantic type and instantly became enamored with his uncle's wife.
  18. ire
    anger; irritability
    In the middle of it all, with family members in a state of ire over their love affair, she got cold feet.
  19. indiscretion
    a petty misdeed
    Her husband couldn't forgive the indiscretion and didn't want to be with her anymore.
  20. torrid
    characterized by intense emotion
    I don't know if their torrid beginnings cast a dark shadow on them, but my grandparents' marriage was laced with hardship and tragedy.
  21. volatile
    marked by erratic changeableness in affections
    By then, my grandparents had a volatile relationship...
  22. woe
    misery resulting from affliction
    My mom says that despite their marital woes and my grandfather's wandering eye, they remained in love till the very end.
  23. visceral
    coming from deep inward feelings rather than from reasoning
    She never got over the visceral grief of losing her daughter or the fact that she didn't raise her oldest child.
  24. emphysema
    a condition of decreased respiratory function of the lungs
    She'd been a chain-smoker, and as she approached her eighties, she would spend weeks at a time in the hospital due to emphysema.
  25. sterile
    free of pathological microorganisms
    The sterile hallways of the ICU and the scent of illness caused me bouts of anxiety when we'd visit her, but no matter how bad she looked, she always seemed to make a full recovery.
  26. stint
    an unbroken period of time during which you do something
    I started to expect that every hospital stint would end with her returning home.
  27. somberly
    in a serious and solemn manner
    Dayee Mohammad's wife was the first to greet me, and I asked her how my grandmother was doing.
    "She's fine,” she answered somberly. The relief I felt was instant.
  28. ostracize
    expel from a community or group
    My problems may have seemed big to me in high school, but I wasn't dealing with arranged marriages to the wrong man or a love affair that would leave me ostracized from my entire family.
  29. stoic
    seeming unaffected by pleasure or pain; impassive
    But in that moment, I wished he were one of those stereotypically cold, distant American dads or those stoic, strict Asian dads my friends always complained about.
  30. provisional
    under terms not final or fully worked out or agreed upon
    But let's pause for a moment on my dad's red and puffy face, and cut to the events leading up to our provisional estrangement.
  31. estrangement
    separation resulting from hostility
    But let's pause for a moment on my dad's red and puffy face, and cut to the events leading up to our provisional estrangement.
  32. painstaking
    characterized by extreme care and great effort
    I had spent several painstaking weeks cutting out my favorite pictures from issues of Us magazine (back when it was still a respectable monthly publication).
  33. don
    put on clothes
    Each day, my dad donned a white lab coat with his name, Ali, embroidered above the front pocket, and drove his giant red van to the San Jose and San Francisco airports to pick up suitcases in need of fixing.
  34. disposition
    your usual mood
    Despite his cheery disposition, I knew my dad hated what he did for a living.
  35. foreclosure
    proceedings initiated to repossess the collateral for a loan
    If we didn't sell our house, the bank would put it in foreclosure.
  36. locale
    the scene of any event or action
    We still lived off the beaten path, but Pinewood Drive was much closer to my friends and school than the San Jose locales my parents were now considering.
  37. naive
    marked by or showing unaffected simplicity
    I hate every happy naive stupid person.
  38. fend
    try to manage without help
    The day I arrived at my uncle's house, he gave me a hundred dollars to buy my own groceries. He explained that they didn't really cook and usually fended for themselves for dinner.
  39. resilient
    recovering readily from adversity, depression, or the like
    If they could be that resilient, then I could move to a different part of San Jose without making such a giant fuss about it.
  40. absolve
    grant remission of a sin to
    After months, he'd finally been absolved of his guilt. I only wish I'd told him sooner that he had nothing to feel guilty about.
Created on Tue Apr 30 10:13:58 EDT 2019 (updated Tue Apr 30 14:06:40 EDT 2019)

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