Reading Lolita in Tehran: Reflections upon Reading an English Novel as a Foreign Language Learner

This is an ESL learner’s reading response to a literary work and a literature circle activity run in a classroom in the United States. After reading the assigned novel, Reading Lolita in Tehran, the author not only reflected on her view upon the story, but she also detailed the reading process. Most importantly, she passionately echoed her personal experiences in her home country, Thailand related with the novel’s theme. Indeed, along with reading the women’s lives in Tehran, the author used reading to revisit and narrate her own life, one scene to another, in Bangkok and in southern Thailand where she was born and had a memory of love and pain. This reflective account demonstrates the importance of novel reading to ESL learners. It not only provides a space for the writer but it evidently also provides a sanctuary for a common reader. Key words: Lolita in Tehran, Reading in a foreign language, ESL readers, reflective response “Literature provides a living- through, not simply knowledge about: not the fact that lovers have died young and fair, but a living-through of Romeo and Juliet; not theories about Rome, but a living-through of the conflicts in Julius Caesar or the paradoxes of Caesar and Cleopatra ” (Rosenblatt, 1983, p.38