Read by the author, the structure of this book is entirely different than any I've come across. Keshavarz wanted to defend her Iranian and Persian culture from misrepresentations, so she did so from many angles. She brings in her personal experiences of growing up in Iran, and she reflects on her studies as a literature professor. This means that she presents us with bits of history, poetry, short stories,visual arts, philosophy, and social observations. One thing that often comes up when someone is defending her culture is a sensitivity to how damned sensitive people are. Authors often have palpable restraint in protesting negative portraits of their culture, knowing that readers are quick to call someone bitter, or to bring out that silly complaint of "reverse racism." Keshavarz doesn't hold back how hurt and angry she feels when books like "Reading Lolita in Tehran" come out. She quite pointedly tears apart its Western Savior viewpoint, and more delicately points out that the author uses certain narrative styles and tropes that make the book's authenticity highly suspect. In the audio version, we can hear her contempt in her own voice for the misplaced fear of an entire religion based on the horrors we hear about, vs. the ordinary people who aren't villainous enough to get in the news. For me, it felt like she was respecting her audience to truly listen to WHY she feels angry and maligned.

Besides all this, it made me incredibly sad to hear her talk about how much poetry had shaped her upbringing, and how she defended literature in general. It reminded me of how much we've lost by not valuing our arts studies, globally speaking. It is so frequent to hear people dismiss liberal arts as useless, that even as an English teacher, I've had to adapt a great deal in how much time I can spend on literature studies. If I can cover three poems in one year, it's a dip into extravagance. If we fully read two novels, I have to really rush and prioritize, because the drumbeat of nonfiction and technical reading cannot be ignored. All I can really do in response is continue to value good reading in my own time and hope that there are enough fellow fans to keep that art alive.

Keshavarz offers super important critiques of New Orientalism.

I was kind of gratified on reading the introduction of this book that I had spotted some of the issues with Reading Lolita in Tehran myself, despite being a white ‘western’ person accustomed to relying on native/insider voices when thinking about other cultures. Keshavarz sets out to provide something of an antidote to what she identifies as the New Orientalist narrative espoused by Reading Lolita..., The Kite Runner (which I felt no temptation to read after seeing the film) and other recent(ish) works. She provides a detailed critique of Reading Lolita, but this is actually given in the penultimate chapter. She prioritises material that she feels Azar Nafisi left out of her memoir – positive aspects of life in Iran.

She introduces her aims by telling about how her family would sleep on their roof terrace on summer nights in Shiraz, under the bright starry sky, and how her grandmother would leave a jasmine flower by the nose of each sleeper early in the morning. Occasionally, swarms of grasshoppers made sleeping outdoors uncomfortable for Fatemeh as well as causing problems for local farmers. If I only told you about the grasshoppers, she says, you would never have imagined the jasmine and the stars. So since Nafisi has given us grasshoppers, she sets out to offer the missing starlight and fragrant blossom, pointing out the problems of the New Orientalist narrative on the way.

New Orientalism is the old Orientalism except, Keshavarz says, it often has a native/seminative/insider voice, as is the case with Reading Lolita. This makes it more credible, especially to white people, who are rightly told to learn by listening to native voices and accepting what we hear. The native voice element attempts to neutralise Said's by now well known critique. New Orientalism “explains almost all undesirable incidents in the Middle East with reference to Muslim men’s submission to God and Muslim women’s submission to men” and “does not hide its preference for a western political and cultural takeover” also, it assigns valuable aspects of Muslim culture to a past golden age, sadly lost, and presents the locals as uncomplicated, incapable of innovation, stubborn, hateful, sexually repressed or perverse, and so on.

One of Reading Lolita’s assertions is that Iranian culture does not recognise or value literary merit. Even I could see that this is absurd and directly counter to the truth. My image of Iran is of a culture where virtually everyone, even teenage boys, recite poetry to each other for recreation. Keshavarz confirms that Iranians don’t just value literature ‘we live it’; for example when feeling low, she would visit the tomb of Hafez. She introduces us to two modern Iranian women writers – Forough Farrokhzad and Shahrnush Parsipur – in detail. She also refers to other Iranian writers, especially poets, both classical and contemporary, but it’s the work of these women she explores in depth. In the face of this it’s impossible to maintain a fiction that contemporary Iranian literature does not exist or that its only value or validity comes from imitating the west. She mentions that when her high school physics teacher announced, with deep distress, that Forough Farrokhzad had died, the whole class was distraught. Everyone knew her.

Another topic is ‘my uncle the painter’, literally. Fatemeh shares some thoughts about her lovely uncle and father and other folks in her life who are nothing like the stereotypes presented by the New Orientalism. It’s telling that such a simple strategy can be effective – the totalising vision presented by Reading Lolita and its ilk makes invisible the realitiies that Fatemeh is able to reconjure by simply sharing a few anecdotes. In addition though, she offers profound insights both about the functioning of New Orientalism (for example, how the extremist stance is boosted by its dominant image abroad), its mode of literary criticism, about Islam and Muslims. She draws on discussions with family members, poetry lovers and her own knowledge.

Increasingly I think the most useful form of academic work draws on personal sources, analysing moments that resonated in the author’s own life. The loving activism Fatemeh Keshavarz has done in creating this book is a beautiful, lifesaving thing. It’s completely accessible, and since it makes use of extended poetic metaphor to string its illuminating anecdotes and sharp ideas together, it’s also a sensual delight.

