Reading Lolita In Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is a story about the experiences Azar Nafisi has as a Literature Professor at the University of Tehran during the Iranian Revolution and about the private class she teaches in her home after being expelled for not wearing a veil. It's also unbelievably biased towards the United States.

The selective version of history that Nafisi presents in her discussion of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War completely erases US complicity in both events. First of all, the Islamic faction does not simply overthrow the Shah after a series of protests. They were dissatisfied with the Shah because of his close (multi-billion dollar) relationship with America, and they protested his regime largely because of this, which caused the US to withdraw their support, which greatly contributed to his downfall. Additionally, during the Iran-Iraq War that Nafisi writes about, describing in detail how terrified she was of the bombs falling all over the city, the US supported Iraq. In the book, Nafisi does not hesitate to condemn the Islamic Republic or the War, but she never faults the US, who can apparently do no wrong.

Her discussion of the veil also reinforces stereotypes of Islamic women as oppressed, a misconception that was used to garner support for the war on terror.

And her admiration for "Western Classics" marginalizes Iranian authors and artists. For example, from reading her memoir, one would never know that during the time she was writing about there was an incredibly progessive feminist film movement in Iran. Another issue is the fact that she published a book about the virtue of the English Canon (books by dead white men) right after minority authors in the US had finally earned a place in classrooms. Nafisi's memoir can easily be co-opted as proof that their struggle was "unnecessary" because "Western Literature really is better" than the literature of other people and cultures.

While Reading Lolita in Tehran does not pretend to be a history book, Nafisi ought to have considered the potential her book had to affect others, especially considering that it was published during the early years of the war on terror, and given more thought to how she depicted both the United States and Iran.