When I first saw the animated film adaptation Persepolis in theaters in 2007 (see trailer), I was thrilled to finally see a highly commercialized story depicting the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath, which many of my friends and family in Iran have been coming to terms with for many years. Although the film is a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel, the text allows readers to pause and reflect upon certain images, thereby allowing them to animate these images themselves.

In Persepolis, Satrapi describes her personal history as a middle class Iranian woman who experiences the effects of a post-revolutionary transnationalism as she migrates across Iranian and European borders and attempts to explore and test the boundaries of identity expression within the boundaries of the state. The graphic novel form allows her to tell this story in a unique way because she can illustrate the figuratively and artistically black-and-white dichotomies in Iran and Europe during the 1980s, juxtapose simultaneous elements of brutal honesty and playfulness within select images, and explain a complex political history in a series of snapshots with small amounts of text.

Satrapi hooks her readers with her first chapter, “The Veil,” which introduces an image that I believe many people imagine when they think of Iran: women in veils. As a viewer, I am struck by these initial images of frowning young girls with white faces emerging from black veils. Further, on page 6, Satrapi includes the image of herself as a young girl split in half: on the left side is a girl with short hair, a long-sleeve top, and the gears and tools of progress in the background, while the right side depicts her in a black veil with what appears to be traditional or even religious imagery in the background. One would not see such visually drastic polarizations of lightness and darkness, or modernity and traditionalism, in a photograph or film of women in Iran wearing the veil. Through the graphic novel form, however, she is able to weave these images in ways that tell her story of this split in identity without relying solely on words or stand-alone images to convey her thoughts. I must note that, while I think such images are powerful and productive for her narrative, they can also be limiting, as the viewer only sees the solid black against solid white and cannot imagine more colorful, diversified images of veiled women in post-revolutionary Iran, such as this image from Iranian New Wave filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s 1987 film Where Is the Friend’s Home?

Iranian schoolchildren in “Where is the Friend’s Home?” (1987)

Satrapi effectively utilizes these black-and-white scenes to convey her transnational reality later on in the graphic novel, when she spends time in Austria. For example, in the chapter “The Soup,” there is one strip of images that shows how her caretakers, Zozo and her husband, Houshang, saw their lives change drastically after moving from Iran to Vienna. In one image, Zozo is a smiling secretary in Iran, and in the next, she is a frowning hairdresser in Vienna; in another image, Houshang is a smiling CEO in Iran, and in the next, “he was nothing” in Austria (157). Thus, in just four pictures with two- or three-line captions, Satrapi is able to capture the hardships of the transnational Iranian migrant in a way that would be formed and communicated differently if conveyed through other media, such as a text-based novel or documentary film.

Through the graphic novel form, Satrapi also has the advantage of being able to convey multiple images simultaneously, with multiple moods. For example, she includes one scene where children and their mothers shop in a sparse grocery store during a time of growing food shortages in Iran. While the mothers are in one corner of the scene, lamenting about how the increase in the number of refugees in Tehran has affected this food shortage, the children are in another part of the image, laughing about a bean joke (92). In this way, Satrapi juxtaposes a brutal reality of the effects of transnational migration on the middle as well as lower classes in the aftermath of a major conflict in Iran, while also showing the playful childhood innocence that still lingers during this difficult time.

Finally, the graphic novel form allows Satrapi to take many liberties in her portrayal of the political history of Iran. Because she can only capture her situation through images and small amounts of text, she is able to summarize key events in ways that the reader can easily digest the history. For instance, in her chapter, “The Sheep,” she depicts the crux of revolutionary motivations and the liminal, transnational space of the transitional Iranian state in five images depicting a conversation between Marjane’s father and uncle. Her uncle says, “In a country where half the population is illiterate and you cannot unite the people around Marx, the only thing that can really unite them is a nationalism or a religious ethic,” and her father replies that the elections in favor of the Islamic Republic must have been faked, because 99.9% of the people supposedly voted for it and he personally doesn’t know a single person who wanted it (62). I don’t think it would be appropriate to go into further detail in this graphic novel, because she can only explain so much in this form and she is depicting the situation as it was presented to her as a child. However, it is important that the reader understands this and realizes that this is just a small synopsis and particular point of view of how the revolutionaries became in favor of establishing an Islamic Republic following the collapse of the monarchy. After all, she does not go into much detail at all about Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power and his ability to strategically unite revolutionary protesters across several key demographics to call for the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

If Persepolis as a retelling of political history appeals to you, I would highly recommend reading the 9/11 Report in the graphic novel form. For me, this text allowed me to understand a national history I witnessed and was a part of in a way that I had not thought about before. You can read the first chapter here.

