This book kicked my ass, and I deserved it.

[rax]

A week or so ago I finished Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran by Fatemeh Keshavarz. (You can read about it or order it here; Amazon also has it.) The premise of the book is that Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, which I've not read but had heard very good things about, constructs what Keshavarz calls a "New Orientalist" narrative that paints Iran as a society composed solely of religious oppressors and victims. I've not actually read RLT, but Keshavarz makes a very compelling argument, pulling both long and short citations from the book, that even if this isn't the author's goal, it is what actually happens. RLT is the memoir of a professor in Iran teaching English language literature, and operates under the conceit that this is highly unusual, that engaging with literature is a huge deal for the women of Iran, and that reading English language literature, including controversial works like Nabokov's Lolita, is radical and controversial. Keshavarz argues that while the terrible things that Nafisi describes --- abusive relatives, oppression of women, censorship ---  are real and real problems, that they are taken out of context to make Iran seem like a society without nuance or positive male figures at all.

Now, I like to think of myself as a person who is good at nuance: Seeing multiple sides of an issue, appreciating the complexity and value of people and ideas I disagree with, recognizing that things are rarely just black and white, just good or bad, just right or wrong. I like to think of myself as a person who knows what she doesn't know and takes that into account when making judgements. This is why this book kicked my ass. I hadn't even read RLT, but a lot of the assumptions that Keshavarz broke down in it were assumptions that I had. Whether this is because of similar effects in media coverage or other books I've read or just my own ignorance and bigotry, I'm still trying to break down. What's important about this book, and what I am thankful for, is that Keshavarz was able to convince me that I had my head up my ass.

The first thing she did to do this was to present a number of stories from her own personal experience. Chief among them are stories of her uncle, a military officer and painter, and of a radio show on poetry that she ran in Iran. If you wanted to cling to the New Orientalist narrative in your head --- or maybe "wanted to" isn't the right phrase there --- you might say "Well, her uncle was an exception. Of course there are going to be some nice guys, that not the point." But when she talks about running a radio show on poetry and having huge numbers of listeners, and of people calling in and appearing on the show who couldn't even read but had memorized a number of poems and thought deeply about them? A series of those stories in a row is a pretty compelling counterargument to "reading literature would be revolutionary for 'those people.'" Stories about her family and friends confirm that some, if not all, lives in Iran are not just livable but vibrant, full of literature, full of art. Keshavarz doesn't deny that they're also full of problems, but she doesn't harp on it either, since that's probably the one thing that readers come to her book already knowing. (Plus, whose lives aren't?)

The second thing she does is engages with contemporary works of Iranian literature to combat the idea that Iran is a dead cultural zone whose "new" culture comes primarily from Europe and America. Certainly, she says, Iranians are reading a number of our authors and engaging with those texts personally and critically. But look, she says, check out all of this Iranian work of merit that you could engage with. One book, Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, sounded so compelling in its multiple-threaded genrequeerness that it bumped up close to the top of my reading list right away. The excerpts of Forough Farrakhzad's poetry that Keshavarz shares didn't lean on my must-read-this buttons in the same way, though her stories of engaging deeply with the poems over the course of many years and sharing them with her close friends reminded me of my own engagement with my favorite poets, and how I keep coming back to new things in Elizabeth Bishop or Adrienne Rich.

The third thing she does is to engage critically and aggressively with RLT throughout the book, calling out the structures it describes or implies when they are different from reality or have erased crucial complexity. I found these arguments compelling, but maybe because I did not read the text she was critiquing, I was most engaged when Keshavarz talked about her own life and the literatures of Iran. The book is titled Jasmine and Stars because she wants to bring the reader a view of the beautiful things in Iran as well as the terrible things, the "grasshoppers," provided by RLT and works like it. I strongly recommend this book, and am happy to lend it out once eredien  is done with it. I know that hari_mirchi recommended it to me, and I think someone else did as well; thank you! If you're looking for other things to read that will kick your ass, Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon was all over mine. (I still have a couple of chapters to go, but I might write about that one eventually, too.)

Comments

[laura47.livejournal.com]

calls a "New Orientalist" narrative that paints Iran as a society composed solely of religious oppressors and victims.

huh. it was a very interstign book, and was my first real look at Iran, and that is right. the next encounter i had with fictional Iran was in Persepolis, and I was very much comparing it to RLT and wondering how it was that this Iran of a similar era was so very different. and then I got an Iranian coworker, but she's far younger.

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

Heh, I haven't read RLT, but I quite liked Persepolis, both the graphic novel and movie versions. Which, rax, might be another thing to put on your reading list if you haven't read it already.

[anacoluthon.livejournal.com]

My mom read and enjoyed RLT and loaned it to me several years ago (she rarely re-reads books so an extended loan is normal from her; it would drive me crazy), but I haven't read it yet. After reading this post I think I'd be much more likely to pick up Jasmine and Stars instead.
Thanks!

[fyfer.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I had a friend over for dinner last week and she was criticizing Reading Lolita in Tehran for the same reason (the New Orientalist problem; she said that Edward Said had used some of the books they read in RLT as examples of problematic literature). I'll send her a link to this post.

