In a brave, disturbing book, Azizi exposes the nature of the Iranian regime and applauds the courage of its opponents.
According to this passionate book, Iranians want a liberated life in a free country.
Azizi, the author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions, is a writer and historian based in New York City who specializes in Middle East issues. He shows how in Iran, even the most basic rights are either nonexistent or severely curtailed, with women and ethnic minorities facing the most severe oppression. The author tracks through the history of the country since 1979, when the aging cleric Ayatollah Khomeini led a revolution to install a hard-line Islamic regime. His shadow still looms large over Iranian politics, in everything from the requirement that all women wear hajib to the militant gangs who roam the streets looking for transgressors. Azizi ably describes the tenures of subsequent leaders who have promised reforms, only to crack down when pressed; the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is perhaps the most ruthless and manipulative of all. With the media effectively under government control, it is difficult for any organized opposition to form. Nevertheless, protests and demonstrations occur regularly, and the regime responds with murderous force and arbitrary detention. Azizi chronicles his interviews with many of Iran’s dissidents and believes that pressure is building for real change. His optimism, however, might be misplaced. The government, while plagued by corruption and incompetence, still has considerable support, and it holds all the guns. Still, the author lays out the situation in a cleareyed manner, and readers will leave with a deeper understanding of Iran’s historical and current circumstances. “No matter what comes after Khamenei,” he writes, “Iran’s formidable mass movements will continue to fight for Women, Life, Freedom: the fullest democracy and social, economic, environmental and gender justice.”
In a brave, disturbing book, Azizi exposes the nature of the Iranian regime and applauds the courage of its opponents.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780861547111
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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