I found most of her criticism of Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran didn't line up at all to what I saw from the book. She seemed to read it as an attack on the Iranian people, but Nafisi loved the Iranian people. What she hated was the political institution and the human rights violations it implemented after the revolution. The book was a mourning for what she knew Iran could be, and all the injustices being committed against the Iranian people by the oppressive regime.

I also didn't walk away thinking the west needed to "save" Iran, or that foreign powers should get involved. Iranians are the only ones who can change Iran outside of destruction and war - and the situation has been slowly improving. It left me hoping that Iran will continue to open up and that their women will get more and more equality.

Nafisi's RLT read as a deeply personal and sincere memoir of her life, one that of course showed her biases, but it was not meant to be impartial. What kind of sincere memoir is impartial? It was meant to explore her thoughts and feelings and show what it is like to try to reconcile your beliefs in a place where everything seems to have turned against them. And I thought how much she cared and bonded with her students was beautiful.

Keshavarz uses examples of Nafisi's "discrimination" against the Iranian people by pointing out how she used the word "mob" to describe Iranians at a crowded concert, and how she didn't use that language to take about Westerners. The thing is, she NEVER talks about westerners - even the chapters that take place in the USA, it is mostly confined to the Iranian community at her university. OF COURSE both the negative and positive words will pertain to the people who are actually in the book - and there are many very positively portrayed characters.

I walked away from RLT with an interest in learning more Iranian culture and heritage, a lot of reflection on the value of literature, and reflecting on the discussions that were had with her students in their class - how they reflect on the complexities of life.

This book (Jasmine & Stars) reads like an academic essay, I couldn't get sucked in. Even when Keshavarz describes her own memories of Iran, it is written in the clear goal of proving her thesis, not in honest reflection. The thesis-evidence feel to the book make the stories feel dry and insincere, or at least not as heartfelt.

I was disappointed. I wanted something that would captivate me and make me both think and feel, and motivate me to read more books on Iran - like RLT did by leading me here.

I enjoyed reading about Fatemah Keshavarz's stories and reflections from her childhood in Shiraz, Iran: how she learned about poetry/literature and love from her family members, and what a significant part poetry played in her community (apparently Shiraz is called the City of Poets, among other things!).

I haven't read Reading Lolita in Tehran (RLT), but if indeed the book has the caricatures of revolutionaries and Muslim people that Keshavarz says it does, I would say 1) the author of RLT, Azar Nafisi, has the right to write whatever she wants but also 2) Keshavarz has the right to criticize the book for making false generalizations and recommend that people not continue to read the book to learn about Iran. And I can understand her sometimes doing a line-by-line tear-apart of the book because that's the kind of evidence you have to bring when you're arguing a point that counters what your audience currently thinks (and RLT is extremely popular).

I can completely understand the frustration she feels about RLT being most people's picture of Iranian life, so it was refreshing to read about that. As a Chinese American, I'm accustomed to people in the US taking for granted that China is a backwards, repressive place, 100%, due to the US mainstream media only telling negative stories about "Communist" China. I think that the Chinese government needs to be better, but I honestly don't want to hear it from people who have never lived there, don't really know or care about people who have, and who think that the US is in contrast totally free and democratic which it is definitely not (since we have more people in prison per capita than any other country). I bet it's annoying as hell for Keshavarz to meet US readers of RLT who think they need to save Iran. Her point is that plenty of people in Iran are smart, politically active, and strong. They experience love, joy, pride, and triumph, and they are working to make their country better.

I docked Keshavarz one star for spoiling the entire plot and everything that happens in the book Women without Men -_-

This was an interesting book but I think it would have benefited from extensive editing. It was written by an Iranian woman who is a poet and professor at Washington University. She was offended by the portrayal of Iran in "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and some other books about Iran, because they reflect a Western prejudice which sees Iranian men as evil, women as submissive, and the modern culture lacking any contribution to the arts. She describes her childhood in Iran lovingly, the kind Iran men she has known in her life, and gives extensive examples of modern Iranian women poets. She also has an entire chapter devoted to a detailed description of the prejudice reflected in "Reading Lolita". I skimmed this chapter.

