Tag: Iranian-American writers

Quote for the Day: February 2nd, 2022

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

The worst crime committed by totalitarian mindsets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.

Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

I’ve been listening to Azar Nafisi’s memoir which today’s quote comes from on audiobook, and I think it’s a timely read considering all the attempts at censorship which are taking place in the United States right now. For example, Gene McGee, the mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi, is withholding $110,000 in funding from the Madison County Library System until such time as they remove all LGBTQ+-affirming content from their shelves. His personal religious beliefs are being used as the arbiter for the distribution of public tax monies, which is reprehensible. The matter is being brought before the city’s board of alderman, which will make the final decision. You can read more about the Madison County Library System’s fight to keep diverse content available to the community here.

His [McGee’s] personal religious beliefs are being used as the arbiter for the distribution of public tax monies, which is reprehensible.

On January 10th, just 17 days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, the school board of McMinn County, Tennessee voted to have Maus, Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust, removed from the 8th-grade curriculum. In a statement released by the school board, they said the book was removed on the grounds “of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide.” Art Spiegelman’s parents were survivors of the Auschwitz extermination camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered; nearly a million of the people murdered were Jews. Spiegelman’s mother later died by suicide. What do these adults expect? Shall the Holocaust be sanitized to accommodate their puritanical squeamishness? How is reading Maus any more traumatizing than the active shooter drills these children must endure?

Shall the Holocaust be sanitized to accommodate their puritanical squeamishness?

There are more examples of attempts at censorship sweeping the country. Just googling the word “censorship” will bring you up dozens of results, most of which are from incidents occurring in the past couple of years. The books which these people want to limit or remove access to are books which tell the truth about the world and about its history, a history which closely mirrors our present reality. What is that reality? A world in which the horrors of the past are silenced while the suffering of the marginalized is ignored in the present. And the world turns on: business-as-usual.

The books which these people want to limit or remove access to are books which tell the truth about the world and about its history, a history which closely mirrors our present reality.

It is important that we talk about the ideas, themes, and events in these books. It is important for our children to have access to narratives (historical and contemporary) about people with lived experiences divergent from their own. It is important that we say no every time someone tries to distort, sanitize, or artificially alter the reality of the past or the present. Our future depends on it.

It is important for our children to have access to narratives (historical and contemporary) about people with lived experiences divergent from their own.

World War II wasn’t that long ago. The concentration camps of the Nazis are not that long shut down. Anti-Jewish crimes are on the rise. Black people are still being murdered by police. We cannot afford to be silent.

References

Ridgeland Mayor Demands LGBTQ+ Book Purge, Threatens Library Funding by Nick Judin, published online by Mississippi Free Press on January 25th, 2022

School Board in Tennessee Bans Teaching of Holocaust Novel ‘Maus’ by Jenny Gross, published online by The New York Times on January 27th, 2022

Auschwitz: How death camp became centre of Nazi Holocaust by BBC News, published online on January 23rd, 2020

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Poem for the Day: November 27th, 2021

Patronage by Solmaz Sharif 

They say
willingness is what one needs 
to succeed.

They say one needs to succeed.

    *

Our poets do not imagine 
a screaming

audience.

Our poets are used to padding,

vinyl, on the foldable chairs, 
bookshelves on casters 
moved aside
to make space for them

A world polite 
for their words

A well-­behaved.
A world’s behavior

malformed and they step 
in as one steps in
to a nursery and

quiet

calms the tantrum 
attempts not to wake
the sleeping, the milk-­drunk

and burped babe.

Our poets coo.

And beg their feet be placed in a large room.

            *

Prize ring. Bull ring. Lion
through the ring of flames.

Poets convinced they are ringmaster
when it is with big brooms and bins, in fact, 
they enter to clear the elephant scat.

            *

There was an inlet
I pulled over once to watch the sunset, which 
was still another hour or so away, the light 
just low enough there to begin to change.
I should’ve stayed. I should’ve stayed.

            *

A life of idle, with money

doing the work. A life beholden,
but bestowed. To make reformists of us all,

even the fascists.
Especially

of the fascists.

            *

But he’s a patron.
But he makes a star of us, 
he makes us of rank.

But he’s a churchgoer

and they place their hands on him and pray and bountiful 
grow their wives’ bellies, a bully
for each family. Exponential doom.

Singing to each other in the private gazebo of their youth.

            *

Now sing.

            *

I said what I meant
but I said it

in velvet. I said it in feathers.
And so one poet reminded me


Remember what you are to them.

Poodle, I said.

And remember what they are to you.

            *

Meat.

© 2021 Solmaz Sharif. “Patronage” originally appeared in The Yale Review on May 19th, 2021. Solmaz Sharif is the author of two collections of poetry: Look: Poems, which was published by Graywolf Press in July 2016 and was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award; and Customs: Poems, which is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in March 2022 and is available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.