In Flexible Citizenship, Ong describes how transnationalism has influenced and changed how she views Chinese cultural identity. As a huaqiao Chinese, or individual of Chinese descent born overseas, Ong had always espoused an ambivalent, albeit idealistic view of her ancestral homeland. While she accepted that poverty and political oppression might exist, she also envisioned a “kinder, gentler Chinese people” than those she knew in the “diaspora,” a notion that had developed on account of Western modern history and themedia (42). Upon visiting China for the first time, Ong did not feel an authentic connection as initially hoped, but rather a profound sense of “alienation”, which was promoted on both sides of her cultural divide. While her Western friends criticized her for visiting places in South China that did not meet their view of what China should be, native Chinese discriminated against how Chinese she actually appeared. As an overseas Chinese, she was expected to embrace “Western modernity” and not dress as a “college student.” (43). In essence, Ong hoped to feel welcomed home in China, but was rather viewed as a foreigner.

Just as transnational notions of cultural identity in China allow Ong to experience dismay and alienation, particularly with regards to how one is perceived by others, so does the outcome of the Islamic Revolution on the protagonist in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis. As we shall see with various examples, the images present in this genre further emphasize how cultural identity is expressed and conveyed to a wider global audience.

In the opening pages of Persepolis, we meet 10 year old Marji, who has recently been made to wear a veil in school. Having grown up in a modernized, Westernized Iranian society, the notion of wearing a veil seems antiquated and senseless. The opening images of Marji’s unhappy school portrait coupled with flashbacks of her class mocking the veil highlight this initial alienation.  As we progress to the second page, we see that her identity up to then had been cultivated by a secular French education espousing Western values.

Yet, with the dismissal of the “capitalist system” in favor of a “cultural revolution”, these images introduce how required gender separation and new attire for Muslim women shape Marji’s eventual perception of herself as an Iranian woman at home and abroad (particularly as she transitions between Iran and Europe). Eventually, as we learn, the enforced dress code and detachment from Western culture lead Marji to acts of cultural defiance, which are detailed throughout the novel. In one instance, the posters of Kim Wild and Iron Maiden received as gifts from her parents inspire her to wear American fashion in addition to her veil, which causes her trouble with the “Guardian of the Revolution” (Satrapi 131-133). In another example, a sequence depicting a confrontation between Marji and her school principal over further fashion infractions demonstrate the societal clash of Western influences on the dress expectations for Muslim women. The anger shown by Marji, particularly as the principal attempts to take her bracelet, and the act of Marji covering her ears when she is informed of her expulsion further highlight this (143).

Overall, with both Ong and Satrapi, we see how transnationalism enables perceived notions of cultural identity to evolve. While Ong initially feels alienated from her Chinese cultural identity upon visiting her ancestral homeland because she, as a huaqiao, does not espouse the “modern West”, Marji feels isolated in her Iranian homeland because the previous culture that she had known, has been limited. Instead of viewing these dilemmas in cultural identity as binary, however, the written and visual responses of Ong and Satrapi demonstrate diverse perspectives and challenge us to think beyond defined borders. In particular, the images of Iranian history in Satrapi’s graphic memoir which are interpreted by global audiences, the multiple translations of Satrapi’s text into different languages, and its recent film adaption further attest to this spirit.

