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Reading Lolita in Tehran
Nov. 24th, 2006 10:38 pmReading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
This is a memoir that got a lot of good press, and was one of the only appealing books in English that I found in Israel. It is the memoir of a woman, Iranian-born and raised in the US, who became one of the Islamic Revolutionaries at her US college and returned to Iran shortly before the revolution in 79. She taught English literature at the University of Tehran and several other places, becoming more and more disenchanted with the theocratic government, refusing to wear the veil in class and eventually being expelled for subversiveness. She then taught a secret English lit class in her home, before eventually getting a passport under the more moderate government in 97 and leaving the country before it exploded again in 99.
But this is not a straightforward chronological memoir. It is "my life in books," an acknowledgement that the way we understand our lives is shaped by the books we read, and vice-versa. The experience of being a woman under the Islamic Republic- never feeling the sun on your skin or the wind in your hair, never out of your house unaccompanied by your husband, subject to stops and searches on the street for makeup or nail polish- The experience of seeing your country turn on you, a revolution devour its own children- the knowledge that you, as a woman, have become irrelevant. It's all told in terms of literature. The great lessons of Western literature all seem to have to do with empahy, listening and connecting to other people. Hubert Humphrey's real crime is not sexual- he steals Lolita's life, using in only for his own purposes, denying her an existence as her own person. Women become political objects.
This is a memoir that got a lot of good press, and was one of the only appealing books in English that I found in Israel. It is the memoir of a woman, Iranian-born and raised in the US, who became one of the Islamic Revolutionaries at her US college and returned to Iran shortly before the revolution in 79. She taught English literature at the University of Tehran and several other places, becoming more and more disenchanted with the theocratic government, refusing to wear the veil in class and eventually being expelled for subversiveness. She then taught a secret English lit class in her home, before eventually getting a passport under the more moderate government in 97 and leaving the country before it exploded again in 99.
But this is not a straightforward chronological memoir. It is "my life in books," an acknowledgement that the way we understand our lives is shaped by the books we read, and vice-versa. The experience of being a woman under the Islamic Republic- never feeling the sun on your skin or the wind in your hair, never out of your house unaccompanied by your husband, subject to stops and searches on the street for makeup or nail polish- The experience of seeing your country turn on you, a revolution devour its own children- the knowledge that you, as a woman, have become irrelevant. It's all told in terms of literature. The great lessons of Western literature all seem to have to do with empahy, listening and connecting to other people. Hubert Humphrey's real crime is not sexual- he steals Lolita's life, using in only for his own purposes, denying her an existence as her own person. Women become political objects.