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School officials have hurried to explain that they do not actually object to the political content. Instead, they say, the book is still sanctioned for school libraries, but that lower grades may not use it because of "graphic language and images that are not appropriate for general use in the seventh grade curriculum." High school teachers are still, apparently, allowed to use the book, though only with special training.

CPS then, isn't protecting the Iranian regime out of some confused notion that criticizing them constitutes Islamophobia. It is simply protecting all of our children. And, to be fair, Persepolis does include a certain amount of violence and (especially in its second volume) a certain amount of sex. Satrapi talks about how friends and relatives were tortured, both by the Shah and by the Revolutionary government. There's a picture of a man dismembered by the authorities. She also talks about the Iran-Iraq war, and there are pictures of wounded soldiers. She describes her escape from Iran to Austria, and talks (without much detail, but still) about her sexual adventures as a young woman living on her own. She describes her suicide attempt. She writes the word "fuck" once. She talks about her gay roommates. She shows herself as a young child having imagined conversations with God. She shows herself as an adolescent smoking cigarettes and dealing pot. In my experience, any one of these infractions would be sufficient excuse to keep Persepolis out of the hands of students.

I'm sure there are some parents who, if asked, would say that they don't want to have their seventh graders exposed to narratives about suicide, or torture, or God, or sex, and don't want them to read the word "fuck." There are probably parents who would be horrified to learn that my third-grader is reading Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House at his Waldorf school -- a book in which (my son informs me) virtually everyone dies in a hideous smallpox epidemic. Maybe someone would be offended, too, by the book he read about the Chicago fire (too violent!) or by the Norse myths he's studying (too pagan!).

The truth is, outside of arithmetic, it's hard to teach anything worth learning that someone won't find offensive or upsetting or frightening or off-putting. If it's interesting, if it's something people care about, then people are going to have opinions about it. That means somebody, somewhere, isn't going to like it. The drive to keep our children perfectly safe from dangerous knowledge just ends up reducing their education to a bland, boring, irrelevant slog.

And, again, you start to suspect that this is the point. As in the Iranian regime that Satrapi describes, where art students are only allowed to do figure drawing sketches of women covered in a head-to-toe chador, the aim of American education too often seems to be a quite deliberate ignorance. The revolutionary guards patrol the classrooms not to make sure you learn something about the real world, but to make sure you don't.

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Sex, Violence, and Radical Islam: Why 'Persepolis' Belongs in Public Schools

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School officials have hurried to explain that they do not actually object to the political content. Instead, they say, the book is still sanctioned for school libraries, but that lower grades may not use it because of "graphic language and images that are not appropriate for general use in the seventh grade curriculum."

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http://preshilmyplanguageandliterature.weebly.com/unit-two-global-perspectives.html

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Themes of Persepolis include:

Culture and cultural diversity - Iranian culture, Islamic traditions, the influence of American popular culture

History, governance, and civic ideals - Revolution, Islamic Revolution, civil disobedience, religion in politics

War and terror - Violence as depicted in comic panels, torture, extremism

Language - Political slogans

Coming of age - Growing up during revolution, girlhood, family relationships, defiance of adult figures/ youthful rebellion

Feminism - Generational differences, feminism in a non-Western context

Think/ Pair/ Share: Why the Graphic Novel Format?
The goal is to get students to probe the nature of the graphic novel format chosen by Marjane Satrapi to tell her story.

​Ask students to turn to the diptych on page 102 - depicting young soldiers exploding on the battlefield in the upper panel and Marji and her friends dancing in the lower panel. Ask students to describe the illustrations. Then ask questions along the lines of

Why would Satrapi choose to present this scene in this visual way?

What might be lost (or gained) had she decided to tell her story in a more traditional prose form?

Create pairs (can also work as a small group) of students. Using similarly graphics-heavy page of the text - pages 15, 42, 61, 71, 77, 89, 95, 235, 245, 250, 281, 290, 305, 309, and 329 - and discuss these same questions. Have the students confer, note one another's thoughts, and then share with the class.

The following question may be used as a prompt for discussion posts or an out of class written assignment: "Based on what you've heard from the different groups, why do you think Satrapi might have utilized the graphic novel form to tell her story?"

Pathway Connections:

Art Appreciation

Literature

Composition, Developmental Writing

Reading, English for Academic Purposes

Communications, Speech

Teacher Education (Reading)

Honors & Interdisciplinary Studies

See link for more details Whole Book Recap & Reflection

How does the author indicate a change in one of the characters?

Which technique seems the most successful in revealing the turmoil of the changes in the society?

