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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7603.Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_A_Memoir_in_Books?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1165637149m/7603.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7603.Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran_A_Memoir_in_Books?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5151.Azar_Nafisi">Azar Nafisi</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6219073?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars Passages that provoked various reactions... 
 
 p. 30 - "She was talking about the teacher who taught Islamic morality and translation. A Pillsbury Dough Boy personality, she said. Three months after his wife's death, he had married her younger sister, because a man - and here Yassi lowerwed her voice - a man has special needs. 
 
 Then her voice took on a serious tone as she began to describe his recent lecture on the difference between Islam and Christianity. She now became the dough-faced little man standing by the blackboard, pink chalk in one hand, white chalk in the other. On one side he had written, in large white letters, MUSLIM GIRL, and drawn a vertical line in the middle of the board. On the other side, in large pink letters, he wrote CHRISTIAN GIRL. He had then asked the class if they knew the differences between the two. One was a virgin, he said at last, after an uncomfortable silence, white and pure, keeping herself for her husband and her husband only. her power came from her modesty. The other, well, there was not much one could say about her except that she was not a virgin. To Yassi's surprise, the two girls behind her, both active members of the Muslim Students' Association, had started to giggle, whispering, No wonder more and more Muslims are converting to Christianity." 
 
 p. 111 - (discussing The Great Gatsby) ... 'In retrospect it appears strange to me only now, as I write about it, that as I was standing there in that classroom talking about the American dream, we could hear from outside, beneath the window, the loudspeakers broadcasting songs whose refrain was, "Marg bar Amrika!" - "Death to America!" 
 
 A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. I just want you to remember this. That is all; class dismissed.' 
 
 p. 234 - 'The place where the regime tried to keep its hold, ironically, was in the realm of our imagination. Television was saturated with documentaries on the two world wars. As the now almost empty streets of Tehran became livelier and more colorful, on television we saw Londoners searching for food in garbage cans or huddled together in underground shelters. We were told about how the people of Stalingrad and Leningrad had survived the harsh siege of their cities on a diet of their comrades' flesh. This was not only to justify an increasingly unpopular and desperate war, whose end the regime had refused to contemplate until it had "liberated" the whole of Iraq. It was also aimed at intimidating and controlling a restive population, by holding up the prospect of even greater misfortune, and by reminding us that all had once not been so well on the Western front.' (Emphasis mine. Sounds familiar...) 
 
 p. 330 - 'First, none of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them. And second, you always talk about the effect of "these people" on you. Have you ever thought about your effect on them?'
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/380228?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Casey's review
rating:
bookshelves: biographynmemoir, womensstudies

Passages that provoked various reactions...

p. 30 - "She was talking about the teacher who taught Islamic morality and translation. A Pillsbury Dough Boy personality, she said. Three months after his wife's death, he had married her younger sister, because a man - and here Yassi lowerwed her voice - a man has special needs.

Then her voice took on a serious tone as she began to describe his recent lecture on the difference between Islam and Christianity. She now became the dough-faced little man standing by the blackboard, pink chalk in one hand, white chalk in the other. On one side he had written, in large white letters, MUSLIM GIRL, and drawn a vertical line in the middle of the board. On the other side, in large pink letters, he wrote CHRISTIAN GIRL. He had then asked the class if they knew the differences between the two. One was a virgin, he said at last, after an uncomfortable silence, white and pure, keeping herself for her husband and her husband only. her power ca...more Passages that provoked various reactions...

p. 30 - "She was talking about the teacher who taught Islamic morality and translation. A Pillsbury Dough Boy personality, she said. Three months after his wife's death, he had married her younger sister, because a man - and here Yassi lowerwed her voice - a man has special needs.

Then her voice took on a serious tone as she began to describe his recent lecture on the difference between Islam and Christianity. She now became the dough-faced little man standing by the blackboard, pink chalk in one hand, white chalk in the other. On one side he had written, in large white letters, MUSLIM GIRL, and drawn a vertical line in the middle of the board. On the other side, in large pink letters, he wrote CHRISTIAN GIRL. He had then asked the class if they knew the differences between the two. One was a virgin, he said at last, after an uncomfortable silence, white and pure, keeping herself for her husband and her husband only. her power came from her modesty. The other, well, there was not much one could say about her except that she was not a virgin. To Yassi's surprise, the two girls behind her, both active members of the Muslim Students' Association, had started to giggle, whispering, No wonder more and more Muslims are converting to Christianity."

p. 111 - (discussing The Great Gatsby) ... 'In retrospect it appears strange to me only now, as I write about it, that as I was standing there in that classroom talking about the American dream, we could hear from outside, beneath the window, the loudspeakers broadcasting songs whose refrain was, "Marg bar Amrika!" - "Death to America!"

A novel is not an allegory, I said as the period was about to come to an end. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. I just want you to remember this. That is all; class dismissed.'

p. 234 - 'The place where the regime tried to keep its hold, ironically, was in the realm of our imagination. Television was saturated with documentaries on the two world wars. As the now almost empty streets of Tehran became livelier and more colorful, on television we saw Londoners searching for food in garbage cans or huddled together in underground shelters. We were told about how the people of Stalingrad and Leningrad had survived the harsh siege of their cities on a diet of their comrades' flesh. This was not only to justify an increasingly unpopular and desperate war, whose end the regime had refused to contemplate until it had "liberated" the whole of Iraq. It was also aimed at intimidating and controlling a restive population, by holding up the prospect of even greater misfortune, and by reminding us that all had once not been so well on the Western front.' (Emphasis mine. Sounds familiar...)

p. 330 - 'First, none of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them. And second, you always talk about the effect of "these people" on you. Have you ever thought about your effect on them?'...less

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