Jonon Karimovna Bobokalonova was a Tajikistani writer, literary critic, and academic of the Soviet era. Her name is sometimes given as Jonon Karim.
Life and career
Bobokalonova was born into a working-class family in the village of Pulodon in Konibodom. She graduated from the Dushanbe Pedagogical Institute in 1949. That same year she took a post at the Sadriddin AyniHigh School in the same city, teaching the Tajik language and literature; at the same time she became head of one of the departments of the children's magazine Piyanir. She continued her studies at the pedagogical institute, performing postgraduate research there from 1950 until 1951. In 1954, she returned once more to the Institute to teach Tajik literature, with an emphasis on works for children, at the Department of Tajik Literature. In 1958 she became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the same year she defended her thesis, on the children's works of Mirsaid Mirshakar at the Faculty of Eastern Studies at the Leningrad Academy of Arts, marking the first time such a scholarly work had been written on Tajik children's literature. Later she became chair of Tajik literature at the Pedagogical Institute. She received a doctorate in philology in 1983, being named a professor two years later. Bobokalonova was among the first literary critics to concern herself with Tajikistani literature for children; during her career she also developed an interest in the work of other children's writers from various Soviet republics. Later in her career she also began to write on the subject of women's history. She became a member of the Union of Writers in Tajikistan in 1991 and a member of the Union Journalists of Tajikistan in 1995. She received a number of medals and awards during her career, including being named a Prominent Scientific Figure of the Republic of Tajikistan in 1994.
Selected works
Taken from
Some Considerations Regarding Literature for Tajik Children
She also participated as an editor in the publication of the five-volume Collection of Children's Literature, published in Dushanbe between 1979 and 1984, and assisted in the compilation of a textbook on children's literature.
