Awake

Hamideh Khanum Javanshir grew up in a traditional Azerbaijani society where women were relegated to playing a self-effacing and submissive role with no identity of their own and no function in society outside the home and family. In 1907, she married Mirza Jalil Mamadqulizadeh founder and editor of the satirical journal Molla Nasreddin, which, through cartoons and articles, exposed injustice, superstition, abuse, and backwardness. The journal became tremendously influential throughout the Caucasus, Middle East, and Iran. Hamideh Khanum and Mirza Jalil’s marriage was a union of like-minded spirits, for they both  wanted to educate their community in a period of great turmoil not only in Russia and Azerbaijan but also in Iran, where they had fled for a period. Awake is the story of their twenty-five-year struggle to be able to continue the publication of the journal and Hamideh Khanum’s  tireless efforts to improve the lives of  peasants in her village, where she introduced modern farming techniques and medicine. She established a school for girls and a weaving factory in the hope of achieving equal rights for the men and women of the village. This book intertwines Hamideh Khanum’s memoirs with examples of the satirical cartoons that appeared in the journal as well as family photos and correspondences.  It also has a number of appendices that include Hamideh Khanum’s paper on stopping the locust invasion,  as well as essays giving the reader a better understanding of the environment  in which the journal was published and the cartoonists and writers that contributed to it.