Persepolis the City

Throughout the book, Marjane mentions several times her [and her people's] connection to Persia. To further emphasize this point, she named the book after the capital of Persia in the ancient world. In 1971, Iranians celebrated the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian [Iranian] monarchy by Cyrus the Great. What is interesting is that this idea of a monarchy continued with Iran for thousands of years, and whenever Marjane became old enough to be aware of her surroundings, she recognized the horrors of her government and the people who wanted to change them even though the previous decade had celebrated such a government. However, even when the people got their change, the government seemed to only get worse. Like Persepolis, a foreign invasion practically destroyed the unity of her country, the government, and the educational system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,500_year_celebration_of_Iran%27s_monarchy

Veils Banned in France

In Persepolis, we see how Marji in Iran is forced by Sharia law to wear a veil and how in public she must always be conservative by wearing a veil. Even though this was in 1980, it still applies to many Middle Eastern countries today. However, some western countries have begun to 'fear' the hijab and niqab, especially considering 9/11 and other terrorists attacks. In France, in April it officially banned woman from wearing the niqab. Furthermore, the vast majority of women have been stopped by the police. Yet, two women in the minority, still wearing their niqabs, were fined by the state. Now this has become a huge case in France because of the alleged discrimination in addition to the controversy of whether or not this is also a case of human rights. It is interesting how we see Marji hate wearing the veil, and others like her fighting again that and other aspects of Sharia law yet there are others, who are not forced to wear the veil, consider it be a proud symbol of their religion that is being taken from them [by French law in this particular case].

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/22/niqab-women-fined-french-court

Kosinski Interview

In an interview with the Paris Review, Kosinski says a lot of interesting things that can be applied to The Painted Bird and perhaps help us understand it more. When the interview mentions that many people believe that his stories are autobiographical or at least some form of it, Kosinski gives a kind of roundabout answer. He says that people create "little fictions" and that an event is "a highly compressed dramatic unit that mixes memory and emotion, a structure made to accommodate certain feelings" and if it wasn't for that then art would be "too personal for the artist to create". It is interesting how Kosinski say this, never really confirming or denying how much truth is actually placed into his stories. Are they merely just elaborated emotions from traumatic events or did he create the events in The Painted Bird in such a way that they were more horrible than what really happened to anyone he knew/himself in order to make himself feel as if he got off well?

At one point he talks about he does not measure events as being less brutal and extremely brutal because horrible things can happened regardless if you were in a war or not, it is all a matter of perspective. This causes me to wonder why he made many of the events in the story so horrific. Is he trying to show the grotesque, crude nature of war and its effects for those who aren't directly involved or is he trying to show that no matter whether you're the boy, Ludmila, the farmhand, Ewka, and so on, that the horrors that you experience are no more or no less worse than those experiences of others in and out of the war.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4036/the-art-of-fiction-no-46-jerzy-kosinski

Holocaust Hoax

To many Americans, it's odd to think that the Holocaust didn't exist, considering that we begin learning about it in middle school. However, some people, even countries (such as Iran) believe that the Holocaust was a hoax. I think that The Painted Bird and it's magic realism and horrifically graphic events may lead people to think that the Holocaust didn't actually exist. For many 1st world cultures, the mixed religion conveyed by the book of Christianity and 'traditional' can come off as 'unreal' or 'fabricated'. Additionally, some of the scenes thus far in the book, such as the scene with the miller gouging the farmhand's eyes out with a spoon, are so descriptive and graphic they seem as if they could have only have come from the imagination. However, the 'evidence' that those whom don't believe in the Holocaust seem to be very circumstantial and conspiratorial. I feel as if this is some of the criticism Jerzy Kosinski had to deal with on top of plagiarism and fabrication.

http://www.takeourworldback.com/short/holohoax.htm

Refugees

Throughout almost the entire story, Alepho, Benson, and Benjamin were refugees. Luckily with the assistance of outside, peace-keeping forces they were able to escape their former lives and flee to America. However, even today many people aren't so lucky.

Even though North and South Sudan are now separate, there is still a lot of violence going on. Just like Benson, many Sudanese are fleeing to Ethiopia. Just as the Lost Boys, there are promises of education and a better life, but those seem to be non-existent. Thousands of people had to evacuate their homes in order to just survive but the climate of Ethiopia described to us in the book is fighting against many of these people. Organizations such as the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) are doing their best, but not only do they have the vast quantity of people working against them, but also the 'leaders' controlling the refugees. Although the people in the article below were fortunate enough to be able to move to a safer location, many Sudanese are not so lucky.

http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,SDN,456d621e2,4ea165e52,0.html