(However, having read RLT, I do think it paints a more complex picture of women's life in Iran compared to what we (or I at least) assume about life in oppressive regimes. So I do think it's a valuable perspective.)

[rax.livejournal.com]

I don't think RLT necessarily has no value; if it starts dialogue that's valuable in and of itself, and I don't think Keshavarz considers it unmitigated evil or anything. :) Personally, I'm unlikely to read it at this point, as I'd rather go read the other books she talked about in Jasmine and Stars. It's likely that what you take from it depends in part on what you had in your head going in.

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

(However, having read RLT, I do think it paints a more complex picture of women's life in Iran compared to what we (or I at least) assume about life in oppressive regimes. So I do think it's a valuable perspective.)

Given how very one-sided and simplistic this picture appears to other Iranian and Iranian-American women, I think your statement is very telling of the success of the US media and certain elements in government in encouraging even smart thoughtful people to buy into narratives that are misleading and othering.

[mollishka.livejournal.com]

That's so meta, it's meta-meta.

[oxytocin-junkie.livejournal.com]

Aw. You make me want to read both RLT and RMLT.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Well, RLT was a bestseller, so it should be trivially librariable. RMLT may be tougher, but it would definitely be worth requesting into the system.

[seth99rb.livejournal.com]

you should really read "Desert Flower" by Waris Dirie

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Orientalism belongs to the rather large category of valuable books that I should read again, since my first reading only gave me a superficial understanding of its subject. But one valuable (and, in retrospect, not very obvious) insight gleaned is that, no, having an intimate (and even life-long) involvement with a foreign culture does not mean that you will shed unfair conceptions of it.

There's a long paragraph or two I could write about my own approach to generalizations about cultures, but I'll leave it be unless you want to hear. :)

[rax.livejournal.com]

You know, I've never read Orientalism. That would be an obvious place to start, wouldn't it? *adds it to reading list* Thanks!

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts, if you don't mind!

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Heh, well, every devoted reader has notable gaps in what they have read. One of my worst gaps, because I think it's one I can never fill, is the fact that I find Derrida unreadable. I can rarely get more than a couple of pages into anything he writes, and the one time I did get all the way through an essay, it was only because he was bullying one of my favorite philosophers. ("Limited Inc", wherein Derrida bullies Austin.)

Mind you, I will firmly stand behind my use of the term "bullying". Derrida engages (in the above-mentioned book) in a vicious criticism from a social context in which he is unassailable by his target, a criticism which is useless to its target but reinforces the bully's position. It really doesn't help that the somewhat useless Searle then jumped into the debate. The whole thing comes across like an emotional explosion on LJ: a fairly sane, but prominent person expresses a view; that person is criticized harshly; a far less competent and articulate person feels obliged to step in and defend the original target; finally, the bully goes to town on the new, far easier target.

Okay, that was sheer venting. I really dislike Derrida. But he is nonetheless an extremely important writer whom I will never be able to absorb.

Thoughts about generalizations coming shortly.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

As for generalizations:

Starting sometime in adolescence I grew very sick of dodgy generalizations about groups of people, and concluded that no all-encompassing statements about groups of peoples (and thus about governments or cultures) were valid. Which is overcompensating, I'll admit. But it's still something I reflexively avoid and almost-hungrily observe, even though the occasional examples of good, insightful generalizations still indicate that I tend to overreact to the bad ones.

However, from that observing I've noticed patterns in the way people seek to characterize a group (which I would call a mode or format of generalization) -- not particularly subtle patterns, but still. Members of the group, unless they're writers or something related, tend not to characterize it. Some outsiders characterize it according to the most visible members, some according to the best members, and some according to the worst. I can't say anyone characterizes a group according to its typical members, since even when typical members exist the human tendency is to pass over them in favor of extremes... human observation seems to favor exceptions, or exceptional cases, even to the extent of basing generalizations on them. (Poor furry fandom.) But seeing which of those three above-mentioned groups a given person uses as a basis for characterization tells a lot about that person's attitude toward the group. I don't even think it tells the most pertinent fact, whether or not they like the group -- that's obvious enough from other information -- but rather it tells something one notch lower, namely the extent of their engagement with that group. A person who cares deeply about disliking some group will specifically seek to dislike its best members, for example. :)

The order, in terms of how engaged or involved a person is (or perhaps how committed they are to their opinion) seems to be: most visible < worst < best.

[rax.livejournal.com]

A person who cares deeply about disliking some group will specifically seek to dislike its best members, for example. :)

This is a really interesting idea I missed on first read. Thanks!

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

*preens*

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

Also, I'd love to borrow Black Skin White Masks when you are done. I also have a copy of RMTL that I am happy to let you lend to one of your friends/commenters as well.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to lend you Black Skin, White Masks. If you think you'll finish it by mid-July I can even give it to you now, since I know I won't get to it before Readercon. Otherwise I'll probably finish it shortly after Readercon when I get to the point of being terribly tired of speculative fiction.