Jade Keller

Reading Lolita in Tehran is a powerful account of a woman’s journey through the Iranian Revolution and the gripping challenges her young students had to face as the society underwent cataclysmic changes. Iran went from being a country that could rival many of its Western counterparts in the freedoms and liberties it offered its citizens – even the women – to one that became among the most repressive regimes ever seen in the modern world.  The different generations of women lived in different time zones, it seemed, with the older generations experiencing more freedom than the younger ones could.

Some of the earlier chapters are the most poignant…after a while the book did get a little repetitive and difficult for me to wade through (especially since I’ve become a pro at skimming – thank you, grad school). But I pushed myself to read it in its entirety. It is worth reading, to catch a glimpse behind the veil. To see what these women had to endure and how they found inner resources to help themselves survive imprisonment (on multiple levels), fear, violence, erasing of self and theft of their rights to do even the most basic things like express who they are and love whom they choose.

But the part I loved most about this book is that Nafisi, who is a university professor, collected a select group of her top female students and invited them to weekly meetings in her home – free from the oppression of prying eyes and suspcious ears – to read literature together. In these classes, the students read everything from The Great Gatsby to Pride and Prejudice to, of course, Lolita. And through the literature, these women were able to find themselves. They used important themes from the texts to discuss the world around them and to understand their place in it. The literature gave them a forum in which they could break down the barriers they had around them and begin to talk about their own lives; first, obliquely, and then more assertively and directly as they gained confidence and built mutual trust and respect. Indeed, the book itself is divided into four subsections, each one based on a different piece of literature. Each subsection draws from its literary namesake to highlight themes Nafisi faces in her own life as the Revolution begins, when the oppressive regime comes to power and she is forced out of job and under a veil, until the time when Nafisi plans to leave Iran and the students must make their own plans for survival.

It is for this reason I love this book. It highlights and illustrates so well why books are so important for us. We have our favorite books: ones that entertain us, that uplift us, that comfort us. If there is a lesson here, it is one we already agree with and and maybe already intuitively know. Or, perhaps it is something we can just appreciate, even if it differs from our own experience. But then, we have our books that touch the essence of who we are. They help us see our own world in a different way, and maybe help us understand who we are and what our situations are a little bit better. Reading them is like an epiphany. And sometimes it rocks you to your core.

I have one such book that has been important in my life: Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. Shantaram almost isn’t even a favorite book, though it is a really entertaining read. But I’ve only read it once; it’s not one I go to for comfort or escape. But it speaks to my heart. And why should I be able to identify with it so much? It’s a book about an Australian convict who escapes and flees to India, gets involved with some humanitarian work, the local mafia, the movies and eventually the muhajadeen. It’s quite the adventure (and based on a real story) – but far from my life. But the main character is a powerful narrator, and under the adventure was pain, loneliness, emptiness and a swollen and bruised heart. And that I understood. I was in that place and his words made me understand the blackness, so that instead of staring at a gaping, dark hole, I could begin to see fragments and facets of life. Dimensions to hold on to, and through understanding, grasp and clutch my way towards finding forgiveness and redemption.

It has beautiful quotes like:
“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”
and
“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.”
and
“In this way justice is done…because justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving…justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

Do you have a book like this? One that has changed you or been important to you in some way?