| Author of ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ speaks of literature as resistance BY SALLY ACHARYA 
Photo by Jeff Watts
It was only a weekly gathering of seven women, who came together in Tehran to read and discuss books such as Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, and Lolita. But the meetings at Azar Nafisi’s home were subversive, because the book-loving women were living under a totalitarian regime. And for such a regime, Nafisi said, “imagination is subversive.” Nafisi is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003), which spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 32 languages. She spoke last week at AU’s Visiting Writers Series about the power and importance of literature. The Iranian author and literature professor recalled that her father attended AU in the 1950s, and that “one of the ways I got introduced to some of the best aspects of America was through his reminiscences.” She left Iran in 1997, having lived and taught for much of two decades in a place where even lipstick or a stray wisp of hair could be deemed a threat. Outside, the state’s religious police patrolled the streets; in Nafisi’s home, the act of reading and thinking about books became a way to preserve the self. Literature, she said, provides us with “a universal space within which we feel our humanity in its best and worst aspects.” That makes it a way to connect across time and culture and language, and to hear a diversity of voices. But voices, she said, are the first thing suppressed by a totalitarian regime. “The whole idea of writing and reading is, ‘Hmmm, it needs to be investigated.’ Not ‘Hmmm, I know something.’” That makes it dangerous to forces that want to destroy ambiguity, curiosity, and plurality of opinion. At least when the voices of writers are taken away, there is a global outcry. But, she asked, what about the rights of readers? A system that stifles writers also stifles the imaginative life and internal freedom of a whole people. But imagination is not always treasured or championed as it ought to be, even in the West, she said. “These days, thought and imagination have become so marginalized—especially these days, when so many mistakes in the policy world have been made because of lack of imagination,” she said. “Polarization gives us a sense of righteousness and ‘know it all’ that disrupts genuine debate . . . I think one of the most subversive things we can do in this country is not just to question the other, in the Bill O’Reilly mode, but to question ourselves.” As a woman from Iran who now lives and teaches in the United States, she finds it disturbing that Westerners too often view a vast and varied part of the world through a single lens. Countries as different as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, and Indonesia are being reduced to one of their aspects, and lumped together as “the Muslim world,” which is then reduced even further to conform to one narrow, fundamentalist view of what it means to be Muslim. She told a story of her grandmother, who wore the veil all her life, yet cried when other Iranian women were flogged for not wearing one themselves. To Nafisi’s grandmother, the veil was a symbol of her faith, but forcing it on women twisted it into a symbol of oppression. “She kept telling me, ‘This is not Islam.’” “It really breaks my heart when I hear people in this country say, ‘Oh, it’s their culture,’” she said. “Every culture has something to be ashamed of, and every culture also has a right to change,” she said. Literature is not politics, but it is always an act of resistance, she said. “It is resistance against the brutality and tyranny of time. We write to join the community of all mankind. It is not a consolation. It is always a protest.” Nafisi spoke at the Abramson Family Recital Hall in the Katzen Arts Center. The Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by the Department of Literature, College of Arts and Sciences. |
