Using Persepolis in a Women's Studies Course

PART 3 OF 3

Friends, I've been handed a challenge by the Diversity Committee of a
retirement community.  Each year they choose a text on a
diversity-related topic to recommend to residents and hold discussions
related to that text. The committee is leaning toward Persepolis, but
it's a controversial choice for two main reasons: the format and the
"vulgarity." So they want to offer an alternative and/or companion
text--either fiction or nonfiction.  The criteria are a little
vague--but they want it to be about an American woman emerging from
poverty, and they want it to convey an uplifting message. My first
thoughts would have been rejected immediately by the committee.  The
readership is very largely white; there are also a few Japanese
Americans.  They're well educated, with class status ranging from
middle-middle on up, and the average age probably around 80. The
overall conservatism of the group is mitigated by the presence of
quite a few Quakers, most of whom have spent a lifetime engaged in
peace and justice activism.  So I'm looking for suggestions!  Can you
think of any American narratives, fiction or nonfiction, about women
emerging from difficulty that might challenge but not offend readers
in this community, and would be interesting to pair with Persepolis?

Thanks,Janet Gray
gray  AT  tcnj.edu 
The College of New Jersey

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska

Brown Girl, Brownstones Paule Marshall
-----
Dr. Nan Bauer-Maglin
Professor Emerita
The City University of New York
nbauer-maglin  AT  gc.cuny.edu

Hi Janet

I wonder if Wilma Mankiller's autobiography would work?  I think it's
actually quite tame (given what she COULD have said) and certainly
inspirational.

Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (w/Michael Wallis), St. Martin's.

Best of luck -- fun "assignment"!

Barb

Barbara Gurr
University of Connecticut
Department of Sociology

Since Persepolis is a graphic novel, maybe you could try Fun House by
Alison Bechdel.  It was a national book award finalist... and while it
does deal with homosexuality, it is also a coming-of-age story with a
US setting that might be familiar to many of these women (?)  

JoAnn Castagna

Or Lynda Barry's work--hardly upbeat, but also graphic novel and comic
stuff by a woman of color dealing with growing up in a culture not
designed for her longings and interests.  And as a bonus, she's bi!

There's actually an article on Barry and Satrapi that I've taught on
women's and gender studies undergrads before to some success:  Theresa M.
Tensuan, "Comic Visions and Revisions in the Work of Lynda Barry and
Marjane Satrapi," Modern Fiction Studies 52, no. 4 (2006): 947-964

Best,
Don

Don Romesburg, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Women's and Gender Studies
Sonoma State University
romesbur  AT  sonoma.edu

"The House on Mango Street"; "Bastard Out of Carolina"

Say hello to my sister Quakers for me.


Dr. Nancy Whitt
Professor of English
328 DivN
nmwhitt  AT  samford.edu           

Hi Janet,
What about Mine Okubo's graphic novel from the 1940s (originally), with a
story told from the perspective of a young girl in the Japanese Internment
camps?
http://www.amazon.com/Citizen-13660-Mine-Okubo/dp/0295959894
Considering your demographic, this might be just the thing!
best,
Kellie Holzer

Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark. Terrific, under-rated novel, and
centrally about 'diversity' and a girl then woman emerging from
various kinds of difficulty. It's interestingly non-predictable, too -
Thea is eccentric but she's far from entirely misunderstood or alien.

opheliabenson  AT  msn.com

Ophelia Benson, Editor Butterflies and Wheels www.butterfliesandwheels.com 

Solar Storms, by Linda Hogan, would do well. A Native American Author
writes about a Native American's search for her roots, the truth of
her abused childhood, and the path her life should take.  She is
taught and guided by older women.

Virginia Bemis
Associate Professor of English
Ashland University
Ashland, Ohio

If you're looking for one of these visual novels I suggest you make
sure your audience, 80yrs old plus, can actually read them.  I can't
read any of these anymore, although I used to, because they are too
small for what I can read now.  My mom couldn't have begun to read
them.  You need a magnifying glass of some sort to read them.  There's
a big problem with assigning work that don't work for the low vision
population.  Susan
 
Huddis  AT  msn.com

Susan Koppelman 
www.SusanKoppelman.com 

The Short Stories of Fannie Hurst "The Strange History of Suzanne
laFleshe" and other stories of Women and Fatness "Women in the Trees:"
U.S. Women's Short Stories about Battering and Resistance, 1839-1994
Between Mothers and Daughters: Stories Across a Generation
http://www.feministpress.org

Hi all,

Below, with thanks to all who responded, is a list of recommendations
I received in response to my inquiry about a text to be paired with
Persepolis for readers in a senior community.  I'm sorry to say that I
deleted some of the ideas before thinking of posting it to
WMST-L--these were ideas that didn't fit the criteria I was given by
the community's Diversity Committee. Several people recommended some
fascinating-looking graphic novels...I didn't pass on these
recommendations, because one reason the committee was looking for an
alternative was that they found the graphic novel format to be
problematic for their readership, as Susan Koppelman indicated in her
message to the list.  I've cut down on the annotation of the list for
brevity.

