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    Things I've Been Silent About: Memories
    Unavailable
    Things I've Been Silent About: Memories
    Unavailable
    Things I've Been Silent About: Memories
    Audiobook13 hours

    Things I've Been Silent About: Memories

    Written by Azar Nafisi

    Narrated by Naila Azad

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    I started making a list in my diary entitled "Things I Have Been Silent About." Under it I wrote: "Falling in Love in Tehran. Going to Parties in Tehran. Watching the Marx Brothers in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran." I wrote about repressive laws and executions, about public and political abominations. Eventually I drifted into writing about private betrayals, implicating myself and those close to me in ways I had never imagined.
    --From Things I've Been Silent About

    Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution. A girl's pain over family secrets; a young woman's discovery of the power of sensuality in literature; the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval-these and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir, as a gifted storyteller once again transforms the way we see the world and "reminds us of why we read in the first place" (Newsday).

    Nafisi's intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerizing fictions about herself, her family, and her past. But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed. Nafisi's father escaped into narratives of another kind, enchanting his children with the classic tales like the Shahnamah, the Persian Book of Kings. When her father started seeing other women, young Azar began to keep his secrets from her mother. Nafisi's complicity in these childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining silent about other personal, as well as political, cultural, and social, injustices.

    Reaching back in time to reflect on other generations in the Nafisi family, Things I've Been Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a family that spans many periods of change leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, which turned Azar Nafisi's beloved Iran into a religious dictatorship. Writing of her mother's historic term in Parliament, even while her father, once mayor of Tehran, was in jail, Nafisi explores the remarkable "coffee hours" her mother presided over, where at first women came together to gossip, to tell fortunes, and to give silent acknowledgment of things never spoken about, and which then evolved into gatherings where men and women would meet to openly discuss the unfolding revolution.

    Things I've Been Silent About is, finally, a deeply personal reflection on women's choices, and on how Azar Nafisi found the inspiration for a different kind of life. This unforgettable portrait of a woman, a family, and a troubled homeland is a stunning book that readers will embrace, a new triumph from an author who is a modern master of the memoir.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 30, 2008
    ISBN9781415958261
    Unavailable
    Things I've Been Silent About: Memories
    Author

    Azar Nafisi

    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.

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    Reviews for Things I've Been Silent About

    3.5/5

    116 ratings13 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This was a slow read like "Reading Lolita in Tehran" but not as satisfying. I like the premise of writing about the things one never speaks of but I don't think it was executed as well as it could have been.
    • 3/5
      A slow read about growing up in Iran. Perhaps if I knew more about the politics of the time, it would be a bit easier. However, I do love getting the perspective of the people who seem to be on the outside of their culture and how this has affected them.
    • 3/5
      Well I am giving this three stars for now, and I will think about whether I want to give it more. On GR three stars mean I liked it. Which I did. Oddly, I liked it slightly less than Reading Lolita even though one of my major complaints about the previous book was that it was curiously reticient and impersonal, and this one is anything but reticent and impersonal.

      Nafisi, having decided to confront the problematic legacy of her parents, confronts it head on, even if that means being critical of people who she very clearly loved greatly despite their considerable flaws. I respect the unflinching honesty with which she does this. There are some very vivid episodes here. But in the end I'm not sure what it adds up to.

      There is a thread in this memoir about a family tendency to see life through the lens of fiction - using poetry and storytelling and literature sometimes to make sense of their experiences and sometimes to hide from or even deny them. This interested me a lot. But as much as it interested me, it wasn't fully teased out into a consistent theme or brought to any kind of conclusion so I just ended up feeling sort of unsatisfied.

      Also - as in the first book- I come away feeling that there is a great deal here that I just don't understand. In a number of places she will relate an incident or an occurance and then draw an implication or a conclusion from it that for me didn't follow at all. I feel like I'm not always able to follow the through line even though it clearly seems so self evident to her that she doesn't feel a need to connect the dots.

      I don't know if this is a cultural or a personal disconnect, that I have trouble following because we are from such different backgrounds or because we have different natures and personalities. All of which is not to say that this was a badly written or uninteresting book because it most definitely was not. I think perhaps I am frustrated with it precisely because she can clearly write well and vividly and yet somehow she still remains for me always just slightly out of reach and out of focus.

