Week 3 Persepolis Book Club


Hi everyone,
I'm glad that I have the opportunity of talking with you guys and hearing different opinions about this book in the last two weeks. Although we didn't have time to discuss this book in the class this week, I'm glad that we have this blog for us to communicate with each other about this book. This book actually makes me reflect a lot about my own background. Here's my response to this week's questions.

The theme of the novel and what it means to you?

The themes of revolution and war are the two huge themes in this novel, pushing the story going on. Under these two themes, Marjane further talks about the topics of oppression from politics and religion, freedom, human rights, social justice, gender, and other issues. Although this book is about the culture and history of Iran, Marjane's story makes me reflect a lot on my country's history during the reading. My country also experienced a long history of social revolutions and wars. When I was reading the scenes that Marjane heard stories from family friends, grandmother, and her uncle about the revolution and the war, I would think of my childhood time that my grandfather told me the stories he experienced and how the social revolution happened in my country negatively influenced people' life. Some stories sounded absurd when the first time I heard about, but those are the crimes that the results of social revolutions and people hold great power did on people in the past. That was a depressing history, but as the author said at the beginning, we should never forget when we are living a peaceful life now because there were people in that history who suffered, fought, and even sacrificed their lives for freedom and democracy.
The theme of Marjane's self-identity formation also reminds me of my experience of self-identity finding when I just moved to the U.S a few years ago. For Marjane, she lost her identity at first. She tried to get rid of her past and didn't want people to know where she originally came from. Similar to Marjane, I was not willing to talk about my country at the beginning because I knew there were many stereotypes and misunderstanding of my country and was afraid these things would affect people's way of treating me. Finally, like what Marjane did, I accept and embrace everything I had - "If I weren't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable." Marjane's grandma is a witty woman, what she said to Marjane is so true - "Always be true to yourself."





This picture reminds me of my childhood that my grandfather told me the stories he experienced and heard. 


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