Reading Lolita in Tehran
Reading and writing as resistance
This week I heard author Azar Nafisi in conversation with poet and novelist Leeya Mehta at DC’s Middle East Institute Arts and Culture Center. Nafisi came to my attention some years ago with her bestseller READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN. The book is a paean to literature’s power to open minds and hearts, which is the focus of Nafisi’s body of work.
Nafisi is a spokesperson for the dangers of hate and authoritarianism. She comes to this from living through years of chilling, murderous repression in Iran. As a literature professor with a deep knowledge of the western cannon, she considers reading the gateway to the imagination, and imagination the necessary tool to counter fascism.
Nafisi made a plea for empathy—”to feel for the mother in Palestine and the mother in Israel”—as an antidote to dehumanization. She told numerous stories of Iranian students and colleagues carried off in the night and murdered for their beliefs, and of the horrors of a regime that weaponizes the hijab, takes Ophelia out of Hamlet, and Olive Oyl from Popeye because “Olive Oyl is a loose woman.”
Autocratic regimes target three things, she said: (1) Women, (2) Culture (books, literature, the arts), and (3) Minorities. We are living through this now in the US: the removal of the right for women to control their own bodies, proposed massive cuts in child and family care, cuts to NEH and NEA funding, the sacking of the Librarian of Congress, expanding book bans, the hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center, the firing of museum heads, targeting people of color, making DEI a dirty word, and creating a living hell for immigrants and refugees. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Nafisi warned against autocrats getting inside our heads, messing with our imaginations, driving us to despair, and preventing us from imagining bigger, more abundant freedoms, such as working toward increased care for our neighbors and people who are different from us, and stewarding our environment as if we did, acutally, respect the earth.
Literature, she concluded, “helps us move outside the authoritarian mindset.” Her words are a reminder that we must resist in any way we can.
I look forward to providing more resources when I am home for a little longer than I have been over the last few weeks. Tomorrow I am headed to California, for readings from DUET FOR ONE along with a concert in Berkeley at the Hillside Club on June 8 at 3 PM. I would love to see you there!
And on June 17, at 6:30 PM, I am back in Philly at Head House Books with the wonderful Paul Lisicky. (The bookstore prefers that you register if you can, link here.)
I’m so grateful for generous reads from Joshua Kosman, the former classical music critic of the SF Chronicle, and from Gavin Larsen, ballerina and author.
And finally, a short clip from my talk at Joe’s Pub in NYC a couple of weeks ago.
I hope to see at least some of you soon!
Love,
Martha
P.S. ICYMI, my last newsletter/Substack is here, “On the Road.”