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Blogging Guidelines


  1. R-E-S-P-E-C-T: same as in class. Play nice.
  2. Be honest: same as in class. It's fine if you're not in love with everything you read or hear, but give respectful, honest, analytical explanations for your opinions. Challenge yourself to disagree with your peers and/or the author, but once again, do so respectfully and analytically.
  3. You may write in the first-person, informally. That being said, please write in complete sentences and keep your comments relevant and appropriate. 
  4. All entries must be a minimum of 250 words. Anything less will count as incomplete. Although you are not required to answer the Reader Response questions below, I encourage you to use them for ideas.
  5. All entries must include three components: questions (these may be to stimulate discussion, challenge a peer, or to ask something that you are genuinely curious or confused about), quotes (from the book or other sources, using MLA formatting), and connections (to anything else you've read, heard, seen, experienced etc.). You will be graded on how you respond to the text in light of these three components.
  6. All quotes must be cited using MLA formatting.

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Graphic Text

Thinking of the book as a graphic text, with a focus on word and image as devices for storytelling: Why do you think Satrapi chose to tell her story in words and images?  What does the combination make possible that words or images alone would not? How would you describe the style of Satrapi’s drawings?  How does this style contribute to the story that she tells? How does this style limit the way the story is told? What particular incidents in the story do you think are conveyed more effectively in pictures than they could have been in words alone?

Bildungsroman

Thinking of the book as a coming-of-age story, with a focus on connections to readers’ own lives, answer one of the following questions: What stages do you recognize in Marji’s attempts to understand justice and forgiveness? What forms does teenage rebellion take among Marjane and her friends?  To what extent are they like teenagers everywhere? How are they different? Several times in Satrapi’s narrative, Marjane seems to hit bottom and decides to remake herself.  How are these various new selves related to each other?

Cultural Lens

Thinking of the book as a portrait of a culture, with a focus on social practices and traditions, answer one of these questions: What does the book suggest about the role of religion in Iranian culture, especially in the lives of people like Marjane’s family? What does the book suggest about social class in Iranian society, especially, for example, in the story of the courtship between the family’s maid and their neighbor (34-37) or the distribution of keys to paradise to boys drafted into the army (99-102)? What are the roles for women in Iranian society as depicted in the book?  How do Marjane and her mother and grandmother both play into and resist those roles?