How does the author use diction effectively?

How is the role of religion in this book similar to that in your own community? How is it different?

In what ways is the family in the book similar to yours? How is it different?

What similarities and differences can you identify between the politics of the Middle East and those in our country?

Pathway Connections:
See more info at link
Selection from Persepolis 2 by Satrapi with discussion questions. Themes of this selection include: adolescence, teenagers, and parent relationships.

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Research Guides: College Read 2019-20: Persepolis: Teach with Persepolis

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Themes of Persepolis include: Culture and cultural diversity - Iranian culture, Islamic traditions, the influence of American popular culture History, governance, and civic ideals - Revolution, Islamic Revolution, civil disobedience, religion in politics War and terror - Violence as depicted in comic panels, torture, extremism Language - Political slogans Coming of age - Growing up during revolution, girlhood, family relationships, defiance of adult figures/ youthful rebellion Feminism - Generational differences, feminism in a non-Western context Think/ Pair/ Share: Why the Graphic Novel Format?

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Growing up in Afghanistan

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Removing gender stereotyping in early childhood

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The author talks early beginnings

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Marjane Satrapi in "Beginnings" by Chiara Clemente

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3 mins

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Don't go to Iran - Travel film by Tolt #4

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Nuts and bolts of a graphic novel

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Start studying "Nuts and Bolts" of graphic novels. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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Emma Watson interviews Marjane Satrapi

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Understanding comics

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blog entry, 2016

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For the past two weeks, in the Global Citizens stream of the CAP program I am registered in at UBC, I have explored 'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi in detail with my professor and my group in my ASTU course, a graphic narrative written by Marjane Satrapi describing her experiences growing up throughout the fall of the 2500 year old Persian empire and the increasingly changing society of revolutionary Iran, till her departure from Iran to study in Austria. In this course, one of the most interesting questions raised by far was 'What is the difference between "memory" and "history". Memory is something which is more personal, and tries to give details that a person is aware of through senses and feelings while history gives only a general briefing of a situation, being objective and specific in times, places and dates without really putting much of personal feelings in question. As a global citizen in the CAP program, examining the writing of national memory in this ASTU course, determining the difference was by far one of the most important areas in which to explore works such as those by Satrapi, and from this experience understanding this through persepolis has not only increased my understanding of this difference, but has also enabled me to change my view of many standing current issues, of which I have personally previously tried to understand and discuss about throughout my experiences in MUNing in high school, where I find parallels between the feelings and memories conveyed in Persepolis and what is actually happening in the world right now..

Indeed, by comparing the circumstances mentioned in Persepolis to something current such as the Syrian Civil War and Refugee Crisis right now, having watched the fall of Syria into chaos and further oppression, and war, and the subsequent refugee crisis, one would realize that the history that the news reports and documentaries have given us, are simply not enough, and that we need more memories to convey the horrors and feelings of victims to the world. We need more memories because people begin to fail to show empathy to the refugees and the suffering from situations such as the Syrian Civil War, standing by and do nothing to help the suffering and the refugees, sometimes even resorting to hostile propaganda and violence against refugees through stereotypes without actually trying to understand them. Thus, the world needs more Satrapis and Persepolises.

First of all, throughout the first few classes of ASTU we have been taught the importance of considering genre when it comes to reading and writing in general, genre in that one should consider not only the form of the but also the situation, the audience, and the purpose in which the work is being addressed to, such that establishes it as a genre. The introduction of Persepolis mentioned the very purpose of why it was written, as Satrapi believed' that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.' and that she doesn't 'want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten', establishing its genre as a graphic narrative attempting to address Western stereotypes and misconceptions about the so called axis of evil in the Middle East, especially in regards to Iran, where she comes from. Many of these misconceptions and stereotypes which remain similar to those of how some in the western world view refugees from Syria with suspicion and skepticism. Given how Persepolis has come to become a work of literature that has been explored, and even studied by prominent academics, Persepolis has changed my view in that such narratives can indeed be useful in trying to reverse stereotypes made against certain peoples, in that they can show the human nature side of those 'who are not us'.