In our class meetings thus far, we’ve often returned to the concept of transnationalism, discussing the vocabulary of the transnational and what kind of an experience we are describing when we talk about transnationalism. One idea that we have returned to is that of simultaneity. Transnationalism is a not a story, or a phenomenon experienced as a step-by-step process. In real lives, the transnational exists because of the all-at-once, uncontainable nature of people, products, cultures, histories, and imagination. These all exist at the same time around the globe, and occur both at the same time and in the same place within the individual consciousness. In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, the visual form of the graphic novel contributes to Satrapi’s ability to represent the simultaneous, placeless nature of transnationalism in ways that a purely linguistic narrative form could not. As an English student, I’ve been trained to see the complexities of the text and the various ways authors use language to communicate multiple and even conflicting messages in their works. While reading the graphic novel, however, I was most often struck by the extra-lingual, information that was not only communicated by the drawings rather than the text, but in particular information that could only be communicated by the images, because it went beyond the text’s capacity for signification. I believe these extra-lingual messages are essential to the representation of transnationalism in Persepolis.

One way Satrapi mobilizes visual imagery to more vividly express transnationalism is by representing meaning with blank space. An unlikely frame emphasized this strategy to me: that of the before and after comparison of Marjane’s hairy and shaved skin (274). In this frame, Marjane’s hairy skin is represented by a rectangular swatch that is covered in hair (“Me before.”). Alongside that image is a completely blank rectangle that Satrapi writes is “Me after” (274). On a surface level, this makes sense; the hair is present in one image, while the next shows it removed from Marjane’s now smooth and blank skin. Beyond the surface, however, this frame struck me in its use of blank space to convey meaning, prompting me to think about Satrapi’s use of this device throughout her graphic novel. I was especially interested in the difference that this use of blank space highlighted between textual and graphic representation. While blank spaces appear in text to indicate divisions between words, paragraphs, and sections, blank space cannot, in prose, represent part of the body, or the removal of hair. Yet in this black-and-white work of fairly uncomplicated illustrations, blank spaces often represent important parts of the story. For example, blank background space is present in Satrapi’s illustrations of Iran, Austria, Turkey, and Spain. By making the nothing of blank space represent physical spaces in her illustrations, Satrapi creates a sense of nonspatial places. While the illustrations represent real places, comparing their shared negative spaces demonstrates that they all lack fixed or isolated location as it is relative to the people in those spaces. The only times when spatial location is truly defined is when it is at its most abstract and meaningless, such as on the map of the Middle East that Marjane and her parents see on television in Madrid (78). The map presented in the broadcast clearly defines borders, yet such a representation of space is as meaningless to the individuals moving across and within those borders as the Spanish report that the Satrapis cannot understand. From within the borders of a country, or of a frame in the graphic novel, place lacks national definition. The blank spaces that represent walls, skies, and ground, the very points of orientation by which one might ascertain location and relation to one’s surroundings, are indistinguishable. Thus nothingness comes to represent location, and in doing so, enacts the same dismantling of local orientation that simultaneity of location effects in transnational experience.

The representation of simultaneity is accommodated especially well in Persepolis not only through the extra-lingual expression of meaning through nothingness, but also in the graphic novel’s capacity to bring elements together in single frames. When Satrapi presents frames that represent, for example, the influence of Britain, the propaganda of the Iranian government, and the intimate space of the family home all in one simultaneously accessed image, these elements are experienced as contemporaneous (83). The frame illustrates that such forces exist all at once and in shared spaces, both physically and internally in individual experience. Their relations are complex, the result of multidirectional tension and simultaneous interpretation and reinterpretation in the context of one another. To represent such nontemporal and nonspatial presence with the inherently temporal form of language is a daunting prospect. Thus, I believe Satrapi’s placement of transnational messages, individuals, and products on the equal and displaced footing of her graphic frames is another way she utilizes the graphic novel to represent transnationalism in a more lifelike manner than she could have achieved through language alone. As a final image of Satrapi’s use of images to displace, level, and merge transnational elements, I consider the frame that depicts Marjane’s and her parents’ trip to Italy and Spain (77). Perched on a magic carpet and surrounded by the swirls that often indicate Marjane’s imagination at work, the three are simultaneously in Italy, Spain, and the nowhere space of Marjane’s mind. Buildings that may represent both Spanish and Italian architecture and landmarks bracket the interior, where a dark haired woman twists among the strands of Marjane’s imagination, perhaps embodying one culture, perhaps two, perhaps more. Like the Satrapis, she is entangled in the transnational nowhere and everywhere. The evacuation of fixed location, visual simultaneity of national symbols, and merging of individual consciousness and multiple cultural experiences in this frame exemplify how the form of the graphic novel amplifies Satrapi’s figuration of the transnational. In Persepolis, transnationalism is presented as a placeless, timeless, uncontainable phenomenon that can only be experienced all at once, just as Marjane is at once, and inseparably “a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the west” (272).

