Lolita and Scheherazade

[bibliogramma]

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Scheherazade Goes West by Fatema Mernissi

Two books, both written by Muslim women who are scholars and academics. The first, Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, records the author's experiences in teaching and discussing a variety of Western texts - Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice and Daisy Miller - within the cultural and political context of revolutionary Iran up to 1997. The second book, Mernissi's Scheherazade Goes West, begins with classic Islamic literary representations of women – using Scheherazade as her primary image – and examines how the Islamic woman has been represented in Western literature and art, and how this differs from representations of women in her own culture.

West to east, east to west, two cross-cultural investigations, each with a great deal to say about the role of literature and art, both in creating consensus and encouraging resistance, each illustrating in its own way aspects of both Western and Islamic ways of looking at women. Nafisi writes in Iran, under the rule of the revolutionary ayatollahs; Mernissi writes in Morocco, a parliamentary monarchy with greater ties to the west than some other Islamic nations. Taken together, we are reminded that the Islamic world is not all of one texture, politically or intellectually, as each woman makes clear as she discusses how her involvement with these literary texts and images affects her personal decisions about her life.

The first book ends with its author fleeing an increasingly restrictive and anti-woman regime for the relative intellectual and personal freedom of the west, having been all but silenced as a person, as a woman, and as a teacher. The second book ends with the author's conclusion that, despite the sexism she sees and acknowledges in her own culture, women are in some ways taken more seriously and offered greater respect as individuals in her own culture than in the west.

Both perspectives, both intellectual and personal journeys, are well worth reading and thinking about.