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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
Such a thoughtful, beautiful, and mature memoir. I learned a lot about Iran and the revolution from it, but it was also an exploration of family relationships, identity, home, and literature. Highly recommended read.
I sometimes had trouble staying focused on this book. It was also a little hard to follow in a "story/timeline" way, which I know is common for memoirs. Some bits were extremely interesting, but I didn't feel any one big thing pulling it along for me. I'd feel slightly surprised when I got to a section I was really interested in. Being a memoir, it's interesting and valuable as a life different than mine, but I can't say I really felt for and understood the author in everything she was doing-I'm not sure everything translated onto paper right for me to really understand.
dark
emotional
informative
The author is extremely biased and resentful and misogynistic of individual women in her life and agrees with her dad women in his life are all horrible to him for not getting over his adultery (and blames them for it alongside him and accuses them of dragging her into it while stating it’s literally her dad taking her even at six out on these dates or bringing the women into the home and blaming her mom for awkward it is?? Or not knowing but it’s a catch 22 where her getting mad is also bad??) or other women and saying women take their husbands for granted Omg. There’s not a single time in the book where the author doesn’t defend men cheating on women.
It really paints women as hysterical and resents her mother for things men did that she explicitly says her mom didn’t even know about and also like …literlaly has disturbing stories of trying to get men who aren’t a psychologist to diagnose her mother for her father to make her a better wife (that’s very clearly a non career woman that revolves entirely around her husband given the examples and how there’s something hysterically wrong with Every Woman he’s serious with including them expecting him to help with bags or cleaning or expecting him to be their friend or not liking the same…shows as him like one of the things her mother is damned for is literally falling asleep during tv shows her dad likes and it’s like you not are reliable source on this woman’s faults unfortunately) and literally talking about fantasizing about drugging her mother forcibly or poisoning her to make her more likeable to her brother and years later getting caught writing wanting to commit the mother forcibly to her dad and it’s like…no shit it’s obvious the entire family treated the mother as stupid and openly wished her ill and violence no wonder the woman was paranoid. Those are not normal thoughts to have and it’s very obvious even if your dad puts you in charge of ur mother at points that he encourages this as did his family?? Like no shit she didn’t like them. Also treating the dad threatening suicide as proof of the mom being emotionally abusive and not the father and just brushing the mom saying he interferes with her trying to get a drivers if as slander it’s crazy. And the housework demand is plainly sexist Bs but it’s even worse when you know this family had house staff so it’s like god forbid he do shit at his own house I guess.
Also you would not know from this book her mother outranked the dad politically and for longer and her dad was only mayor for a literal year. His politics are never wrong and only well or not connected as makes him look good while the mom is an idiot unearned and is somehow too radical to accept reform safeguards for women but also too conservative.
Like hell I’ve known conservative women or misogynistic liberal women that do tell lies they believe to be true and their kids never wished them death or psychological violence of institutionalizing them or said the woman knowing her husband would cheat on her caused it vs the man’s own free will and shitty personality. Let alone acted like the other stating that she knows they feel that way is emotional abuse to the kid?? Versus the mother being aware her entire family harasses her?? It’s such a misogynistic book.
I am biased that the authors ties to Israeli film people and dedication to Bush admin foreign affairs also negatively affected me but politically besides dashes of anti Arab (as if Iran isn’t run by Persians no matter if people want to blame the ‘Arab conquest’) sentiment here or there the book isn’t anti Islam at all and read liberal to left imo (similarly to how the author herself has said she’s never supported military action against Iran and democracy must come from within) and I believe her about her leftist college days even if it makes knowing she DID PR work for American neocons no less true or less disturbing. But the book itself I don’t think is going to teach some dramatic lie or colonial view, it’s very realistic and negative about the Shah’s anti democratic policies and the royal family but also fairly critical and negative of theocracy and frankly not that much even about the Islamic Regime (and the book is honest that prejudices to minorities if exasperated existed prior to the regime) even if I’d still recommend Persepolis beforehand and I get why one Iranian diaspora in my life didn’t recommend the book.