Is global feminism really productive, or even global, if it reduces the real experiences of women outside the West to marginal notes?  Ella Shohat problematizes global feminism in her piece by claiming that too much focus on Western feminism, whether deliberate or not, has created an “overarching feminist master narrative” (1270).  There are two issues involved in the way global feminism is viewed, she suggests.  The first is this focus on the West, which is pervasive even if the West is geographically uninvolved in the area being discussed and uses the West as the baseline for feminist ideals in parts of the world that are completely different in many ways.  The second, she says, has to do with area studies and how they break the rest of the world up into regions and categories that may not reflect the people actually inhabiting certain spaces and may in fact allow for inaccurate generalization such as the idea that the “Middle Eastern” woman and the “third-world” woman are “passive victims lacking any form of agency” (1269).  From a transnational standpoint, such categorizations provide an incomplete picture of the people they are attempting to include not only because they generalize over (mostly) arbitrary geographical regions, but also because they ignore factors such as migration, immigration and intersectionality.  What about “Middle Eastern” women who live in United States, or for whom religion and race play a much larger role than is typical in Western discourse?  Shohat says she argues for “relational” feminism, which would allow for examination and discussion of feminism in specific parts of the world and in specific cultures as it relates to other “isms” and cultures, instead of invoking the West in all treatment of the subject.

Aihwa Ong puts it well when she describes anthropology’s organization of the world as “the West” and “the Rest” in Flexible Citizenship (30).  Ong’s book shows that some of what Shohat finds wrong with global feminism can also be applied to anthropology; specifically, both base their observations and expectations on Western ideals, which may have very little to do with what another culture wants for itself.  “Mass media continued to construct our world as a failed replica of the modern West,” she says of Malaysia (29).  “Although the comparative method is at the heart of anthropological knowledge, it has been a comparison that employs the West as a single measure of modernity against which other societies must be measured” (31).  While mass media and anthropology often seem to portray Southeast Asia as substandard because it is not as “modern” as the West, Ong suggests there is a fundamental difference in what Southeast Asia actually imagines as modern that may not have any bearing on Western ideals.  Not only is the region not conforming to those ideals, it may not even be considering them.  In this manner, utilizing the West as the cultural dipstick for how other parts of the world measure up is counter-productive and possibly even irrelevant, as Shohat suggests is also the case with modern global feminism.

In a quick search on transnational feminism I came across a 2009 TEDTalk given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novelist from Nigeria.  The premise of the talk was “the danger of a single story,” the danger being that a single story can become an inaccurate or very limited view of a people, a country or a culture if it is repeated enough or remains the only story available.  While listening, I was reminded of Shohat’s remarks about the Eurocentric views of “Middle Eastern” women.  Frequently I think we do see these women generalized as so-called “passive victims” – debates over the hijab and whether or not it’s oppressive and degrading come to mind – or else somehow related to terrorists and radical Islam, and the problem with this is that their own personal stories and views are left out of the discussion.  “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become,” Adichie says in her speech.

Adichie gives several examples of the “single story” being inadequate for understanding a culture or region, including a story about visiting the village of her family’s houseboy in Nigeria.  She talks about how she was constantly reminded by her parents that the boy’s family was poor and that they had nothing, but that upon meeting them she was shown a beautiful woven basket one of the sons had made, which took her by surprise.  “All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor,” she says.  “Their poverty was my single story of them.”

