Reading "Lolita" In Tehran

When I signed up the bookring for Reading Lolita in Tehran,
I'd anticipated reading a book about a woman fighting for
human rights in an increasingly intolerant society.
Reading Lolita is this book, but it is much more.
Nafisi creates a safe place for women to gather
and explore what it means to be human,
what it means to be alive, by reading and discussing literature.
Nafisi's group faces bullets and beheadings,
yet the most awful horror is the day-to-day
slow death of the world of the imagination.

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

- William Carlos Williams