Hendricks 1
Olivia Hendricks
Professor Sparks
Proseminar
1 Dec. 2014
Article Review: “Why Americans Love Azar Nafisi’sReading Lolita in Tehran”
In her chapter “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War of Terror” in Women’s Studies on the Edge, Saba Mahmood discusses links between Muslim women’s literature as a genre and Western conservative institutions. One book she reviews and critiques from this genre is Azar Nafisi’sReading Lolita in Tehran. Mahmood argues that Reading Lolita “fits the Orientalist paradigm…it reproduces and confirms impressions of its Western audience, offering no surprises or challenges to what they think they already know about Iran…” (p. 93). For Mahmood, Nafisi depicts the West as desirable, free, and culturally superior, while Iran is depicted as bleak, oppressive, and without cultural or feminist political development worth mentioning. Mahmood sees Nafisi’s work as out of line with the reality of Iranian history, oversimplistic, influenced by conservative political links, and profitable to Nafisi, since it made her agreeable to Westerners while still a sufficiently foreign and edgy figure for the Western advertisements in which she appeared post-success.
Since Mahmood’s discussion of Reading Lolita in Tehran is both only a small fraction of her chapter’s focus and it does not discuss very deeply the literary aspects of the memoir, I turned to a 2008Signs article specifically about the book—Anne Donadey and Huma Ahmed-Ghosh’s “Why Americans Love Azar Nafisi’sReading Lolita in Tehran.”This article’s title seemed from that it might offer a different view from Mahmood’s; that is, one focused more on the reader. “Why Americans Love…” places the readers as the subject, and seems ready to question their responsibility in using the novel as confirmation of stereotypes. This makes sense, since Nafisi’s novel’s title obviously references Nabokov, who is well known for his emphasis on the mutualreader-writer relationship in his works. However, Mahmood’s critique of Reading Lolita comes down rather heavily placing responsibility on Nafisi for what she does not include in her memoir and how this might be read by Western readers. Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh are both professors of Women’s Studies, but Donadey also has training and expertise in literature. Therefore, I hoped she might engage in some literary analysis between Nabokov and Reading Lolita to emphasize the role of the reader, removing such onerous responsibility from Nafisi to have to teach a Western audience Iranian history, and to constantly have to have Western stereotypes drive her memoir through her avoidance of them.
Ultimately, however, while the authors do delve into some of the literary mechanisms of Reading Lolita and offer a more nuanced look at the complexities of judging the novel on the basis of its breaking of stereotypes, they still focus most of the responsibility on Nafisi for the novel’s potential confirming of stereotypes. Before engaging in my critique further, I will briefly summarize the article. Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh begin with a historical overview of feminist politics in Iran, because they believeNafisi does not always acknowledge the existence or diversity of those historical political efforts. They argue that had she included more historical information, the Western reader would have been less likely to recontextualize certain incidents and dialogues within a Western context. They emphasize this problem of context frequently, noting the ways in which a sufficiently “transgressive” text within the totalitarian revolutionary regime comes to condone passivity in a Western one (pg. 636).
Donadey and Ahmed-Ghosh expound upon several examples and themes from the novel whose impact in an Iranian versus Western context varies drastically in terms of its conservative political implications. Examples include the hijab, the language/rhetoric of freedom, and engagement of largely Western canonical texts. The authors are thoughtful and nuanced in their depictions of Nafisi, taking care to note ways in which tries to balance and represent at least some variation in approaches to Islam, America, and freedom. However, ultimately and like Mahmood, they underscore especially in their final section how a Western reader will likely take the novel rather fully on as an example of the stereotypical repressiveness of Islam and desirability of Western life. However, they regularly try to imagine how her own experiences shape her writing and how context affects the implications of her memoir.
While Donadey and Ahmed’s analysis is overall careful, even they seem aware of a tension in their text in regards to the responsibilities of Nafisi. They write that combating Eurocentrism and orientalism requires giving historical background, which Nafisi does not do well enough for Western readers, though it is sufficient for Iranian ones. They then note, “It may of course be argued that a memoir is not a history book and that Reading Lolita is long enough as it is; both arguments are valid. Yet some contextualization such as that provided throughout this article is necessary to circumvent western overdeterminations of Muslim women” (pg. 641).
It is here that the authors just barely allude to the fact that perhaps it is not Reading Lolita’s job to educate the Western reader. I would draw out this allusion in the following ways, as a critique of both Mahmood and, to a lesser extent, Donadey and Ahmed. First, in terms of broad questions of literature, we need to first ask what the responsibilities of a memoir are. Do we really judge it by how transgressive it is—is that not likely to slip into a bizarre aesthetic and false, theatrical politics? And is this transgressive standard fairly applied to all writers, or just to authors of certain backgrounds, such as Muslims? Is a memoir really expected to be a history lesson, that we are going to condemn for the historical moments it does not include? Can a story about one individual’s life really be expected to capture (and ultimately represent and defend) an entire culture?
The question that follows next obviously begins to regards the role of the reader—from whom is Nafisi expected to be defending an image of Iran? First, it is from the reader. We need to think as much about what expectations we have of the reader as we have been about the expectations of the writer. Second, and more importantly, it is from the Western reader. Knowing Western readers may (problematically) assume them as being “outside” Western culture without further thought, Ahmed and Mahmood may not have felt comfortable addressing more directly that it is the Western reader’s responsibility to learn more about the context of the book they are reading, and to be savvy enough to understand the concept of a stereotype. That is not a high expectation, and it is one that should not have to become Nafisi’s artistic problem unless she chooses for it to be. This is a topic perhaps more White, Western feminist scholars might feel compelled to address.
Works Cited
Donadey, Anne and Huma Ahmed-Ghosh. “Why Americans Love Azar Nafisi’sReading Lolita in Tehran.”Signs 33.3 Spring 2008: 623-646
Mahmood, Saba. “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War of Terror.” Women’s Studies on the Edge.Ed. Joan Wallach Scott. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 81-115. Print.