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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi I don't think I would have the courage shown by Azar Nafisi and her students.  I just finished the book and could not help but draw parallels between what I was doing with my life at the time Azar Nafisi was risking hers to gather with a select group of young women and study Western Literature in Revolutionary Iran.
At a time when I was struggling to try to get my students to just plain read, she and her students (only a few years older than mine) were risking their lives to have the freedom to read the books they chose to study. As I fought to imbue an understanding of other times and other places in the lives of my students, they were joyfully reading contraband in the form of Henry James and Jane Austen. I kept hearing the defiant refrain from many of the young women I taught: “You would never get me to do that.” or “No way would I dress like that.”
Reading Lolita in Tehran is a strange mixture of a memoir in the best sense of the word. It is compelling and should be required reading for all young women who think their lives are so “hard.” We are given glimpses of what it was like to live in Revolutionary Iran. The young women could be stopped by the morality police for a stray strand of hair or flogged for nail polish. They could be admonished and threatened with prison for “immodest behavior” for simply enjoying a lunch on the lawn and giggling as do all young women. One was reprimanded for eating an apple too seductively. Being alone with a male companion not a husband or brother could be punished by stoning.
My favorite idiocy is that the movie and theatre censor was blind…literally. And this was the man who had the say over all movies and plays that were seen in Iran. It is also a heartbreaking story of the young women who grew up knowing only war and repression and their struggles to find a way to reconcile their lives as they lived them with the worlds about which they were reading. From the overthrow of the Shah through their departures for different parts of the world, they had known little other than the theocracy. They were told how to think, how to dress, how to react with other people. They were not told how to live. Yet, each one of them did embark on a life not expected of a young woman brought up in a religiously conservative state.
Throughout the memoir, Nafisi ties the novels she and her students read to the political and moral climate of the day. Nafisi is removed as a teacher at the University of Tehran because she refuses to wear the veil. She withdraws into her world of literature for the freedom of imagination she so dearly values and passes on to her students. She not only draws parallels to life in Tehran and great literature, but also builds a strong case for the place of novels in our lives. Is this something I could have done? I fear I would not have the courage.
I strongly recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran as both a heartwarming adventure and a look into a world too many of us know too little about. I honor the courage of Azar Nafisi and the young women who sought her out.
Review by Jewel
Reading Lolita In Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi.
Random House, 368 pages
ISBN: 0375504907
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