Underage Prostitution and Somaly Mam

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2011-11-03/news/commercial-sexual-exploitation-of-children-john-jay-college-ric-curtis-meredith-dank-underage-prostitution-sex-trafficking-minors/

I read this article a little bit after we read the Road of Lost Innocence, and thought it was a very interesting contrast to the book. For anyone interested, the article is about a study done on underage prostitution in New York City that shows that the myth of the teenage sex worker (a teen girl controlled and sometimes even held captive by a pimp) is, at least in NYC, largely just a myth. I thought this was interesting in light of the messages sent by Somaly Mam. It seemed to me that she promoted this stereotype of victimized girls, brainwashed by society and helpless (until Somaly rescues them.) And while it is a touchy subject, obviously this is a real problem and Somaly is helping a lot of people, I thought it interesting to read a different perspective on the issue. I know this comes a while after we read the Road of Lost Innocence, but it is an interesting article, and gives us another story of underage prostitution (if we want to avoid the danger of a single story.)

Former Yugoslavia

I was interested while reading "Love and Obstacles" in the geography of the story. I did some research and the results are difficult to understand. It seems that former Yugoslavia has been split into several nations including Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This story takes place mostly in Slovenia, about ten years prior to the Bosnian genocide. The history leading up to the genocide was very complicated. In some ways I saw it as being similar to the situation in Nigeria. Much of the conflict in Nigeria traces from the false borders drew up in the Berlin Conference, which grouped different ethnic groups together in one "nation." This led to power struggles down the road. Maybe it is the same in Yugoslavia. The different territories and ethnic groups were grouped together after the first world war in 1918, and much of the violence and war seemed to be ethnically driven.

http://www.kosovo.net/serhist2.html

Hope in Srebrenica: ten years on

Srebrenica: ten years on by Ed Vulliarmy tells of his visit to the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia, where eight thousand Muslim men were killed in July 1995. Though many stories are told, gruesome stories of massacres, mass graves, and the desperation of those who survived, what I found most important in the story was the thread of hope apparent in many of those interviewed. Sabaheta Fezic, who lost both her husband and her son, says that she tried to commit suicide after her son was taken, but says "thank God I did not succeed" (5). She spends her days now meeting with other women who have lost the men in their lives, and searching for information on her still missing son. A women named Sija says that "If I cry, I would die of heartbreak, so I don't." (7) Hurtic sums it up perfectly: "we live strange lives... traumatic, but we do it. Because we have to." (11)
This is my favorite part about this article- while Vulliarmy clearly illustrates the horrors of what happened, the focus of the article is not on pointing blame or simply relating the facts of what happened, but on finding hope amidst all the suffering and death that the massacre left behind. What matters now that the dead are dead and survivors have survived is actively working towards rebuilding- identifying bodies, moving Muslims back into Serbian neighborhoods, and educating the public so that future generations will know what happened, and know "that this should never happen again." (13)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Opab3PY30

Secrecy

I found it interesting in Wood how secretive the narrator and his mother must be in this seemingly harmless task of making poles. I think it speaks to the level of tension present in Ireland during the troubles. McCann barely writes of the political/religious issues in the background, yet we as readers are drawn into the story like a conspiracy. The making of poles seems to us like the making of deadly weapons. Oddly enough they are not hiding the job from an enemy or rival. In fact they are working for the "enemy" and hiding the job from the narrator's father.
I found it interesting how McCann chooses not to write about violence or death but something apparently innocent; milling logs. Yet the tension is there, and we see an aspect of war that isn't usually covered in "war novels": that of the family physically untouched by war, but still effected, and in this case split, torn between loyalties and survival.

http://www.linenmemorial.org/

This is an interesting site I found on a memorial dedicated to honoring those who died during the Troubles in Ireland. I thought it would be interesting to compare this memorial to McCann's memorial of the war through his story. You also see the immensity of the death that happened during this war that you don't get from Wood.

Voice in Everything in This Country Must

I was interested in the voice McCann writes in in his story Everything in This Country Must. I thought it sounded eloquent yet strangely childish. It added a surreal quality that draws the reader into the story more so than if it had been written in a straight, matter of fact tone. One thing I noticed in particular about the writing was the use of long, run on sentences with lots of conjunctions. I thought this gave a feeling of immensity, as if the story is too big to fit into neat, organized sentences. Though the straight facts of the story are not all that impressive, the emotional toll that it takes on the narrator and her father is significant. We see this not just in the description of the characters but through the language and the writing. Not everything the narrator writes makes perfect sense, and that combined with the long sentences reminds one of the ramblings of a disillusioned, shellshocked soldier.
This brought up the question to me of who is telling this story. Is it from the perspective of the girl as a fifteen year old, or an adult looking back on her past. I couldn't come to any conclusion, but I was leaning towards the former. The voice seems traumatized, and naive yet perceptive. It seems to be written in a burst of inspiration. Yet it is hard to imagine a fifteen year old poetic enough to write something like, "oh what a small sky for so much rain."

http://www.colummccann.com/interviews/everything.htm

This is an interview with Colum McCann about the writing of Everything in This Country Must. I found it interesting how he describes his writing process and how it relates to the particular voice.