One of the reasons I enjoyed Persepolis so much is because it allows the reader to see Iran not only from the perspective of a young person, but also from her parents’ perspective.  After being exposed to a lot about Middle Eastern women but not much from them, the scene where Marji’s parents react to her wearing nail polish with pride rather than anger in particular sticks in my mind as significant because it expands the “single story” I have of Iranian culture, as well as of the lives of women in that region.  Under the narrative of the oppressed Middle Eastern woman that I’m familiar with, Marji putting on nail polish would have been unacceptable not only to society but also to her parents; her father especially would have not allowed her to do it.  From examples such as this I would agree with Shohat that relative, transnational feminism is necessary for constructing more complete and useful stories that do not attempt to force “the Rest” into Western molds.

Consider how the form of the graphic novel contributes to the way Persepolis figures transnationalism.

In a recent conversation with a French colleague, I learned that comic art (la bande dessinée) is considered to be the “ninth art” in the ranks of French art classification. Established recently in the latter portion of the 20^th century, the French system of art classification includes architecture, sculpture, visual arts, music, literature, scenic arts, cinema, photography, and lastly, la bande dessinée. That comic art is at the end of the list is unsurprising, considering the antiquity of the other forms, but it surprised me to find graphic work neatly in line with the others, standing all alone. Surely comic art could be placed with visual arts or literature, I thought. Having grown up on Archie Comics, I am no stranger to comic books or adolescent graphic novels, but I had never before read anything like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis as an adult. From the beginning, I was enthralled in the story and hooked on this newfound (to me) genre of expression.

In the introduction, Satrapi* gives a brief history of Iran and the many conquests the country has suffered, both internally and externally. She mentions ancient invasions, as well as the twentieth century British embargo on oil exports. Though many devastating events in Iran were instigated by Western influence, the country is not subject to the typical colonial/postcolonial classification frequently associated with Western powers and their former dependencies. The transnational approach allows the story to unfold and overlap in complicated ways. As a medium, the graphic novel is a compilation of elements. In the case of Persepolis, Satrapi mixes studio art and literary storytelling to communicate the tale of her young self growing up during the Iranian Islamic Revolution.  The title evokes the ancient Persian city, but the plot is modern. Already, two binaries collide, pushing the reader to reflect upon how the past influences the future and is represented in it.

To read about Marjane’s development as an individual is to witness it from her perspective. As an author, Satrapi is able to manipulate each scene by representing space and distance by how she places her figures in the case and in drawing a variety of shots—close up, medium, long, high and low angle, etc. (I am forced to use film vocabulary here, as I do not possess a visual art lexicon). The exclusive use of black and white allows for no in-between, no gray space. Yet, Satrapi somehow manifests texture and change. Though the images are a flat binary of color, the subject matter itself relies on movement and displacement. The narration and dialogue carry the reader through protests, historical details, social upheaval, and cross border migrations. Through the images, the reader makes a visual and imaginary connection to what is written in the text. While each scene may be analyzed individually, each page makes a unit that continues and connects the story holistically. As an art form, Satrapi’s graphic novel allows for wider readership, or viewership, as one need not read all of the dialogue in order to understand content. Moreover, in choosing a Western language (French) in which to originally publish the work, Satrapi exposes a typically censured perspective to people all throughout the globe.

In the introduction to Flexible Citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality, Aihwa Ong writes in detail on the split identities of multiple-passport holders, or the division between “state-imposed identity and personal identity caused by political upheavals, migration, and changing global markets” (2). The question of the passport recurs throughout Persepolis, not only to convey the difficulty in obtaining one in 1980s Iran, but also to express the very identity breach Ong refers to. Over halfway through the novel in the section labeled “The Vegetable”, Satrapi documents her attempts to “assimilate” and the fear of distancing herself from her Iranian culture after living in Austria for one year.  The dominating image is of Marjane herself, colored entirely black except her face and hands, physically stretched as though she needs to represent her body as a caricature in order to portray her feelings of conflicted identity (193).  Later in the section, Marjane denies her nationality and claims to be French. Unfortunately for her, her accent says otherwise.

