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Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.
"[A] stunning look at the power of reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Remarkable. ... Audacious." —The Progressive
"Stunningly beautiful and perceptive." —Los Angeles Review of Books
What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?
In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so.
Structured as a series of letters to her father, who taught her as a child about how literature can rescue us in times of trauma, Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, and more.
1137333228
Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.
"[A] stunning look at the power of reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Remarkable. ... Audacious." —The Progressive
"Stunningly beautiful and perceptive." —Los Angeles Review of Books
What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?
In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so.
Structured as a series of letters to her father, who taught her as a child about how literature can rescue us in times of trauma, Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, and more.
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Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
The New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with a guide to the power of literature in turbulent times, arming readers with a resistance reading list, ranging from James Baldwin to Zora Neale Hurston to Margaret Atwood.
"[A] stunning look at the power of reading. ... Provokes and inspires at every turn." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Remarkable. ... Audacious." —The Progressive
"Stunningly beautiful and perceptive." —Los Angeles Review of Books
What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics?
In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, her life as an immigrant in the United States, and her role as literature professor in both countries, she crafts an argument for why, in a genuine democracy, we must engage with the enemy, and how literature can be a vehicle for doing so.
Structured as a series of letters to her father, who taught her as a child about how literature can rescue us in times of trauma, Nafisi explores the most probing questions of our time through the works of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, and more.
AZAR NAFISI is the author of the multi-award-winning New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, as well as Things I’ve Been Silent About, The Republic of Imagination, and That Other World. Formerly a Fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Foreign Policy Institute, she has taught at Oxford and several universities in Tehran. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Hometown:
Potomac, Maryland
Place of Birth:
Tehran, Iran
Education:
M.A., Ph.D., Oklahoma University, 1979
Table of Contents
Author's Note xi
Introduction 1
The First Letter: Rushdie, Plato, Bradbury 11
The Second Letter: Hurston, Morrison 49
The Third Letter: Grossman, Ackerman, Khoury 81
The Fourth Letter: Atwood 121
The Fifth Letter: Baldwin, Coates 155
Conclusion 199
Acknowledgments 201
Appendix: My Father's Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson 205