      Interestingly in this book Nafisi describes her mother as someone you can never quite grasp, someone who slips through your fingers like smoke, leaving you slightly bereft and at a little bit of loss. It seems to me she inherited some of those traits herself. Yet, again like the mother she describes, she is still a source of great interest as well as frustration.
    • 5/5
      Positively Brilliant memoir coupled with listening to the author tell it really made the book for me. Almost as wonderful as hearing Azar Nafisi speak in person.
    • 3/5
      Really intended for an Iranian audience, so might have made more sense to publish it in Farsi. If you were intrigued by some aspects of, say, the Iranian revolution or Iranian overseas student movements that were lightly brushed upon in Nafisi's previous book, you're not going to find much elaboration here.Odd for a woman who has spent her life studying literature. Nafisi didn't grasp which aspects of her life and experiences would most interest foreign readers.Instead, the focus is on Nafisi's parents. There isn't enough context to understand how Nafisi's family fits into the Iran's recent history or the economic and political structures past or present. Was Iran in the early 1960s more like a 3rd World or Second World country? There seems to be an large upper bourgeoisie (I'm guessing), to which her family belonged. Nafisi's family seems to have been quite wealthy and yet she still doesn't realize it. Here she is being sent off as an adolescent to an English boarding school and later off to college in the US. After marriage, Nafisi's mother goes off on her own for six months to learn English in England (servants make very shadowy appearances) yet education for women seems to have been limited to the equivalent of high school. So there's a parliament and Nafisi's mother somehow gets elected to it, though she had no professional credentials or accomplishment. So what was the basis? A class thing? Charitable works? Family history? What powers does the parliament have anyway when the Shah seems to be calling all the shots? Wait, there are political parties?! Was there any possibility of peaceful devolution to totally elected rulers? How did her father become mayor or Tehran and what was the extent of his authority?
    • 3/5
      Never really got into this, but can't quite figure out why. The prologue and the ending were both lovely.
    • 4/5
      This was a fascinating reflection on Nafisi's life that seemed to me to be more of a lack of the mother/daughter relationship that she missed out on. I think it's even safe for me to say that as I started this book I found myself disliking the author because she only seemed to complain about her mother. I decided to stick it out and after about 100 pages I found myself enjoying the book and by the time I turned the last page I loved it.Azar had a good relationship with her father and even pitied him in a sense. She knew her mother did not appreciate her father as a wife looks to a husband because she was always reminding her family about her missed opportunity with her first husband, Saifi. After their marriage she learned of Saifi's illness so her mother spent her marriage with Saifi taking care of him until he passed away. They obviously did not spend much quality time together as a married couple, but she seemed to believe in her mind that Saifi was the perfect spouse that she should have been able to spend her entire life with.We learn of much turmoil between Azar and her mother. Besides complaining to all, about the loss of her first husband, she also expresses her frustrations about not having been able to realize her fullest potential as an independent woman. She considers herself a woman wasted because she decided to take care of her husband and children rather than going on to finish medical school. It seems that she finally is able to gain some satisfaction in life when she is elected into Parliament.Azar's father was a very interesting individual, but always seemed to have a sadness upon him, which seemed to be from having to live in Saifi's shadow. To Azar's mother, he would never be as good of a person, or have as much to offer as Saifi did. I think that when he found himself put in jail for reasons he would never fully understand he was able to reflect on his life and find what may be missing. He found himself writing poetry and short stories during his incarceration to help pass the time.We learn a lot about Iranian politics during the time period of this book, which I think may have explained why Azar's mother acted the way she did. As her mother was growing up she slowly was given more rights as a woman, only to have those rights taken away later in life. So let me tell you that if you can muddle through the beginning of this book, you will appreciate the life you have once you finish it.I read this book with my book club and it turned out that I was the only one to actually finish it. It was difficult to read, but I wonder if part of the reason that I found enjoyment from the pages was the difficult relationship that Azar had with her mother. Personally, I did not have a good mother/daughter relationship with my mom until after I left home, and then she passed away about a year later. I think this helped me to connect with the author in a way that the other gals in my group could not. With themes of family obligations, civil rights, and independence I think this book has a lot to offer and makes a great discussion if everyone in your group can handle reading it.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! I found that Nafisi doesn't pull punches when discussing her private life and the secrets of mysterious Iran. Her storytelling skills make this a much easier read than her other book, Reading Lolita In Tehran. Things I've Been Silent About reveals intimate details of an important, well-connected family as well as the moral struggles of young intellectuals squeezed by political times. Absolutely mesmerizing and informative.