It was great to hear some good stuff about Iran. The Jasmine flowers of the title are very lovely, and I was happy to be reminded of the stars in Iran. They are especially gorgeous from the deserts around Kerman.
But...
I felt this book was uneven - and more than a little confused about whatever it was doing.
Is it a dissertation she did on RLT that has some of her family memoirs mixed in? If so, I felt that the literary analysis was much blander than it might have been. I felt like she was a teacher repeating her point to a class of dullards. As to her (privileged) family: I felt the female members were somewhat glossed over.
Or is the book actually about New Orientalism? If so, why such a focus only on RLT? The big deal about Orientalism (of all sorts) is surely that it is so pervasive. There are lots of other books out there to demolish. Why didn't she say more about this? Some comparisons (including some positives) would have improved the literary analysis too.
Or perhaps the book is supposed to give some idea of what Iran is "really like"? If so, why so upper class? I wished the "illiterate" man who knew all the poems had been gifted more of a voice. What did he actually think of the poems? How were his opinions different to hers? She silenced him more effectively than his lack of reading skills had deafened him. And although she spoke against the idea of Islam only being negative, she didnt flesh this out at all.
It's surely a challenge catering for an audience of variable knowledge and varied opinions.
So maybe I should be kinder.
Overall, though, I think it was a wasted opportunity.

Just ordered it the other day. look forward to reading it.

Brought up some of the issues I had with RLT (Reading Lolita in Teheran). Very legitimate points, but the aims and the audiences are different...although a segment of the audiences overlap. Me, for instance. My solution? Read widely on any topic to discern for myself a more 3-dimensional view of any topic. This work is alternately scholarly and poetic. Feels like a dissertation warmed up by memoir...which would explain some of the repetition.

Spoke to a lot of the intuitive discomfort felt around RLT. Includes really compelling discussions of the author's family members and how they relate through literature. Worthwhile follow-up/counter to RLT.

The book is written as a critical response to Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. I agree with the arguments Keshavarz tries to make, however, the book needs serious editing in terms of language and style. Not all the points she makes are clearly explained. And there are some irrelevant vague ideas that should have been discussed in detail.

Prof Keshavarz' expertise in Persian Literature is clear throughout - to a degree that I wonder why, to oppose New Orientalist narrations, she did not devise a book entirely dedicated to the promotion of 20th century Iranian intellectual production. Her critique of RLT, instead, is as punctilious (and resentfully so, I'm afraid) as often irrelevant and ineffective - mainly because Keshavarz uses personalistic views (references to friends, relatives, acquaintances) to oppose the personalistic views of Nafisi, or because she pleads the argument that 'such things happen anywhere there is a war/revolution'. I agree that RLT is not a good book to learn about the revolution and post revolutionary Iran, but the reason for this is precisely that it is a memoir, not intended to be an objective documentation. Despite Keshavarz' being very aware of this, as well as of the background and education of Nafisi, she recognises a 'confusion of genres' in Nafisi's book, and seems to point to it as if it were a deliberate tool for Nafisi to criticise Iranian society as she sees fit. However, Keshavarz' critique shows how much she loves her country and how proud of Iranian creativity (and resistance) she is - but it is a pity that she decides to criticise so punctiliously the bestseller instead of producing an alternative narrative, or exposition.
An interesting read on Iranian memoirs and memoir features, by Roxanne Varzi (2008): https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n...
On the commodification and ‘propagandisation’ of memoirs, see Gillian Whitlock, Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit. Chicago 2006.

3.5/5

I took way too long to read this book

Tämän löysin luettavakseni elektronisessa muodossa Nelli-portaalin kautta. 188 sivua ei tuntunut liian isolta palalta lukea ruudulta, eikä se kappale kerrallaan raskasta ollutkaan, vaikka mieluummin olisin lukenut paperilta. Olen aikanani lukenut Nabokovin Lolitan mutta en Azar Nafisin kirjaa Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir of Books (suom. Lolita Teheranissa), johon jo otsikossa viitataan. Tästä kirjasta saanee luonnollisesti enemmän irti, jos tuntee kritiikin kohteen.

Keshavarzin huomiot vaikuttavat kuitenkin asiallisilta ja ne ovat hyvin perusteltuja, ja samalla myös omaelämäkerrallisiin elementteihin pohjaavia, mikä on tyypillistä jälkikoloniaaliselle kirjallisuudelle ja sen tutkimukselle. Hän kritisoi Nafisin kirjaa ja muita vastaavia teoksia ("New Orientalist narratives") ensinnäkin liioittelusta ja stereotypioiden vahvistamisesta, ja toiseksi länsimaisten klassikoiden merkityksen korostamisesta paikallisen, eli tässä iranilaisen, kulttuurin tuotosten kustannuksella. Kirjoittaja tuo esiin islamilaisia runoilijoita, nykykirjailijoita, tavallisia ihmisiä ja mystikkoja, sekä heidän ajatuksiaan (valistunut länsimaalainen "ajattelee, siis on olemassa", islamilaismystikko "rakastaa, siis on olemassa"). Hän muistelee omaa lapsuuttaan ja nuoruuttaan Iranissa, sekä nostaa esiin kauniita arkisia yksityiskohtia, jotka usein jäävät negatiivisten uutisten varjoon. Teoksessa on ajoittain oppikirjamainen ja akateeminen sävy, mutta mikäli aihe kiinnostaa, suosittelisin tutustumaan tähän.

From Follett:
The author provides a different perspective of Iranian literature and society by introducing readers to two modern Iranian women writers who attempt to break the stereotypical impression of women as voiceless victims.