I had loved "Reading Lolita" so I was caught short by this author's perspective. I am glad to have had my mind broadened by this book, but while each chapter was fairly well organized, I thought the chapters didn't flow one from the other very well.

This book did what it set out to do: be a candle to enable me to see more of the "elephant" in the dark room. Keshavarz's discussion on Neo Orientalism confirmed what I already sort of knew about modern works portraying entire countries and cultures as backwards/violent/brutal. I was lucky enough to read a few books centered on Iran/Persian culture in the past that did the good thing of avoiding brutal stereotypes and western/savior type characters. So in my mind, I related Persian culture with poetry/tea and philosophical grown ups.

I appreciate that this author didn't just tell her own story, but also did an argument and dissection of a wildly popular work (Reading Lolita in Tehran) so as to arm the reader with the ability to recognize Neo Orientalism in writing. However, the parts I most enjoyed were the author's stories about her kind, curious male and female role models, the importance of poetry and poets to her/her family/her classmates' education, and her anecdotes from working in America and challenging her sometimes misguided colleagues. Giving four stars because 1. Sometimes the criticism of RLT felt like it was line by line, quote by quote, which was less persuasive than it could've been. 2. I'm still a bit in the dark about "how things changed" after the Revolution.

4.5 stars
Keshavarz wrote this as a response to Reading Lolita in Tehran (RLT) and I have read the two books together. She was concerned that Nafisi had misrepresented Iran and Iranian culture, but especially Iranian women. As Keshavarz says herself:
“The greatest omission in the content of Nafisi’s book is that it overlooks the agency and presence of Iranian women in the social and intellectual domain. That is ironic particularly because the book’s main claim is to tell the untold story of women in post-revolutionary Iran. If Reading Lolita in Tehran is the only book you have read about Iran, you would not be able to imagine that vibrant Iranian women writers such as Shahrnush Parsipur, Simin Behbahani, and Simin Danishvar ever existed, let alone imagine that they wrote during the same period that Nafisi’s book covers. You would not guess that post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has women writers and directors as outspoken as Tahmineh Milani and Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, or that women activists such as the Peace Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi spoke and wrote about women and children’s rights during the same period. And these are only a few examples.”
This is not a negative book. Keshavarz looks at Iranian culture and literature pre and post revolution including poets and mystics. There is a close reading of Shahrnoush Parsipur's Women Without Men (1989), she describes the effect on her classmates of the early death of the poet Forrough Farrokhzad. There are poets, mystics, novelists, film makers, philosophers and many more.
The arguments are convincing and she goes through RLT in detail pointing out inconsistencies and the flatness of many of the players. Keshavarz draws on New Orientalism perspectives to make her point; she also points to the Westernization of goodness in RLT, an unqualified attribution of good things with the West. One of the problems is that readers, especially in the West, tend to bring many preconceived ideas with them about Islam and the situation in the Middle East and RLT just reinforces them with no thought or analysis.
Keshavarz sets the record straight and as a result my to be read list has suddenly grown a little longer!

Excellent look at the cultural and literary side of Iran, if a bit of apologetics at times.

You can tell she's a teacher, although probably her history as a radio show host also contributed to her focus on explaining things. Clearly she has had to explain Orientalism to uncomprehending white undergraduates many times. I liked the details about life in Tehran and the authors writing in Persian, although something about the comments on Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran bothered me, perhaps the way she highlights the artificiality of the plot. Definitely the way she discussed rape in the novel; not sure if the novel itself would bother me as much.

The New Orientalism, not so different from the old Orientalism.

