Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi is an Iranian writer and professor of English literature. She has resided in the United States since 1997 and became an American citizen in 2008...
NationalityIranian
ProfessionWriter
rights imagination bills
I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination.
imagination political feelings
We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings. To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world, because we had used works of imagination to serve as handmaidens to some political ploy.
evil imagination soul
Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.
home imagination expectations
Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed to immutable.
order imagination needs
You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist.
fate shoes imagination
Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world through the magic of imagination, creates this shock of recognition. Without this empathy there can be no genuine dialogue, and we as individuals and nations will remain isolated and alien, segregated and fragmented.
imagination littles great-work
That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.
country entered extreme fiction images iranian islamic liberties lives members norms private revolution society themselves values whose within women
Iranian fiction has entered a new era...The Islamic Revolution has shaken all values and norms within society. Now, the images of women have to be rethought and redefined. Under extreme pressure, women must look at themselves not only as members of their society or their country but as individuals whose very private lives and liberties are being redefined.
almost austen authors best books disturbing gut james life obvious people students
People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.
Well, that was in 1995 when I resigned from my last academic job.
biggest extension imposing sees state
The biggest crime in Nabokov's 'Lolita' is imposing your own dream upon someone else's reality. Humbert Humbert is blind. He doesn't see Lolita's reality. He doesn't see that Lolita should leave. He only sees Lolita as an extension of his own obsession. This is what a totalitarian state does.
china control forced instrument jackets mao people religion supposed system using veil wear wearing women
Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.
reading writing poor
Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.
book teaching passion
My passion has always been books and literature, and teaching.