Persepolis Then and Now

I was so surprised to see the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi on our reading list for this semester. I was first introduced to this graphic novel in my sophomore year in high school. In my Global History class, we were discussing the roles and influences of women in other parts of the world. We discussed and analyzed how girls our age were being treated in different parts of the world based on their religion and society. Some of the things we discovered shocked us. It amazing how us as Americans who have so much freedom take the littlest things for granted. In other countries around the world girls are fighting for their right to read and write and their right to gain an education.

Picking up this novel now almost four years later, I look at it and it's contents in a different light. We focused on one section, "The Veil" where the main character describes the Cultural Revelution in Iran and how everyone was forced to conform and become one. People were being divided based on race and views on the world. People who didn't agree with the new laws, and spoke out began to fear for their lives as Marjane depicts when she talks about how her mother's photo was in a magazine and her mother ended up changing her appearance.

Reading this book twice and analyzing it in a new and different way has given me a new vision of how this novel can be used as a tool to discuss how women are treated in different parts of the world or as how a graphic novel portrays a story to the masses.