Sunday, March 8, 2009

Week Two- Class Act (Alice)

class act

This is not related to anything anybody said in-class. What I am going to write is the thing that I need to understand by writing them down here. (paraphrase, Mr.McGuigan!)

I was fortunate to attend the Cypress Students Summit conference, and one of the workshops they conducted was on the view of Iran from the perspective of a student. The presenter explained that Iran is segregated, and do not allow men and women to interact with one another, which I knew before I got there, because of Persepolis. He(the presenter) said that children went to girls-only or boys-only school until they reached university. University was their dream; the systems allowed more freedom and allowed interaction between the two sexes. However, in the book, on page 295, the author said that the university students had to take different staircases according to their gender. When I pointed this out, the presenter said that was not true, and it was only a rumor. This made me reflect on the book and ponder hard about the reliability of the information presented. Because Marjane lived in Iran, and this is a autobiography--not a diary, the facts and the popular rumors might have merged in her mind as time went by. Also, many things that Marjane illustrated about war against Iraq and revolutions might have been influenced by propaganda. Until that workshop, I naturally assumed that all facts in Persepolis were true; now I know that even an autobiography might need the "origin, purpose, value and limitation" interrogation.

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