Secondly, we can see that Persepolis has inadverntly, through Marji's growing up in revolutionary Iran and up to the Iraq-Iranian War, in a situation that is unique to her, where she grows up in a rather affluent family who has a maid and cardillac, that many issues have been addressed and mentioned throughout Persepolis, such as how the issue of nationalism continues to drive people against each other, as Marji blamed historical hatred of how 'the Arabs never liked the Persians', and how they attacked the Iranians '1400 years ago' and 'forced their religion on' them, in page 81 shows the increasing nationalism shown in nations such as China; how her cousin Shahab, serving in the army, as mentioned in page 101, stated how the poor kids become attracted to joining the army as child soldiers with the promise of paradise through the issuing of cheap plastic gold keys, who had little better fate than being sent to explode in the minefields, whilst richer people such as her were wearing necklaces without being aware to the violence in the Iran-Iraq War, shows the issue of child soldiers that are also prevalent in places like Africa and by organizations like ISIS, where the latter also indoctrinates children to its propaganda in a format not completely different from the methods mentioned in page 101, how people continue to suffer from the trauma from war, such as when Marji noticed the death of Neda during a bombing in the Iran-Iraq War in page 142, as Marjane narrated how 'No scream in the world could have relieved my suffering and my anger', continues to reflect how people continue to suffer in the shadow of war. Even though I have increased my understanding of these world issues through my participations of MUNs, or the watching of documentaries, none of the above would have allowed me to understand the emotions or feelings conveyed through these events as well as what I have read from Persepolis. When discussing these global issues in MUNs, I often resort to the historical, the official accounts of government entities, or the version of events mentioned by the news, which often lack the emotions acutely felt by people affected by these issues, or fail to mention the normality of life of people, as news would often focus on the unique and the special. Though documentaries and reports such as the report 'Srebrenica' written by the NIOD, or the Human Rights Watch report of the Srebrenica Massacre often involve the interviewing of witnesses, or people who were at the scene, these often pertain to the only the actual event, and questions for the most time only serve a specific objective purpose, and fail to truly relay the changing emotions and feelings of the people involved, such as the complexity of how Marji sees heroes throughout Persepolis, such as the martyred soldiers in page 102, or the political prisoners in pages 47 and 51, or how the revolution and the war and the personal loss of her Uncle Anoosh sort of signalled in the loss of Marji's childhood innocent and leading to her growing up in 'The Trip' These serve to influence me, and allow me to recognize the importance of memories aside form history from understanding how historical events make an impact on people, in which most conventional media have overlooked.

All in all, Persepolis has indeed changed my worldview of many current affairs, and changed how I viewed memories and their importance in allowing people to effectively understand history, to have empathy and to make effective changes to it. Indeed, the world needs more Satrapis and Persepolises.

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A reflection of Persepolis: How History Repeats Itself In Today's World.

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For the past two weeks, in the Global Citizens stream of the CAP program I am registered in at UBC, I have explored 'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi in detail with my professor and my group in my ASTU course, a graphic narrative written by Marjane Satrapi describing her experiences growing up throughout the fall of the 2500 year old Persian empire and the increasingly changing society of revolutionary Iran, till her departure from Iran to study in Austria.

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Marjane Satrapi began to write Persepolis after she finished university in France in 1994, with her friends at the time acquainting her with the graphic novel form. It is thus a text composed in an increasingly volatile global environment, one which perhaps paralleled the epoch she was depicting.

Satrapi's work was created in an era preceded and followed by large amounts of military intervention and social unease in the Middle East. This is often thought to be largely a result of the vast, often untapped, oil reserves found in there. In an increasingly energy insecure world, oil reserves are of great importance, and thus Iran's vast primary natural resources can cause large levels of unrest and troubles. Iran's government states that oil reserves in Iran are third largest in the world, with approximately 150 billion barrels available as of 2007 (being ranked second if unconventional oil reserves - such as the Canadian reserves - are excluded). This is roughly 10% of the world's total proven petroleum reserves, and Iran is therefore an energy superpower, also claiming precedence as one of the leading members of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) ( OPEC).

As Anup Shah states, 'given the vast energy resources that form the backbone of western economies, influence and involvement in the Middle East has been of paramount importance for the former and current imperial and super powers, including France, Britain, USA and the former Soviet Union.' (See link: Middle East: Global Issue). Indeed, this is a fact perhaps exemplified by the number of US military bases around Iran. See Figure 1. The involvement of Western countries in the Middle East was thus increasing at the time Satrapi was writing, and her work, depicting a revolution begun by Western influence on the Shah (See: Persepolis, Satrapi, pages 14-15, 38-39) would have had great resonance with the Iranians of her contemporary world.

(Figure 1: US Military Bases around Iran. Image source.)

Moreover, the text was written amongst the trade embargos and sanctions of the years that followed the mid-1990s. 1995, for example, brought oil and trade sanctions imposed on Iran by the US following Iran's alleged sponsorship of terrorism after Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear arms. Initially, both nations were hostile as Iran denied the charges, and by September of 1998 Iran's deployment of thousands of troops on its border with Afghanistan had only furthered these embargos.

