Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
An introduction to women suffrage
Women oppression in iran
An introduction to women suffrage
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: An introduction to women suffrage
Reading Lolita in Tehran gives us a clear understanding that women around the world, particularly Iran, during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, have suffered through difficult times. Nafisi vividly shows that women in Iran have suffered through abuse and have lacked civil liberties and civil rights. Nafisi’s main argument in this memoir is that Iranian law and government makes it hard for women in Iran to live their life peacefully. Nafisi wanted to show the importance of women suffrage, and that not all women are privileged to have civil rights and civil liberties around the world. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a memoir about the life of the Azar Nafisi, who is an Iranian author and professor. Nafisi writes about her personal experiences in Iran …show more content…
Nafisi’s class was an escape from reality for her students and herself. Whenever her students entered her room, Nafisi’s students would take off their veil and would be themselves. Without anyone telling them how to live their life. Nafisi’s students would forget every problem they had and get lost in the literature Nafisi and her students read. Nafisi and her students believed the veil should not be mandatory, and that the women in Iran should have a choice to wear the veil or not. Her students would be completely different people without the veil, even her students who were practicing Muslim took off their veil in Nafisi’s class. Under the veil, there would be colors. Nafisi and her students did not have to worry about the standards that were imposed on them. The class would talk however they liked without being restricted since it was in Nafisi’s class, the class brainstorms ideas of the books they read. Nafisi’s students would open up to her and really get to know each other better. As the students continued in the book club, Nafisi and her students started to rediscover that they were also living human beings. Reading Lolita in Tehran is beautifully written by Nafisi. The memoir gives an excellent insight into a culture that we as Americans do not get to see very often. Nafisi is smart, she is witty, the book is nicely written, the memoir is a deep read and there is a lot to process. Nafisi succeeded in grasping the attention of the reader by showing the reader interesting stories that Nafisi and her students underwent, and by also giving the reader her opinions, and thoughts during and before the revolution that was going on at the time. Nafisi failed at giving the reader a memoir of somebody who lived through the religious, extremist revolution that happened in 1979. The memoir would have been more interesting if Nafisi wrote about the insight about what was
Both el Saadawi and Al-Shaykh both show how perception and expression are both affected within the confines of politics, social opportunities, and male privilege depicted in their stories. Whether the reader is a follower of the feminist movement or not, it is very clear and easy to see that these women are not being treated with the respect that any human being deserves. The misogynistic stranglehold on society, especially in this part of the world, is excessive and avoidable in today’s world but it is very likely that the traditional, conservative ways of the past will continue to control and inhibit women from being able to be fully treated as equals for many years to come, perhaps even after this generation has
With such a unanimous resentment, particularly in the dominating religious sect of Iran, it is important to address the ideologies within the religion enforce the country’s patriarchal social structure, i.e. the “form of social organization in which males dominate females” (text 38). Furthermore, with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, these attitudes were the driving force behind many of the discriminatory laws that confined women in Iran to a life defined by its limitations.
Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, is a story based on her own childhood in Iran. The story consists of the struggles her family and friends are forced to deal with, changing Marji’s view of Iranian life and its people. The book starts during a revolution, the Iranian people are trying to overthrow the emperor and when they finally do, war breaks out between Iraq and Iran. During the war thousands of people’s lives were taken, women, children and men of all ages. During this Marji’s parents forced her to leave Iran because they know it is too dangerous for a child of her age to live in the middle of a war so severe and life threatening. During the time Marji did live in Iran, she heard many tales about the umpteen conflicts and struggles that lower class people were faced with. Marji saw her maid whom she loved and cared for, not being able to date her love, their neighbor, because she was embedded in a different social class. She experienced the harsh realities of divergence between men and women. Women were compelled to wear a veil in order to not “distract” men with their hair. Younger boys in the lower end of the class system were given a “golden” key to take to war, which was actually plastic; this key meant that if they were killed fighting for what they believed in, it would guarantee their entrance to heaven. In Iran, there were a variety of ways in which the people of Iran can be distinguished between social classes. Your social class affected you in every way there was during this horrible time in Iran.
Overall, Islam and Gender is a valuable addition to the field of ethnography by examining the everyday struggles, experience, and involvement of women within the Islamic law. Hosseini targets a Western audience and hopes to leave them with a better understanding of the Islamic judiciary system and Iranian feminism. She successfully provides her readers with an unprejudiced account of the shari’ah and family law, and even includes the ideologies of those opposing her personal beliefs. Hosseini specifically requests Muslim women to take a stand develop their own local, Islamic feminist movement and openly advocates new discourse within Islamic jurisprudence.
