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'When I was with her in her classes, it didn't seem to me that there was anything I couldn't do because of who I was — because I was a woman, because I was Iranian, because I was a muslim, because I was from a particular family.'
In her book Reading Lolita in Tehran, author Azar Nafisi describes her own experience of the power of literature. She writes about a
secret book group she formed in Iran, in which women read and discussed works of literature such as A Thousand and One Nights, Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller and Lolita.
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| Azar Nafisi and her students in Iran. |
In an audio essay, "'Lolita' Unveiled: Muslim Women's Take on a Scandalous Classic," Nafisi discusses the events featured in the book and the power of literature to enact social change and overcome trauma.
The essay — produced by Laura Jackson (a 2000 Dart Fellow) and Elizabeth Morgan (a professor of English at Eastern University, Pa.) — also features interviews with Yassi, one of Nafisi's former students, as well as readings from the memoir and clips of actor Jeremy Irons reading Nabokov's Lolita.
Quotes from "Lolita Unveiled":
Narrator: "Nafisi's students found courage in the study of novels to think differently about their own lives."
Yassi: "When I was with her in her classes, it didn't seem to me that there was anything I couldn't do because of who I was — because I was a woman, because I was Iranian, because I was a muslim, because I was from a particular family."
 Nafisi: "Whenever I think about the power of the novel, I think of a story like Alice In Wonderland. The magic of the novel is like that little rabbit that was running and saying 'I'm late. I'm late.' What that rabbit symbolizes to me is that, on one hand, it is a rabbit, it comes out of the reality of our life. But it is also a rabbit that talks. So he evokes our curiosity and takes us places where we have never been before. And this is the wonderful thing about the novel. It gives us an alternative view of reality and provides a potential for a world that we have not seen. But once we imagine it, that world becomes possible."
» Click here to read a Dart Center review of Reading Lolita in Tehran.
» Click here to listen to other audio essays produced by Laura Jackson and Elizabeth Morgan.
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