A couple of days before Christmas, I started what turned out to be the perfect book as antidote to the stress and pressure-induced whining and depression of the holidays:
During the holidays, I was so "stressed" about the Christmas Cards and gifts, responsibilities, and expectations. As a Reading Fanatic, I turn to books for survival, moments of escape in the midst of the chaos of reality. Turns out, Azar Nafisi does the very same thing, but she is a professor of literature, and she survived 18 years of revolution and oppression in the Islamic State of Iran before escaping to the United States with her husband and children. Puts Rebel Housewife stress and pressure in a whole new perspective.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is a fascinating book, especially when Azar Nafisi writes about her experiences and about life in Iran in the 1980s and 1990s--what life was like for women on the other side of the headlines of revolution; the exiled Shah; the Ayatollah Khomeini; the Iran hostage crisis; the long, bitter, nine year Iran/Iraq war; and being forced to wear a veil and submit to religious fanaticism which overnight became the law of the land. Nafisi tells her story, as a Western-educated Iranian woman who returned to Iran on the eve of revolution to teach literature at the University of Tehran--truly Alice in Wonderland.
In
Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi weaves her own story around the stories of her students, mostly women, and in-depth analysis of great literature, including works by Nabakov (
Lolita), F. Scott Fitzgerald (
The Great Gatsby), Henry James (
Daisy Miller), and Jane Austen (
Pride & Prejudice). Some of this was required reading for us in high school or college, but to Nafisi and her students, these books have meaning and inspiration beyond anything we can imagine. We tend to take for granted freedoms and liberties, the right to imagination and personal ambition, which are pure fantasy for millions of women in other countries.
While the literary analysis is challenging, Azar Nafisi's personal memoir is fascinating.
Article originally appeared on The Rebel Housewife (http://www.rebelhousewife.com/).
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