News-Letter

Media Credit: Shiv Gandhi [Click to enlarge]

Azar Nafisi, an international relations and human rights political activist and the author of the best-seller Reading Lolita in Tehran spoke to a receptive audience on Tuesday as a part of Hopkins' Foreign Affairs Symposium 2007.

Nafisi began her speech by discussing the importance of having as complete a point of view as possible with regard to other places around the world.

"When you think of Tehran, you think of nukes, not seven girls sitting around reading Lolita," she said. She suggested that people often reduce many different countries with heavy Islamic populations (i.e. Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan) to one thing only -- religion, and then to fundamentalism. In contrast, European countries are not referred to as Christian, she said. "The first thing we need to understand is that these countries have more than religion, they have cultures and a history as well," she said.

The American culture and people rely most of the time only on sound bites of information, many of which, she said, have reduced our mind to a "trash bin." Injecting a tone of humor, she declared that too much time is spent on the debate as to which parent Suri Cruise resembles more or who should be given custody of Anna Nicole Smith's child.

"We do not pay attention to Iran and Anna Nicole Smith the way we should," she said.

Nafisi spoke about the importance of literature, attempting to relate its impact on her life to the audience. She commented on the separation of literature and sciences at Hopkins, and expressed regret with this polarization because, she believes, literature plays an important role in one's education.

"Writers do not save us from the tyrannies of government," she stated, "but when we have experienced such brutality that we have lost our humanity, you instinctively want to go back to those deeds that celebrated the individual -- the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." She cited Virginia Tech, where her son attends college, as one example of such a tragedy.

Nafisi also stressed that individuals should not rely on their government to guarantee rights to those that have been deprived of them, but should rather look to grassroots movements.

"The struggle is not political, it is existentialist," she stated.

Overall, the student body reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

It was after moving to the United States in 1997, that she wrote her best-selling novel, in which she shares her unforgettable experiences as a woman living and working under the Iranian regime.

"I would never have been able to write this novel in Iran. I feel as if I can communicate much better, in the United States ... that I can say what I want to say, the way I want to say it," she said.

Nafisi is the author of New York Times best-seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi has gained international exposure for her portrayal of women living during Iran's Islamic Revolution.

Born in Iran, she witnessed the Iranian revolution and the subsequent rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini. The severe rules imposed upon women by the new regime caused her to become restless, and she found herself no longer able to teach English literature properly without attracting the scrutiny of the authorities.

In 1995, Nafisi quit teaching, and invited seven of her best female students to secretly attend regular meetings at her house. They studied works including Lolita, Madame Bovary and The Great Gatsby, all of which were considered too dangerous to read in post-revolutionary Iranian society, in an attempt to understand and interpret them from a modern Iranian perspective.

Nafisi is currently a Visiting Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies.

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