- R-E-S-P-E-C-T: same as in class. Play nice.
- 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.
- You may write in the first-person, informally. That being said, please write in complete sentences and keep your comments relevant and appropriate.
- 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.
- 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.
- All quotes must be cited using MLA formatting.
Thinking of the book as a memoir, with a focus on memory, truth, and representation, answer one of these questions: What difference does it make to your reading that this book is a memoir, a rendering of Marjane Satrapi’s own life, rather than a fictional story about life in Iran? American writer William Zinsser has written that “humor is the writer’s armor against the hard emotions.” Is this the way that Satrapi seems to be using humor when she says that “every situation offered an opportunity for laughs” (97) and again that laughter is “the only way to bear the unbearable” (266)? What instances of humor stand out to you? Why? How are the personal stories of individual citizens related to the history of their nation?