Though Marjane is certainly not French, Marc’s questioning of her identity demonstrates a reluctance to accept the French culture as one comprised of multiple identities. Does having an accent automatically signify the incapacity to belong to a culture or to claim identity?  Later, Marjane overhears the other students gossiping about her false claim to French identity and explodes, finally owning her Iranian identity with furious pride. “For the first time in a year, I felt proud,” Satrapi writes (197).  To designate importance, the text grows in size and the font slightly modifies. This is the only time the dialogue or narration text changes in size, thus clearly outlining an important theme of the work: “I am Iranian and proud of it!” Marjane screams (197). Not only does the exclamation point mark the passion of the phrase, the size distinctly sets it apart from the rest of the novel. It becomes its own image, sharing the spotlight with Marjane’s acceptance of herself and her transnational identity.

*Throughout this post, I use the author’s last name when referring to her authorial role. I use her first name, Marjane, when referring to the narrator/main character of the novel.

The reader’s perception of transnational elements in Persepolis results from its configuration as a graphic novel. Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian-French author, writing a graphic novel in France to relate her childhood in Iran is in itself a product of transnationalism. Persepolis is divided in sections (The Veil, The Bicycle, The Water Cell, etc.), which display a layout that consists of a series of scenes separated by white spaces, contiguous, but still separated. The apparent fragmented structure is unified by Marjane’s objective to show that Iran is more than fanaticism, fundamentalism, and terrorism. In the introduction of Persepolis Marjane explicitly presents this as her motivation to write the novel. In this sense, the components of the graphic novel interact to form a single unity. It is a process analogous to that of transnationalism, which is determined by the interaction of components of culture originated by a diverse range of factors and motivations. After reading Satrapi’s graphic novel, we are able to interpret and assign a meaning to it. Likewise, the flow of culture that results from transnationalism is interpreted and adopted by its recipients.

For me, the genre has had a transnational impact, since it fostered the willingness to try and accept cultural products from other countries. When I was in middle school manga from Japan was very popular among the male student body. This was in Mexico in the late ‘90s. Some of the most popular were manga that we consumed in the form of anime, which aired on television. Nonetheless, everyone was trying to get the latest volumes of the manga to find out what would happen next and be ahead of the anime that showed in TV. There was a complete network of economic transactions (trading, buying, selling) related to these comics carried out by students. The manga were obtained in flea markets and other irregular shops in a bigger city about 20 miles from ours and then were distributed at school. Sometimes the translation from the Japanese was terrible and we had to figure out the plot of the manga by looking at the pictures. In addition, the effort, performed by some translators, to westernize the reading direction created more problems than it solved. Nonetheless, we enjoyed them and learned from them too. I learned most of Greek mythology from reading Saint Seiya. Coincidentally, Marjane learns about philosophy from a comic book.  

As I stated above, my interest in manga led to an openness to accept cultural manifestations from other parts of the world.  During my third year of middle school (middle school is three years in Mexico) my interests began to shift towards music. We were still engaged with manga at school, but now music was our main focus. It followed the same pattern of distribution as manga. This flow of culture through music is similar as Marjane’s experience portrayed in Persepolis. Radio stations, or at least the radio stations my friends and I listened, played mainly rock from the United States and Britain (Regional or norteño music was not as popular among teens as it is now. It became more popular in most age-groups after immigrants returning to Mexico brought along this genre of music, which was popular in some regions of the country, but was even more popular in Mexican communities in the United States). In our quest to find music from other parts of the world, we began to listen to nordic metal. We were listening to bands such as Nightwish (they are coming to Silver Spring in May, by the way) or Tristania. Sigur Rós was not metal, but was perceived as the new Radiohead (I’m not sure how we reached such comparison) and people were eager to get their hands on their music. In contrast to Marjane, I could get the music without major problems and/or consequences. Although, now that I think about it, we did depend on products from abroad to listen to music in the form of electronics bought in the United States. It was common to have products from the United States at home. My family has lived in both countries for several generations so we were always surrounded by products manufactured here.

The process that I have described is analogous to Marjane’s experience. She was surrounded by fragments of culture from abroad.

