Persepolis

After reading roughly half of Persepolis, I was surprised by several things and my view of Iran was altered. To me, one of the most interesting points made was that when the book begins, the women in this family are not wearing the veils. I thought that most of the middle east had always had their women wear the veil and had no idea that this had only recently been forced upon these citizens. Another surprise was that they have a maid that lives with them. That caught me off-guard and I did not think that that was a common occurrence for citizens of Iran. How strongly their society was based off of social class also surprised me. I was unaware that they relied so much upon class and could not marry outside of their own social ranking.

I feel that Satrapi made an excellent choice of making this into a graphic novel rather than a standard biography. The graphic novel medium really lets us see Iran and her story through her eyes. As explained in class, it really keeps us from letting our preconceived beliefs about Iran get into the way of her story. And the point I tried to make in class (but could not explain very well) is that I feel the graphic novel shows us her perspective of things better especially early in the book when she younger. The drawings show us how she interpreted and viewed the world very well as a child.