Almost as much memoir as literary theory, Fatemeh Keshavarz seems like she should be reading the voiceover for some ever-so-hip Al Jazeera documentary. That's not a bad thing, I'd totally watch it. But it's definitely a memoir voice I've heard before.

I'm far more interested when she's expounding on the failures of what she deems to be the "New Orientalist Narrative"-- Azar Nafisi, Khaled Hosseini, etc.-- and how detrimental it's been to public opinion of Middle Eastern cultures. She's charming throughout as well as informative, and that's not an easy thing to accomplish. I'd recommend it for anyone with even a passing interest in Middle Eastern affairs, regardless of their "expertise" level.

Seeking a better balance of light, fun, and beauty to offset the darkness that is emphasized in many accounts of her Iranian motherland, Keshavarz offers a highly enjoyable tour of literary pleasures. She highlights the great female literary artists of the modern age, with tributes to poets like Forugh Farrokhzad, Parvin E’tessami, or Simin Behbahani, novelists like Shahrnoush Parsipour or Simin Daneshvar, or film makers such as Tahmineh Milani and Rakhshan Banietemad. Above all, she provides personal glimpses into the poetry-soaked world of the family and friends she grew up with in Shiraz, who loved to share beautiful lines of tenderness and insight from Sufi mystics such as Rumi, Hafez, or Sa’di, like Rumi’s line “You have come to connect.”

Be very careful with the things that fall into your lap!

An interesting and also puzzling book. I have NOT read 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' so I cannot really assess Keshavarz's criticisms of it, or know whether it really says what she reads there or whether she's arguing with a series of strawmen.

RLT, as she calls it, is not as central to her book as I expected. This is more like a group of essays inspired by her different disagreements with RLT - about her favorite Iranian poets and writers, about members of her family and about aspects of Iran's history and culture, all of which disprove what she takes to be the assertions of RLT. As a small introduction to some of Iran's literary heritage it was very interesting. I don't know whether the oppressive aspects of Iranian society, which we always hear about, are less prevalent than westerners are led by our media to believe, or whether she's saying that in spite of the repression of the government and its minions Iranian people maintain their liberty of mind and a thriving culture of writing and film. I'm also not informed enough to know whether for every filmmaker or author she cites, there are others who are not permitted to write and publish? I don't know. The novel she spends a lot of time talking about is "now banned in Iran" according to the Goodreads page for it; she does not say this, implying that such a voice is welcome to speak in Iran. Has it been banned since this book was written? I don't know that either...

The most important part of the book, for me, is her positing of a "new Orientialism" in western writing about the Muslim world - books written by denizens of that world, but clearly catering to us because they set the west up to be so much better than the 'east.' Besides RLT, she cites "The Bookseller of Kabul" and "The Kite Runner" as examples of this literature that obscures or denigrates Muslim culture and history in an effort to cater to western readers. This is something that we should all be wary of if we want to understand the world outside our borders, and it is the main point of this book.

This is where my puzzlement came in. Azar Nafisi is Iranian. The author of Kite Runner is Afghan. Do these people really hate their cultures enough to present them in such negative and skewed ways? I presume that they have been through struggles that make them angry, but I can assess neither what they write nor how it relates to their own experiences, not having read the books (and now not planning to). So I'm left with puzzlement... I did think briefly of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, though, while Keshavarz quotes over and over from Nafisi. There's one who is happy to demonize Islam and deify the west, in order to sell well here and be a pet Muslim of a right wing think tank...

(Small typo: the first time Henry James is mentioned in conjunction with his concerns for the US entering a world war, it says world war II, which is obviously wrong as he died in I think 1916; later, it's correct, so this is just a typo.)

So. Worth reading.

I am about done reading this book, and it is great! Yes, there is a quite a bit of literary criticism, but that is precisely why I like it. It is quite critcal about statements and assertions made in "Reading Lolita in Tehran", and this is necessary as there were some things said in RLT that were quite incorrect in terms of "most Iranians". I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more beyond the rather negative tone of RLT.