Bastante mejor de lo que me esperaba, y genial para conocer un poco más sobre la literatura iraní contemporánea.

A quick touch of Irani cultural history and what is currently happening there with books and culture. I enjoyed getting a different perspective on what is happening in Irani culture and literature. This was a positive look at what has happened centuries ago as well as the present. I liked being introduced to writers who lived centuries ago and those who write today. I enjoyed the look at Fatemeh Keshavarz's family and the vignettes she shared of her uncles. She brought light to the topic instead of the negative which we are usually given. Well written. It made me think. I would like to read some of the ancient authors and today's Irani authors.

I decided I needed another view of the narrative so after I read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi I decided to read this book. This is really an academic paper, a critique/memoir, if you will but it is the best damn academic paper I have ever read in my life. The name the author uses "New Orientalist" brings about a different image to me which made reading this book confusing but I think everyone should read this after reading RLT because having only one side told/read is not good at all. We should make an effort to hear all points of view. This book brought up a lot of questions and concerns about RLT that I did not have while reading RLT. I was super sucked into RLT and now I see I need to take what Nafisi writes with a grain of salt. The factual errors the author found in RLT and rebuked on page 138 stood out to me the most. Keshavarz is right, RLT tells a narrative/ adopts atone regarding Iran that does not leave anything positive for the reader to read (138-139). There cannot all be bad, there must be good too and that is exactly what Keshavarz proves.

I liked how the author challenged the stories/events in RLT and the way she wrote what she did. I enjoyed the author's stories about jasmine and stars and particularly the one at the end of the book regarding the author's father and reading and reciting poetry together.

I'm really glad I read this right after I read Reading Lolita in Tehran. By themselves, they were both 3 stars, but I think together they kind of enhanced each other. I'm bumping RLiT up to four stars as well.

Dr Keshavarz has done us a great service with her thoughtful, compassionate approach. The book goes a long way in showing us how much we "learn" from things left unsaid, and how much our understanding of a topic can be based on pre-selected evidence that is conducive to our expectations. What I really appreciate is that she not only points out the gaps and distortions in "Reading Lolita"'s presentation of Iranian society, she supplements and fills out the narrative with her stories of "jasmine and stars," the touching, accessible details of life in Iran that are rarely celebrated in literature.

I think the critique of Reading Lolita in Tehran was spot on, and the review of Women Without Men was very good. However, the stories about the author's father and two uncles were weak and not interesting.

İt's more a 2.5 than a 3. İ'm feeling a bit conflicted about this book: it set out to talk about Orientalism in the media treatment of İran in the present day, but then changed towards trying to convince the american reader that iranians are human beings, which 1) should be clear anyway 2) makes it feel like the position she's arguing against has any merit to it and 3) prevents her from being critical with the iranian government in order to not risk the objective of the book. Her claim to stay out of politics and ideology felt somewhat disingenuous – you can't talk about the iranian revolution & global politics about islam without positioning yourself politically in some way. İt was, however, an interesting insight into her own social group, which is iranian americans who can afford to be politically neutral, which is why İ ended up giving 3 stars instead of 2. İt's still a very interesting read, the points she makes about New Orientalism are good points, but it has to be read critically. Also very nice if you'd like an introduction to persian literature & poetry.

Regarding Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran, I should have read this book years ago; it’s been sitting on my shelf for at least six years. In fact, I should have read this book as soon as I saw the Stephen Kinzer blurb on the back. It’s a book about literature, it’s a book about poetry, it’s a book about life, it’s a book about geopolitics, it’s a book about gender relations, it’s a book about a particular place (Iran), and it’s a book—surprisingly enough—about Scripture. Dr Fātemeh Keshāvarz has a remarkable gift for anecdote; and it’s her warm, personal voice that elevates this book from merely ‘good’ to remarkable and sublime.

It is not, I hasten to add, easy. It is in fact quite a challenging text. While you are reading it, you can get the distinct impression that you are reading three books at once. That impression is not, on its face, wrong. Jasmine and Stars is all three: a devastating and trenchant critique of a particular book (Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, which she refers to by its acronym of RLT); a literary survey of modern Iranian cultural output, with a studied emphasis on female poets and novelists; and a touching personal memoir of the author and her family in Iran...

The full review may be read here, at Skeireins.

i love this woman

If you’ve read Reading Lolita in Tehran, I would highly suggest that you read Fatemeh Keshavarz’s thoughtful counterpoint Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran.

Jasmine and Stars is made up of Keshavarz’s own, more positive, memoir of growing up in Iran, her analysis of Reading Lolita in Tehran, and literary analysis of some of the novelists and poets who were writing actively before, during, and after the Iranian Revolution. Keshavarz and Azar Nafisi (the author of Reading Lolita) have very different perspectives on Iran, Iranian people, the Revolution, and the role of literature in that country, and they write from quite different religious and political perspectives.

{Read the rest of my review here}

Author Keshavarz is absolutely spot-on with her review and criticisms of Reading Lolita in Tehran (RLT). RLT came out with a firm point of view, suggesting that women in Iran were not allowed to develop mature thinking unmolested. This sparked a debate within the literary community in Iran which Keshavarz engages, opening for readers a look into other hearts and minds within the wider literary community in Iran. But the book has a scholarly and instructive feel, and one is put in mind of grading a bright student's master's thesis. She would have gotten a A- I think. An A for making the effort to refute the sloppy thinking in RLT and a minus for not making me want to read it.

The book accomplishes two objectives. One, gives an alternative picture of Iranian culture since the 1979 revolution; two, is a memoir of her family life during her early years in Shiraz. The author teaches medieval Persian literature in the U.S., so that subject informs this memoir, especially her childhood's learning of classical stories and poems in reading with her father Baba. Several chapters refute the "New Orientalist narrative" packaged for western consumption. Keshavarz's voice definitely needs to be heard and her memories of fragrant jasmine and of starry nights to be savored.