Persepolis

The first time I was exposed to Persepolis was when I heard that it had been nominated for best feature animation. Which is a big deal for a European animation to be in the running for best-animated film, especially when you look around and see American animations always flooding the category.  When I read the comic I automatically saw how such a story could win an Oscar. Persepolis brings the conflicts in Iran to a much more personable level and gives a point of view that too many western countries ignore. People too easily, talk about invading Iran and dropping nukes on Iran, but every citizen of the country is a human who lives and speaks and thinks, in the same manner that anyone else does.  Persepolis brings the human factor to the conflicts in Iran that we only hear about in the news. The stories that we do hear about on the news talk about important subjects and presents to us the “facts”, and to do so, in an unbiased manner, the news stays away from personal stories.  

The way Persepolis is written I find is very similar to Maus. Everything is matter of fact and everything happens in a linear fashion, with the exception of jumping back and forth from the past and present day in Maus. Persepolis seems even more personal then Maus. It is probably because the author is sharing directly to the reader her personal memoir, while Maus is the story of the author’s father. In Persepolis we dive right into Marjane Satrapi’s mind and into her dreams, we see her conflicts not only with her parents, but also her religious conflicts with god. This is a layer of complexity and humanity that makes the book as successful of a tale as it is.

American Born Chinese

I found that American Born Chinese is a fantastic graphic novel, which delivers a powerful message through the telling of what seems to be three separate stories.  What I found to be most ingenious about the book was that it was able to show three different points of view on personal identity, but still tie all the stories together at the end to give a great final message.

            When reading the book it felt like I was watching a well-done cartoon that I would see on TV as a kid. That may be because of the way the story was drawn or maybe the moralistic story that was being told.  The story that was told though, was much more complicated then something I would find on Nickelodeon.  This speaks a lot to the cultural undertones of the comic, as the artwork seems very American and Chinese at the same time. I am not sure if the artist intended this in his work, but it may speak more to his upbringing and how he was influenced by American and Chinese art and aesthetics alike.

            This book is offered a lot and I think what I enjoyed the most from of this story was the truth that is communicated in the story. Even though many things in the book are highly exaggerated, especially Chin-Kee, but the exaggerations still hold a lot of truth; the truth is just exaggerated along with the drawings. I even got uncomfortable looking at the image of Chin-Kee and the way he is depicted. I am not Chinese or Asian, but I guess I feel some sort of shame of the fact that people may see Chinese people like this.

I cannot say this book was an eye opener though. I have heard similar immigrant stories before, but the way this one was told really gave a lot to the more depth. We see not only a perspective of a young Chinese boy trying to adapt in America, but also the perspective of a “white” high school student, and a traditional Chinese deity. These perspectives made me think about how to look at the immigrant’s story.