Azar Nafisi

Today, I walked into Kiggins reluctantly to listen to a speaker the school invited. I even brought my ipad with me and planned on watching a movie. However, the woman gave such a good speech that i didn't even think about my ipad the entire time. Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I've been silent about, talked about politics, woman, culture and various topics. The central theme of the speech is culture. She gave me an entire new view on Middle East. I have never thought that we are the same-- we want the same thing. We want the freedom of choice. I always thought that Middle East is a place where the culture pressures the people. What Azar Nafisi said was that wasn't the culture, the culture had higher education and not the axis of evils. The uneven portrayed of different countries was what she was fighting for. She mentioned that all countries had something they were ashamed of. If repression was an image of Iran, then slavery was another image of America. Another quote that etched in my head was, " Home is something that can be easily lost. Home is like first love. You idealize it, fantasy it when you don't have it. Fifteen years later when you run into your first love who is bold and socially awkward. You then question yourself, 'what was I thinking?' " I think what she said was deep and the idea was hard to be well translated into word. There are things that you have feel instead of read. At the end, she closes the talk with, " follow your heard, follow what gives your lives meaning cos that's what really matter. "
At the end, I bought her book Things I have been silent about. I will write another review once i finish reading it.