In the same way that Gloria Anzaldúa uses a mix of languages to give her readers a feeling of linguistic and contextual exclusion, Marjane Satrapi uses her medium of images as an inclusive means of communicating to any reader.  As we discussed last week in class, Borderlands/La Frontera in a way excludes readers who don’t speak either Spanish or English.  This linguistic setup reflects the main theme of the text, the portrayal of a rupture between cultures (and the formation of a hybrid culture within).

In a similar manner, Satrapi’s Persepolis creates a completely opposite atmosphere; it represents transnational discourse because she appeals to an over-inclusive audience through her own unique form.  By formatting her novel in the form of comics, she relates her story through two universal languages: imagery and humor.  The three-hundred plus pages of comic strips begins as the narrator (Satrapi herself) is a strong-willed child.  Any reader can relate to the humorous shenanigans that the young girl gets into as she grows up during a constantly-evolving period in history.  Satrapi’s objective in her graphic novel is to translate the experience of coming of age during the Islamic Revolution to her readers.  She manages to achieve this goal through the first-person narrative because the perspective of the child is so relatable.

Though the issues of the Islamic Revolution in the Middle East are distinctly unique and separate from most cultural phenomena in the West, Satrapi nonetheless makes the plot a universal concern by involving the readers as though they experience it themselves.  The novel was originally printed in French, but the actual text of the book is not what best conveys the story; even without being able to understand each written word, the reader would understand Persepolis because of Satrapi’s masterful use of universal communication.  Just like a viewer watching a foreign film will still gain a new perspective on issues abroad, readers of Persepolis can take away the terror, injustice, pride, patriotism, and even quotidian nuances of daily life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.  The author’s means of communication is transnational in that is so comprehensible by any audience, that its language transcends national borders.

In “Area Studies, Transnationalism, and the Feminist Production of Knowledge,” Ella exhorts us to “reimagine the study of regions and cultures in a way that transcends the conceptual border inherent in the cartography of the cold war” (1271). What is implied here is that the West (U.S., Europe) still perceives culture in terms of imagined “areas” which were mapped strategically during the war (think “Middle East,” for instance), and that what ended up happening because of this was that knowledge about these arbitrarily-defined, and very-much imagined areas, was accumulated without regard for cultural differences.

Here, let me literally drive the point home: imagine that the United States was studied by others with the intention of establishing their superiority over Americans (remember, this all started because of wars). Now imagine that they chose the South as the dumping ground of all things American. Soon, people would think that all Americans are predominantly rural, disproportionately poor, and dim-witted (these stereotypes are all intentional). As you can see, the knowledge that begins to be produced about this “American region” is far from the reality. It does not even begin to encompass the social, economic, gender-based, racial, or geographical complexities that exist in the United States. Only by taking a look beyond these maps which were created to assert superiority may others then start seeing these complexities.

This becomes crucial in a world like ours, which is now becoming more interconnected by mass media, and where we are constantly bombarded with images, sounds, and goods from all over. Faced with all this information, we need to be able to look beyond these outdated maps which validity rests on the stating that someone else is inferior, such as the term “third world,” and take a look at how we are interacting and perceiving each other through these transnational (across borders) interactions which are occurring.

This inexorably makes me think Uma Nayaran’s article, “Cross-Cultural Connections, Border-Crossings, and ‘Death by Culture’” in which she compares dowry murders in India and domestic violence in the United States. As she contends with the topic, Nayaran cites an anecdote from Madhu Kishwar in which she tells how she was asked by western feminists if they had battered-women’s homes in India, and that by asking this it was assumed that not having it would constitute a lower stage of development. Nayaran argues that in the Indian context, organizing around issues such as shelters for battered women requires a certain set of conditions which are not available in the country; but that, on the other hand, women in India do have the resources to publicize cases of dowry-murders and hold public demonstrations and protests, which led to the boycotting of marriages where dowry was involved. In short, the conditions of both places (India and the U.S.) dictated what type of actions were taken to lessen aggression toward women. (In the case of the U.S., murder is not as common when it comes to domestic violence; therefore, advocating for shelter for those affected becomes the more logical course of action.)

