Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi


Satrapi described that she was from a normal middle class family from Iran. Satrapi was very religious, but her family did not practice the Islamic religion. When a female practices the Islamic religion they have to wear a veil over their heads. Even though Satrapi and her family were not Islamic they were forced to wear it. Satrapi challenges the myth that Iran is not only a country of “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism” by explaining that just because she was born in Iran didn’t mean that she practiced the Islamic religion. Satrapi was actually rebellious when it came down to the Islamic religion because she had no idea why she had to wear a veil. There was a whole section in the book on just the veil. Satrapi hated the veil, in fact, Satrapi would make jokes about it. Satrapi and a couple of her friends wore the veils unproperly and were joking about it at school and they got in a lot of trouble with their teacher, it was a big deal. Another part of the novel where Satrapi was being rebellious was when she was walking down a sidewalk wearing a sweater that said “PUNK IS NOT DED” and she was also wearing sneakers. Two ladies tried to get Satrapi into a lot of trouble so Satrapi lied and said she had to go home fast (In the photograph above).

Satrapi changed my views from Iran because I would be one to think that most Iran people were bad. There are many stereotypes about the Islamic religion here in the United States and they are not true for example, the stereotype of Islamic males with big beards being terrorist. She really made me understand how the Iran and Iraq society really was from her point of view. Assumed knowledge about other people and other cultures really is superficial because like I said above I was one to think that most Iran people (mainly males with beards) were terrorist. I am not a person who watches the news a lot and I don’t have a lot of knowledge about history, but if I had to choose a culture that would benefit from a “Persepolis-like” treatment to help Americans and other Westerners better understand its dynamics and point of view I would choose North Korea because it is very private and we don’t know much about how they live. I am sure that there are a lot of assumptions of the North Korean culture and it would be very interesting to read a book similar to Persepolis about it.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 6, 2018 at 8:15 PM

    I appreciate your thoughts on this topic, I agree with you that here in the U.S there are a lot of stereotypes but about any culture and religion. I think the best thing for us to do is to just keep an open mind because you never what it's like in other countries and how terrible it can be. It's always a nice aspect to view things in the other persons perspective like in the book Persepolis, I believe it helps us to understand their culture and religion a little better.

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