Memoir
Questions
Although set in the years surrounding events of 1979, Satrapi chose to name her work "Persepolis" after the ancient Persian empire. How is this title appropriate (or not) to the story of a girl growing up near the end of the 20th century?
What is a national or historical event that has intersected with your personal life? Did it change your life? How?
In Persepolis Satrapi tells many people's stories besides her own, incorporating her mother's memories, Anoosh's story of Uncle Fereydoon, and others. What is the value of storytelling?
Books
Asayesh, Gelareh. Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. E184.I5 A8 1999
Bahrampour, Tara. To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. E184.I5 B35 1999
Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America. New York: Random House, 2004. E184.I5 D86 2004
Lashgari, Deirdre. Violence, Silence and Anger: Women's Writing as Transgression. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. PN471 .V56 1995
Moaveni, Azadeh. Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran. New York: Public Affairs, 2005.E184.I5 M63 2005
Nafizi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. New York: Random House, 2008. PE64.N34A3 2003
WEB RESOURCES
Bartkevicius, Jocelyn, et al. "Roundtable Excerpt--'The Person to Whom Things Happened': Meditations on the Tradition of Memoir."Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. http://msupress.msu.edu/journals/fg/roundtable.html
"Memoir." The University of New Mexico Teachers Institute. 2006.http://www.unm.edu/~abqteach/ti/resources/2006/Memoir.htm
Myers, Linda Joy. "Passionate Memoir Writing." National Association of Memoir Writers. http://www.namw.org/recommended-reading/passionate-memoir-writing/
"Recommended Reads: Art of the Memoir." Perkins School for the Blind. http://www.perkins.org/btbl/catalogs/memoir.html
Smith, Liberty. "Reader's Advisory - Problem Memoir." EngagedIntellectual.org. Apr. 25, 2006http://home.southernct.edu/~smithl14/main/reader'sadvisory.html
Zinsser, William. "How to Write a Memoir." The American Scholar 75.2 (Spring 2006)http://www.theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/