Mernissi and Nafisi

Paper Summary:

This paper examines and compares Fatema Mernissi's "Scheherazade Goes West" and Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran". It discusses themes of feminism, western standards in relation to women, literature and love in these novels.

From the Paper:

"It is clear that the love and passion for literature is great for Nafisi because she spends extensive time unfolding her visits to bookstores and concerns of availability of certain books in her writings. Nafisi then divides her book into four sections: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen, where she uses these literatures to discuss with her students about issues in modern Iran. They were able to discuss many different topics including the humiliation of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime and the Iran-Iraq war effects to love and daily life of each person. She writes that, "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom"."

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