Inevitability of Death

I found the ending of Persepolis interesting. The author manages to escape her war torn home country, and the oppression and violence that she grew up surrounded by. Though her departure is bittersweet, one would expect an ending pointing towards hope for a better future outside of Iran. Yet the ending illustration shows Marji looking back, pressed against the glass partition that separates her from her parents. Her father looks grave, his face dark, as he carries his seemingly unconscious wife.
In the pages leading up to the end I did not expect such a dark ending. But if you follow the patterns of the book it makes sense. Taher sends his son to Holland, and though his son remains safe, Taher tragically dies without ever seeing him again. Satrapi focuses on the death of the father rather than the survival of the son. She grows up in a country that mourns the dead from the war twice a day, and embellishes their funerals and glorifies them as "martyrs." And despite her efforts to "think only of life" (95), I believe that Satrapi falls into the same belief as most of those in Iran- that the inevitability of death prevails over the continuity of life. This belief erases all hope for the future. This helps to explain the unusually dark ending of Persepolis. Though a brighter opportunity awaits Marji, all she can do is look back and mourn the life she thinks she is losing.

http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-Ra-Z/Satrapi-Marjane.html

After reading this book, I thought it would be interesting to see what Satrapi did after leaving Iran. As it turns out, she returned to Iran at the age of eighteen.

Prison Culture in Persepolis and Iran Today

There is a lot about prisons and political prisoners in Persepolis. Many opponents of the revolution were arrested in the years following the Iranian Revolution, and the number of prisoners executed increased dramatically from the years under the Shah. On pages 50 and 51 of Persepolis two men describe being tortured in prison: being whipped, having fingernails extracted, burned with an iron, and one man eventually being cut into pieces.
I did some research and apparently not much has changed in the prison system. In 2009 Iran's police chief admitted that people who were arrested for demonstrating after the presidential election were tortured in prison. The Kahrizak detention center in Tehran has been subject of much speculation and was closed after this incident. There were many stories of young prisoners being raped while imprisoned after the demonstrations, and human rights groups say that at least three prisoners have died at Kahrizak after being subject to torture.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/09/iran-protesters-torture-election

Philosophy of Resignation

I thought it was interesting how Satrapi mentions on page 94 the "philosophy of resignation." I researched this a little more and came across an interview with a National Geographic reporter who wrote an article on Iran. She also used the phrase "philosophy of resignation," actually when talking about how people drive so recklessly in Iran and how dangerous the roads were. People drive at high speeds down the wrong side of the road, and mothers walk into streets holding their children by the hand. She attributed this behavior to this philosophy of resignation, the belief that everything is in the hands of Allah, and one can only expect to suffer on earth and gain paradise after death. Perhaps this is why in Persepolis the government puts so much emphasis on mourning the war "martyrs." Maybe this is a way to prove to themselves that resignation is the right path, that life is only pain and death and all that can be hoped for is the afterlife, filled with "food, women, and houses made of gold and diamonds." (persepolis page 100)

http://www.persianmirror.com/Article_det.cfm?id=2170&getArticleCategory=41&getArticleSubCategory=1

Barriers & Desensitization

"I see their dark forms, their beards move in the wind. I know nothing of them except that they are prisoners; and that is exactly what troubles me. Their life is obscure and guiltless; if I could know more of them, what their names are, how they live, what they are waiting for, what their burdens are, then my emotions would have an object and might become sympathy... A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends." (p. 193-194)

I though this passage on the Russian prisoners gave insight into both the experience of a soldier and the aim of the novel as a whole. As a soldier, men are classified into allies and enemies. But it is apparent that these Russian enemies are simply soldiers like the Germans, "just as kindly as our own peasants in Friesland." (p. 190) Yet these classifications, to Paul arbitrary, are held up by barriers, both physical (the fence) and non-physical (language, self-preservation/greed). It is harder to shoot at a man with a name and a background than it is to shoot at a "dark form" whom you know nothing about.

The following link is to an article that talks about how the dehumanization of people makes war more publicly acceptable.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1442

http://publicintelligence.net/the-u-s-militarys-video-game-training/
This link is to an article about the use of video games and virtual reality in military training exercises. Such training is controversial, as some argue that one of the effects is desensitization to violence, making it easier for soldiers to kill.

Obviously dehumanization and desensitization are preferable for those who wish to promote war. But to those of us who believe that war is hell, it is necessary to get past the barriers that prevent us from knowing the true story, which I believe is part of the purpose of this novel.