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The following is excerpted from Anne around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic edited by Jane Ledwell and Jean Mitchell.
Teaching and Reading Anne of Green Gables in Iran, the Land of Omar Khayyam
By Gholamreza Samigorganroodi
When I was teaching Anne of Green Gables in Iran, I never imagined I would one day visit Prince Edward Island. Like Anne Shirley, I had “always heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living [t]here, but I never really expected I would. It’s delightful when your imaginations come true.” After arriving at the airport, I “pinched myself so many times” but it was “real”; I was now in the land of Lucy Maud Montgomery.
(…)
I love Anne of Green Gables, and this is the reason it is on the reading list of my literature courses. I teach this story because Iran loves this novel. I am very disappointed when I find that my daughter and her classmates who go to school here in Canada are more interested in Junie B. Jones and Harry Potter than in such classics as Anne of Green Gables. But Iran is different, and Iranian students still read classical works of fiction that depict a serene and slow-paced life, and they admire them immensely. Is this because Iran still has a traditional social structure and values? So Andrew O’Malley indicates in his reading of Anne’s reception in Iran; he suggests that the book’s appeal there “seems to come from the close familial and community bonds [Anne] forges and maintains in her new environment.” Regardless, it is clear that Iranians are in love with Anne of Green Gables. It is well known that Anne is beloved in Japan, as Yoshiko Akamatsu outlines in this volume, but few people in Canada know that millions of Iranians watch the film and animation adaptations of Anne of Green Gables, and that the story is widely read, particularly by students such as my students of English literature, who are fascinated by what Mark Twain once called “the most lovable” heroine. (My students do not agree with the second part of Twain’s statement, “since the immortal Alice,” for they say they could never identify themselves with Alice in Wonderland.)
(…)
But above any other reason, Anne Shirley has captured the hearts and minds of my Iranian students because she follows her heart against all odds. She does not allow life to make her a victim of circumstances. No obstacles can thwart her imagination and her dreams. She is feisty, lively, energetic, romantic, and stubborn. The students see themselves reflected in Anne; they do not like to be pitied and never let anyone make them a victim. The women, particularly, associate themselves with Anne Shirley. Just like Anne, and despite all the restrictions they are under, they are active, progressive, and self-protective. They are eminently the doers, the creators, and the discoverers. One of my students, who came from an Iranian nomadic tribe, gave me a photograph of an Iranian nomadic woman and, using Montgomery’s words from Anne of Green Gables, described the “unyielding stubbornness looking out of” her face.
(…)
Is it not interesting to see Iranian readers who can identify themselves with Anne Shirley and respond experientially to her world, despite living in a country whose culture and world is essentially different from those of the author of the novel? Could Montgomery have ever imagined that her story would one day transcend its context and reach people in such far-away lands as the land of her beloved poet Omar Khayyam?
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