I became curious about the dowry-murders, and when I looked it up on Google, one of the first articles that the search showed me was titled “India ‘Dowry Deaths’ Still Rising Despite Modernization.” The interesting thing about this article was that it correlated modernity with having obtained independence (“Despite…strides in modernization since India’s 1947 independence…”); that is, it assumes, as Ong states in his book, Flexible Citizenship, that modernity is the process in which “the rest of the world will eventually be assimilated to an internationalized modernity originating in and determined by the West” (53). Implied in the title of that article is the judgment that India, although striving to the like the western countries (does it?), is still located at a lower stage of development than those countries which it seeks to emulate by becoming “modern.” The author clearly has a very western-centered idea of what modernity is. Yet is it important to mention that, as Ong reminds us, modernity “is a matter of signification” (53), and that, at the end of the day, it really has to do with whom controls that which is signified as “modern.” The need, then, to think in terms of difference, not to ascertain superiority, but as a way to reach an understanding of those with whom we come into contact becomes paramount in this day and age.

Previously, a student was not able to post about the issue of rape in Teju Cole’s Open City. We are hoping that campus tech support has been able to address this problem.

When I first read Borderlands/La Frontera four years ago for a seminar class, our assignment was to write an autobiographical poem similar in style to Anzaldúa’s poetry. Given one of the prompts, I thought it would be fun to post this here! It’s fairly self-explanatory, but I might add that in the final stanza, the “Mexican cowboy” is Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who I did a performance art workshop with that same year.

Vocal Cataclysm

My kin never done no foreign talk larnin’.

Hell, they barely knew the King’s English.

They all spoke country, see, the s-language of the Amer’can South.

Mama done tried to fix her tongue when she got that city job.

But she was all hat and no cattle. You could still spot that accent a mile away.

The song had diffrin’ lyrics, but the rhythm was all the same.

But Papa knew I was gonna be the first the leave this one-horse town.

Always said I was quicker than a steel trap. Spoke just like those stars in the picture shows.

His idol was Eastwood, mine was Hepburn. I had the Rain in Spain down by five.

But it was when the schoolhouse opened that I really learned how to talk.

I had just learned to write my name when Sandy Flores came to town.

She was the first one to tell us that there was a south below the South.

She talked funny, so we had to buy a whole new dictionary to understand her.

I found out her last name, Flores, meant “Flowers” in bordertongue,

Which made sense because we listened to her tongue grow each day.

And she twisted our tongues too, teaching us how to turn butter into borregos.

But then Sandy didn’t come around any more.

After giving up on trying to find her, she finally sent a brief letter:

“Gone to find Harriet T. Remember the condor.”

Suddenly the word “Flores” no longer symbolized an image of growth.

I spent all of secondary education trying to know the Other.

I read Lorca, listened to Jacques Brel, and watched del Toro.

I played around with a snow globe I called “North and South”.

I couldn’t really determine where I belonged in that globe.

Then I packed up for Yinzertown.

First to leave the valley, just like Papa always said.

“Kid, you’re no bigger than a minute,” he said, “Don’t let no horse buffalo ya.”

Advice I knew I’d come to partially neglect in the future.

It’s always a struggle, migrating from a flock of eagles to a flock of eagles and condors.

Like everyone else, I witnessed the removal of the “id” from the i-dentity.

That was when I met the Mexican cowboy.

He was a nomadic circus performer that dropped by to lead a cultural fusion workshop.

We would play this game where he would shout out a word and I would definite it.

Migration

A part natural, part man-made delta that universally alters the sense of belonging

Identity

Diamond teeth in a hog’s mouth

Community

The conscious awakening to a primal jungle

Art

The photographic memory of that one good trip

I finally understood the extent of the fluidity of all foreign, all common, all language.

As an American living among the Schwa once said,

“Words provide those extra incisors to bite the hand that feeds us.”

But as a French filmmaker once said,

“Words can lighten the shadows around the thing they designate.”

To-may-to, To-mah-to.

It’s up to us to give them a life of our own.

(Note to instructors: I am not assigned to post this week, so no need to grade this!)