Similarly, Persepolis was written around contemporary social unrest, with protests and demonstrations becoming widespread. July 1999 has been cited as bringing the most violent uprisings since the 1979 revolution which Satrapi depicts, producing six days of student-led protests and rioting, and the arrests of 1,000 Pro-Democracy students.

Satrapi's work was thus written in a time of political fears and social unease and disintegration, and her work depicting a revolution whose end had not brought about peace is one relevant to her contemporary audience, and the time in which she wrote it.

When the text was set and the historical events of Persepolis

Although Iran historically has had a volatile history, this has not always been the case, and the first human rights charter discovered originated from Iran. This has been named the 'Cyrus Cylinder' in modern years, after the Emperor of Persia, Cyrus, in 576-530 BC. See Figure 2. The Cylinder's text has traditionally been seen by Biblical scholars as corroborative evidence of Cyrus' policy of the repatriation of Jews following their captivity in Babylon. Satrapi seems to consciously ignore this heritage however, and instead her text focuses on the more restless aspects and history of the nation.

(Figure 2: Cyrus Cylinder. Image from British Museum)

The title of Persepolis itself places the text directly in the turbulent ancient history of Iran. Once the capital of Iran, Persepolis was located in the South-West of the country, only the ruins of which now remain. Diodorus Siculus, a Greek Historian, writing between 60 and 30 BC, detailed its destruction in his famous work, Bibliotheca historica, stating that Persepolis:

"Was the capital of the Persian kingdom. Alexander [the Great] described it to the Macedonians as the most hateful of the cities of Asia, and gave it over to his soldiers to plunder...(3) The king, too, more greedy for wine than able to carry it, cried: "Why do we not, then, avenge Greece and apply torches to the city?...(8) Such was the end of the capital of the entire Orient." (Diod. Bibliotheca historica. Book 17.70. Verses 3-5)

By naming her text after such a city, Satrapi is placing her text in the context of a continually feuding nation, setting the scene for the novel as one which is well versed in the art of war. Its positioning as such therefore has resonance with an increasingly Capitalist world, where Alexander the Great's destruction parallels that of modern day imperialism. For a further overview of ancient Iranian history, see the BBC's timeline ( BBC Timeline)

The text is set between the years 1976 and 1994, detailing eighteen years of the author's life, and encompassing Iranian history from the past two millennia. It is set in the years surrounding 1979 Iranian Revolution, which Marjane Satrapi herself states "was normal, and it had to happen. Unfortunately, it happened in a country where people were very traditional, and other countries only saw the religious fanatics who made their response public." ( Marjane Satrapi Interview).

The revolution occurred for a number of reasons. Largely, it was a result of opposition to the Westernizing and secularising attempts of the Western-backed Shah, and this is the main reason documented in Satrapi's text. Other reasons included a rise in the public's expectations following an overly ambitious economic policy, which aimed to exploit the income made from oil in 1973, anger over a short, sharp economic downturn in 1977-78, and other shortcomings of the 'ancien regime' (the monarchical hierarchy established by the Western nations centuries before).

Iran was the subject of a great deal of controversy throughout the time Satrapi depicts. The Iran-Contra affair, for example, was an American political scandal which came to light in November 1986 during the Reagan administration. Reagan's government, which played a decisive role in the survival of Iraq's president, Suddam Hussein, by allowing intelligence and hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to be given to Iraq throughout the 8 year war with Iran, had also been allowing the sale and facilitation of arms to Iran. When this financing of both sides came to light, Reagan stated:

"First, let me say I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I'm still the one who must answer to the American people for this behaviour." ( Reagan on the Iran Contra Scandal)

Thus, Satrapi's text is set predominantly in a nation which, particularly in recent years, has centred around scandals and warfare. Though the majority of Satrapi's text focuses on her personal life, some of the Iranian revolution is explicitly depicted.
The main historical events documented are as follow:

Cinema Rex Fire, 19th August 1978, pages 14-15:

- The Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran, was set ablaze, killing around 470 individuals. The government blamed the Islamic militants, while the anti-Shah protesters blamed the governmental intelligence service. It was later disclosed that it was the Islamic militants.
Black Friday, September 8th 1979, pages 38-39:
- Involved the shooting of protestors in Zhaleh Square in Tehran, Iran. It has been described as a pivotal event in the Iranian revolution, where any hope for reconciliation between the Shah's regime and the revolutionary movement was lost. According to anti-governmental sources, a predominately peaceful demonstration was broken up by the Iranian military, with opposition and Western journalists reporting that the Iranian army massacred protestors and left between 100 dead.
Closing of Universities, 1979, page 73:
- University and higher education had been common in Iran, dating back to the early centuries of Islam. In the twentieth Century, the system was seen as antiquated, and was remodelled along French lines. However, the country's 16 universities were closed after the 1979 revolution and were only reopened after the Cultural Revolution Committee had investigated and dismissed professors who were Marxist, Liberal, or believed any other "imperialistic" ideologies. The universities reopened gradually with Islamic curricula between 1982 and 1983 under Islamic supervision.
Western Sexual Revolution, 1960-80s, pages 182-191:
- The sexual revolution was a Western social movement challenging tradition concerning sexuality and relationships from the 1960-80s. This liberation began with included increased acceptance of sex outside of marriage, and widely available contraception - most importantly the Pill - the normalization of premarital sexual relations and, the legalisation of abortion, and the acceptance of homosexuality and alternative forms of sexuality.
Iraq bombs Tehran, 1985, pages 256-257:
- In 1985, Iraqi warplanes bombed Tehran and two other Iranian cities on a Sunday, killing at least 28 people in largely residential areas of the Iranian capital. Baghdad deemed the raids 'retaliation', for an attempt to assassinate the leader of Kuwait, and Iran said its aircraft hit back.
Iraq attacks Kuwait, 1991, page 322:
- The Invasion of Kuwait, later known as the Iraq-Kuwait War, was one of the larger conflicts between the Ba'athist Iraqi's and the nation of Kuwait, which resulted in a seven month occupation of Kuwait by Iraq, leading to direct military intervention by Western, American-led forces in the Persian Gulf War, and culminating in the torching of 600 of Kuwait's oil wells in 1991. (See the 1992 IMAX production film Fires of Kuwait)
Iran's Plastic Keys to Paradise, 1980, pages 100-102:
- This episode in the text refers to the plastic 'Keys to Paradise' allegedly distributed to young Iranian military volunteers during the Iran/ Iraq (1980-1988) by the Islamic Republic of Iran leadership, who stated that they symbolised certain entry into Paradise upon death. They were deemed absurd by even some contemporary.

When the text is being read

Published in English in 2008 and at the turn of the millennium in French, Persepolis is a modern text, written amongst continued strife and fraught relations between Iran and the West. With initial military intervention in the Middle East beginning in 2003 with Iraq, Persepolis is consonant with continued warfare and struggle. Following the US sanctions introduced in October 2007, the toughest since those first imposed almost 30 years before, and the nuclear threat posed by Iran, relations between the West and the US were at a low point. The text is thus being read by an audience aware of the constant issues in the Middle East, and although written about past events, can be seen as integral in shedding light on current and future events. Indeed, with the continued political and cultural dominance of the West - particularly the US - Satrapi's text is a worryingly individual account of the impacts of such dominance, a fact which only heightens the reality of current events in the Middle East. It is a starkly genuine and modern portrayal of a nation at war.

Ciara Faughnan-Moncrieff

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persepolis marjane satrapi iran tehran modern modernity analysis

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Marjane Satrapi began to write Persepolis after she finished university in France in 1994, with her friends at the time acquainting her with the graphic novel form. It is thus a text composed in an increasingly volatile global environment, one which perhaps paralleled the epoch she was depicting.

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Paper 1 practice looking at Perspepolis and other texts
Creative: Dramatize sections of the novel
Learner portfolio: students complete when and as needed

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All the students will read the novel and we will discuss it in class.
https://libguides.broward.edu/persepolis/teach

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/film-and-lit/warren-persep.pdf

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What do we learn about culture through the study of a literary text? How does the context influence the production and reception of a literary text?

How much of the knowledge we construct through reading a text is determined by the author's intentions? By the reader's cultural context? By the purpose or value of the text itself?

Can we judge the value of literature from a geographical or historical perspective?

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violence, radical Islam, gender stereotyping

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ATL: thinking, communication, research, social
ATT: inquiry-based, conceptual understanding, local and global contexts, differentiation, informed by assessment, links with the core and other disciplines (Arts, TOK, History)

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identity
culture
perspective
representation

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- close attention to the details of a text in a variety of types and literary forms.
How are we affected by texts in various ways?
In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated and interpreted?
How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?

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Topic of primary interest: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

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Topic of primary interest: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

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Literary works:
PERSEPOLIS
Non-literary works:
biography, YouTube videos, articles, photographs etc.