It really paints women as hysterical and resents her mother for things men did that she explicitly says her mom didn’t even know about and also like …literlaly has disturbing stories of trying to get men who aren’t a psychologist to diagnose her mother for her father to make her a better wife (that’s very clearly a non career woman that revolves entirely around her husband given the examples and how there’s something hysterically wrong with Every Woman he’s serious with including them expecting him to help with bags or cleaning or expecting him to be their friend or not liking the same…shows as him like one of the things her mother is damned for is literally falling asleep during tv shows her dad likes and it’s like you not are reliable source on this woman’s faults unfortunately) and literally talking about fantasizing about drugging her mother forcibly or poisoning her to make her more likeable to her brother and years later getting caught writing wanting to commit the mother forcibly to her dad and it’s like…no shit it’s obvious the entire family treated the mother as stupid and openly wished her ill and violence no wonder the woman was paranoid. Those are not normal thoughts to have and it’s very obvious even if your dad puts you in charge of ur mother at points that he encourages this as did his family?? Like no shit she didn’t like them. Also treating the dad threatening suicide as proof of the mom being emotionally abusive and not the father and just brushing the mom saying he interferes with her trying to get a drivers if as slander it’s crazy. And the housework demand is plainly sexist Bs but it’s even worse when you know this family had house staff so it’s like god forbid he do shit at his own house I guess.
Also you would not know from this book her mother outranked the dad politically and for longer and her dad was only mayor for a literal year. His politics are never wrong and only well or not connected as makes him look good while the mom is an idiot unearned and is somehow too radical to accept reform safeguards for women but also too conservative.
Like hell I’ve known conservative women or misogynistic liberal women that do tell lies they believe to be true and their kids never wished them death or psychological violence of institutionalizing them or said the woman knowing her husband would cheat on her caused it vs the man’s own free will and shitty personality. Let alone acted like the other stating that she knows they feel that way is emotional abuse to the kid?? Versus the mother being aware her entire family harasses her?? It’s such a misogynistic book.
I am biased that the authors ties to Israeli film people and dedication to Bush admin foreign affairs also negatively affected me but politically besides dashes of anti Arab (as if Iran isn’t run by Persians no matter if people want to blame the ‘Arab conquest’) sentiment here or there the book isn’t anti Islam at all and read liberal to left imo (similarly to how the author herself has said she’s never supported military action against Iran and democracy must come from within) and I believe her about her leftist college days even if it makes knowing she DID PR work for American neocons no less true or less disturbing. But the book itself I don’t think is going to teach some dramatic lie or colonial view, it’s very realistic and negative about the Shah’s anti democratic policies and the royal family but also fairly critical and negative of theocracy and frankly not that much even about the Islamic Regime (and the book is honest that prejudices to minorities if exasperated existed prior to the regime) even if I’d still recommend Persepolis beforehand and I get why one Iranian diaspora in my life didn’t recommend the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia, Sexism, Violence
informative
medium-paced
More like 3.5
Trying to learn about inter generational trauma
Trying to learn about inter generational trauma
Iran is such a fascinating country and it's such an experience to be able to see it through the eyes of this author. A lot of it is about Azar's complicated relationship with her mother but it is an autobiography and clearly to her that was just as important as whatever outside forces she was dealing with growing up in Tehran. I want to read more of her writing.
This book was good but certainly not great. Her views of Iran during the revolution and especially the intimate scenes with her family really hit a strong note. However, there seemed to be too much political discussion for my limited knowledge of Middle Eastern Affairs and so I often found myself lost and waiting for her mother or father to appear. Nafisi's account of her parents' lives and her interaction with them was charming and the later parts of the book only got better as she focused more on her family and less on the revolution.
The portrait of her family is so honest that it seems at times almost too revealing and yet it's not. The view of the revolution through the lense of her family is what kept me turning the pages and almost makes me want to give this book another star.
The portrait of her family is so honest that it seems at times almost too revealing and yet it's not. The view of the revolution through the lense of her family is what kept me turning the pages and almost makes me want to give this book another star.
I read this book because it was the selection for my book club. I've not read anything else by [a:Azar Nafisi|5151|Azar Nafisi|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1231498408p2/5151.jpg]. I just don't know why she wrote the book. Her parents were not the easiest people to live with, love and call your parents. They have both passed away and then she writes the book about them...the book also tells of her life in Iran and all that her country has gone through. She writes well, but it was just not a book I would recommend or have read without it being a book club selelction.
The subtitle has it right; Nafisi has put together a collection of memories, more or less in chronological order. They tell the story of her difficult relationship with her mother and the love and forgiveness she afforded her father, all in the midst of growing up in an ever-changing Iran full of politics, religion, and sexual abuse. I think it's a memoir that's intensely personal, and there are things I don't "get." That's okay; it is an interesting read that is imparting the general flavor of her upbringing in a particular time and place.