    • 4/5
      Azar Nafisi details her life, focusing on her imperfect relationship with her parents, the political unrest in Iran, and her love of literature. The excellent writing and engaging story makes the book impossible to put down once a reader has started.A vast majority of readers can sympathize with Azar’s complicated relationship with her mother, Nezhat, who has a very “Jekyll and Hyde” personality. On one hand, Nezhat is bitter about all the challenges she has endured: her mother died young, her stepmother and father treated her badly and would not allow her education. Nezhat’s first husband (her true love) died 2 years after their wedding. On the other hand, Nezhat is no victim; she was an influential person in Tehran and was elected to Parliament. Azar’s does not claim her account of their relationship is accurate, but her perspective is clearly skewed. She is often too hard on her mother, but I can sympathize that the difficult relationship taints even the good times and memories.Her account of her relationship with her father is equally flawed. Azar adores her father, the man who inspired her love of literature. This devotion causes her to overlook his shortcomings, in particular she aids in his extramarital affairs. Azar’s father is the Mayor of Tehran, and eventually he is arrested which breaks Azar’s heart. Azar is in her late teen years and making important decisions in her life regarding education and marriage, and without her presence, she is a lost and unanchored. This relationship will also be familiar to many readers.On top of the challenges with her parents, Iran changes substantially while she is young: the Shah is overthrown, Ayatollah Khomeni’s institutes a strict and barbarous rule of law, and the Iran-Iraq war. Azar’s outspoken in her political thoughts, and the book really gives a good feeling for what it was like to live through the upheaval and chaos.It’s a beautiful book. One I will surely read again.
    • 5/5
      This is the second book I've read by this author, who also wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran. Though both books are nonfiction about her life in Iran, this one is much broader in scope than the first. Things I've Been Silent About focuses much more on her personal life, particularly her relationship with her parents. Written in roughly chronological order from before her parents were married through the early 2000s, the narrative covers many years in Iran and the U.S. with a very personal focus on historical and political events going on in the background. For those memories that seem particularly poignant, she lapses into the present tense taking the reader into the moment with her. Her memoirs are often sad, but beautifully written. Here is a sample of her writing, from the prologue when she discusses the meaning of the title: "There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives" (xxi). This book speaks of all these types of silences. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      difficult mom and dad and step-mother. a child trying to understand motivations of parents which is always hard because we are children for our first encounters and they are old and difficult for later ones. middle years might be our only time. i try to feel that all parents do the best they can with what they have to work with. some parents don't have much to give or never learned themselves how or what to give. thankfully kids are resilient but we remember many slights that busy parents have forgotten.
    • 4/5
      I heard her interviewed on NPR about this book, and didn't expect that the things she's been silent about would get such short shrift! I thought it was a clever way to recycle a lot of the stuff that was in Reading Lolita, but was disappointed to be rereading so much. I did get a better idea of her personality from this book - difficult, I'd say (it's hard to read a memoir when you find yourself thinking that).
    • 4/5
      It’s a very personal memoir in which Nafisi is mainly paying tribute to her parents, and coming to terms with her fairly turbulent family history- personal as well as political. Her moody, capricious and overpowering mother and her politically and literarily inclined father, are presented on the background of broader political life, of which they both were part. Nafisi gives us glimpses of her own life and literary influences, and the nuggets on literature both English and Persian shone for me. A word of caution to anybody thinking of listening to it. Nafisi is reading it, which is both good and bad. It’s nice to hear her own voice reading her own words, but her intonation is odd and takes some getting used to. In addition, even though the CDs’ jacket does not say so, the memoir is abridged. The chapters don’t seem to be heavily abridged, but they are to some extent, and everything starts to make more sense when looked up again in its full version. On top of that, the paper copy is much richer and complete with photographs and short excerpts from Iranian history. I first listened to it, and then realizing that it wasn’t the full version, leafed through the book to find out what I’d missed. I think I will have to read it again in a while to fully appreciate it in its continuity.