Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran writes, in the guise of letters to her late father from the time of the 2019 protests in Iran to the killing of George Floyd, a guide to literature for troubled times--both in Iran and in an increasingly authoritarian USA.
She says: "We in this country have lost the art of engaging with the opposite. This is where reading dangerously comes in...it teaches us how to deal with the enemy . . .Knowing your enemy involves discovering yourself . . .It depends upon us being made to think, and rethink, assess, and reassess our own positions, face both the enemies outside of us and the ones within."In other words, this sort of reading (James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Plato, Ray Bradbury, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Ta-Nehisi Coates to name most of them) this sort of reading may well take one out of one's comfort zone and introduce one to the harsh realities of other lives. One may even become "woke" by which I mean, aware of and empathetic to the suffering of others. 
This book is an excellent guide to the sort of books that get banned--not because they are pornographic but because they make people in power uncomfortable.
Nafisi's experiences in Iran and later in Trump's America make for a compelling narrative and offer a hard one wisdom."Isn't this what great literature does, drawing upon our shared humanity while also pointing out our differences?"