Cultures throughout the world encompass a diverse array of lifestyles by which societies are led by. These cultures, in a typical sense, are created by the subset of a population that follows a particular set of morals and ideals. An individual’s own identity, as a result, is dependent on many varying factors of their lifestyle in these culturally regulated regions. In the stories, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran,” by Azar Nafisi, and “The Naked Citadel,” by Susan Faludi, the authors depict the impact made on an individual’s identity by male-dominated communities prejudiced against women. The discriminations described in these stories contribute to the creation of cultures that oppose the idea of seeing women as equals to men. Hence,
To understand the changing role of women starting during the Islamic Revolution, it is important to briefly review the lives of Iranian women and the role of Islam during the final years of the secular regime of the Shah. Mohammad Reza Shah was disliked by the majority of Iranian population, but his secular and prominent Western attitude allowed for some reforms of women’s rights in Iran. For example, in 1963 he created a reform program which would eventually be known as the “White Revolution,” which included suffrage for women (Beck and Nashat 114). This decision led to a violent reaction, especially from strong Islamic leaders such as Ayatollah Khomeini, whom would eventually play a pivotal role in the revolution and women’s rights. Although the Shah allowed for women’s reform, he was popularly known as a dictator and appeared to be in complete favor of maintaining a traditional patriarchal society.
Nothing has more of an effect to the controversial conversation of women’s liberation than literature. The subtle cues from Cosmopolitan emphasizing femininity: beauty, sensuality, appreciating the female body… Self-help guidebooks persisting the woman to let go and just be free for once. It is liberating for the woman to see such medias to act upon what they were thinking and to even go beyond that. Talks of
Many believe that our mind is the source of our freedom. We see this in Azar Nafisi’s “Selections of Lolita in Tehran,” Cathy Davidson’s “Project Classroom Makeover,” and Maggie Nelson’s “Great to Watch.” Nafisi creates a world of color to escape from the darkness of the society she lives in. Davidson tries to resist standard education. Nelson discusses avant-garde artists use cruelty as a way to rebel against banality. But people are surrounded by fences that limit their individuality. The mind is not enough to overcome the environment to create freedom.
The novel, Moon at Nine, by Deborah Ellis, is about two girls in Iran just after the Iran/Iraq war when the Shah is defeated and Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power instituting harsh laws that are particularly hard on girls and women. In what I have read so far, I think the most memorable part is when the Revolutionary Guard enter the girls’ school demanding that the girl who wrote the feminist brochure come forward. Farrin, the protagonist, is apprehended by the guards until Rabia, another student, confesses “I wrote the pamphlet…I wrote it and typed it and printed it myself” (Ellis 128). This reminds me of what happened to women under the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, depicted in the novel The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini. As the story
From the 1950’s until around 1985 the Soviet Union had Afghanistan under its control. This Soviet involvement in Afghanistan caused the ideologies of communism to spread into the Afghanistan culture. One of the communistic ideas that were assimilated into was the thought that every person is equal. This idea made life a lot easier for the women of Afghanistan. One of the freedoms they were given under Soviet control was the allowance of woman being educated, “The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. Almost two-thirds of the students at Kabul University were women now… women who were studying law, medicine, engineering” (135) Hosseini expresses this through the character Laila. Laila’s father, Babi, was a professor and strongly urged the necessity for Laila to get an education. He was so dedicated that he would help out Laila with her homework every night. Hosseini expressed this when Laila claimed “Babi thought that the one thing that communists had done right- or at least intended to- ironically, was in the filed of education… More specifically the education of women.” (135). To Babi there was nothing more impertinent than the education of woman in Afghanistan. He knew that when half the population is illiterate the country cannot properly aspire to new and better things. Along with the new right to learn, women’s requirement to cover their skin was relaxed all throughout Afghanistan. ...
Azar Nafisi wrote, Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books, a book about her life as a teacher in Iran. Nafisi decided to teach an all- female class in her home. Nafisi quotes one of her students who explains why she had to lie to her father about taking the class,
You will realize the nationalists’ dream. You will learn foreign languages, have a passport, devour books, and speak like a religious authority. At the very least, you will certainly be better off than your mother.” Reading this masterpiece we can easily see the Middle East women’s dreams for education and freedom, things that we the women from the West taking as granted.
In the passages “Cairo: My City, My Revolution”, “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, and “Persepolis 2”, the authors had different perceptions of the world they were living in and had decided to share the experience of their rebellions to give their story’s and an example of the situation they were living in. Each author handled the idea of rebellion in their own, but similar way in each passage.
Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian psychiatrist, feminist and an activist who has written many books on the subject of Middle Eastern women, and the practice of female genital cutting in the society. Initially, she went to this prison in order to do research in a female inmates, and their experience in the prison. However, after a while she got interested in meeting the woman he who had killed a man and had been sentenced to hanging. She based this book on her encounter with Firdaus and Firdau’s life story. Firdaus story is the contemporary story of sexism, discrimination and sexual abuse that occurs all around the world. She is abused by her father, her uncle, her husband and her one true love. Throughout the book, author shows the difficulty of being a woman in the patriarchal society during 1970’s in Egypt. At the same time, the entire book really perpetuates the stereotype that western culture has about gender discrimination in Middle Eastern nations.
Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero is a significantly direct, sharp-cutting novel. It gives rise to some extreme emotions of agitation and outrage towards the nature of humans, in particular men and their maltreatment of women. This novel left me shocked, upset and angry at not only the antagonists in the book, but also society and the blind eye it so often turns towards abuse. Woman at Point Zero, as the title hints, deals with the struggles of a woman and her fight for freedom and independence in a land that shackles her with misogynistic mores and sexism. Power and control is undeniably a major theme throughout the novel, and Firdaus’ struggle to attain it is certainly a captivating one.