Hierarchy

In The Road to Lost Innocence, the issue of rank of class plays a significant part. Somaly says at one point, "People seem to think to think it was normal that i should be beaten, since I was this small black savage, the lowest person in the village." (15). In Cambodia, the main religion is Theravada Buddhism. It is from Buddhism, similar to Hinduism that the Caste System arises. Although religion plays a seemingly minor role in the autobiography, its affects on society are important. Because Somaly is poor, dark, thin, and an orphan, her rank is probably the lowest one could get, thus making her an easy target to be taken advantage of which is why she is taken, enslaved, beaten, sold, raped, sold again to be continued to be raped and beaten. Not only the source of her problems, but the hierarchy in Cambodia makes her feel like "[m]y body was nothing, of no value" (62). Also, in a sense, it made her feel helpless. Especially whenever her grandfather takes her, since he is her elder and he 'took her in', she feels as if she owes him, even though he beats her and sells her. Thus far in the story, she wants to get away, and tries several times but because of her misfortune and her class, she is stuck at the brothel with seemingly no way out.

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/cambodia.html

Perspective

Before whenever we read "A Private Experience" by Chimamanda Adichie, we contemplated whether she contradicted herself from the her speech about the danger of one story. In that story, she only went in depth about the Igbo Christian perspective, which is her own religion. What I found interesting in "Say You're One of Them" Uwem Akpan is actually a Jesuit priest, and not a Hausa Muslim at all. However, one must ask if Akpan's own religion influenced his depiction of Jubril.

It is general knowledge that Muslims are conservative and Jubril makes many conservative statements such as his comments on the Christians tight jeans and short skirts, and his disbelief of Monica standing up to the male policemen. However, not all Muslims practice such a constricted, cut-off lifestyle as Jubril does. Additionally, even though Jubril does not exhibit violent behavior, his Muslim friends do. Again, my knowledge of religions in Nigeria or limited, but I just find it interesting that Akpan would depict Muslims in a violent nature, even though not all of them are. But Christians are not so innocent themselves. On the bus the Christians want to see their fellow Christians destroy the Muslims in the north.

Overall, it is difficult to say whether or not Uwem Akpan's religion skewed the image of Muslims he embodied in Jubril. However, I feel as if Akpan did a much better job than Adichie in trying to tell the story of others.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Author-Uwem-Akpans-Biography

Defense Mechanisms

It's interesting when having read both All Quiet on the Western Front and The Sorrow of War to see how two soldiers have different reactions and trauma from the war. For instance, Paul desperately repressed most thoughts of his past and how things used to be before the war, and even towards the end of the war he doesn't even talk about his future. Additionally, he and his comrades use humor and games to deal with the horrific nature of war that they're constantly surrounded by. On the other hand, Kien constantly tries to relive his past whether it's through his writing and commemoration of battles scenes and the people who lost their lives, or his passionate, loving memories of Phuong before the war. Furthermore, Kien drinks away his sorrows whereas Paul didn't have a problem with alcoholism.

Although both Paul and Kien's reactions to the war were quite different, they both exhibit examples of defense mechanisms. Paul mostly exhibits repression and sublimation in order to cope. Several times in All Quiet, Paul mentions how the jokes he and his friends make may be cruel but they wouldn't be able to handle the war otherwise. As for Kien, he displays attributes of denial in some parts and rationalization. Throughout The Sorrow of War, Kien writes about some of the events he experienced in the war and he will say directly after something along the lines of, "it was so long ago, it seems like it didn't happen at all." Moreover, Kien tries to rationalize why he is still alive and others who he fought with aren't by thinking that he was meant to write about his generation, the 'lost generation'.

Despite Paul and Kien's reactions to war, there is absolutely no doubt that war is a horrific thing with terrible, traumatic consequences physically and mentally.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/15-common-defense-mechanisms/all/1/

Universality and White Women

I found it interesting that in “We Would Like to Inform You”, in the prologue how the pygmy talks to the narrator about this idea of universality and his ‘theory’ of Homo sapiens. Ironically though, he says that he must marry a white woman. What I find interesting about this is that in order to unify he discriminates against Africans and he even says, “Africans are sick”. I feel as if this story parallels the genocide in Rwanda where all of the Hutu feel the need to kill the Tutsi in order to unify Rwanda.

Along the universality, I thought it was interesting that the pygmy had to marry a white woman specifically. Throughout literature it can be observed that white or pale women represent a kind of purity and peaceful nature countering the animalistic nature portrayed by their counter parts. I think that the pygmy specifies a white woman because being surrounded by constant slaughter and chaos he wants to see something beautiful and gentle. Perhaps this also parallels with the genocide in Rwanda now only in that they’re trying to achieve some sort of universality by dividing people, but they are doing so in order to achieve something beautiful.

http://www.whitedressesforwomen.org/a-symbol-of-beauty-and-purity/