Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz in 1950, as part of a program where American physicians and agricultural experts sought to help jump-start developing countries’ health and farming efforts.
When she was five, the family moved to London for one year, returning to Chicago in 1963.
If the countries were reversed she would be an American.