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club explores the tender and
tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters
know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their
earlier never-spoken of lives in China. The mothers want love and
obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the
daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a
novel for mother, daughters, and those that love them.  (Amazon) 

Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1993)
When Naomi was a young child living in Vancouver, British Columbia,
her mother left to visit relatives in Japan. Soon after, the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor. Naomi's mother was not allowed to return and
Naomi's family was "relocated" by the Canadian government. When Obasan
begins, Naomi is thirty-five, a woman determined to ignore her
past. But the death of the man who helped raise her and her aunt's who
refusal to forgive the Canadian government force Naomi to remember.
(Amazon)

Sky Lee's Disappearing Moon CafT
Lee's first novel traces generations of a Chinese Canadian family and
their ties to (and clashes with) one another, their culture, and their
land in China and North America.

Gloria Naylor - Mama Day
A young black couple meet in New York and fall in love. Ophelia
("Cocoa") is from Willow Island, off the coast of South Carolina and
Georgia but part of neither state, and George is an orphan who was
born and raised in New York. Every August, Cocoa visits her
grandmother Abigail and great-aunt Miranda ("Mama Day") back home. The
lure of New York and the magic of home and Mama Day's folk medicines
and mystical powers pull at the couple and bring about unforeseen, yet
utterly believable, changes in them and their relationship.

Brother, I'm Dying, by Edwidge Danticat, is a
powerful memoir of a Haitian family struggling to make it in US and Haiti and
in between.  (Danticat is a current recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award.)

Sheherazade Goes West, by Fatima Mernissi, would be interestingly
paired with Persepolis because it will allow your readers to think
about what it means for someone to dive into our culture and see it
with the distance of another culture.

In the Time of Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez, is an inspiring story of
how four sisters responded to the Dominican dictator Trujillo and it
is therefore easily paired with Persepolis.  It is also a great read,
and would be so wonderful for the age group.

Red Azalea, by Anchee Min, is an amazing autobiography of a woman who
came of age during the Mao revolution, and she eventually escapes to
America.

Marilynne Robinson's novel Housekeeping Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel
and Dimed Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grown-Ups or Mrs. Bridge 

Solar Storms, by Linda Hogan, would do well. A Native American author writes
about a Native American girl's search for her roots, the truth of her
abused childhood, and the path her life should take.  She is taught
and guided by older women.

Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark. Terrific, under-rated novel, and
centrally about 'diversity' and a girl then woman emerging from
various kinds of difficulty. It's interestingly non-predictable, too -
Thea is eccentric but she's far from entirely misunderstood or alien.

Mine Okubo's graphic novel Citizen 13660 from the 1940s (originally),
with a story told from the perspective of a young girl in the Japanese
Internment camps.

Sandra Cisneros, "The House on Mango Street"; Esperanza Cordero, a
girl coming of age in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, uses poems and
stories to express thoughts and emotions about her oppressive
environment.

Dorothy Allison, "Bastard Out of Carolina" - Set in the rural South,
this tale centers around the Boatwright family, a proud and closeknit
clan known for their drinking, fighting, and womanizing. In this first
novel, Allison creates a rich sense of family and portrays the
psychology of a sexually abused child with sensitivity and insight.

Wilma Mankiller, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (w/Michael Wallis),
St. Martin's.  Since 1985 Wilma Mankiller has been Principal Chief of the
Cherokee Nation, the first woman to hold this post in a major
tribe. Her work in rural development, especially the Bell Project in
Oklahoma, has received national acclaim.  In this inspiring story,
Mankiller offers herself as a valuable role model--for women as well
as Native Americans.

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska. This masterwork of American immigrant
literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and
tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an
Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of
Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and
self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully
redesigned page for page with the previous editions, Bread Givers is
an essential historical work with enduring relevance.

Brown Girl, Brownstones Paule Marshall. First novel by Paule Marshall,
originally published in 1959. Somewhat autobiographical, this
groundbreaking work describes the coming of age of Selina Boyce, a
Caribbean-American girl in New York City in the mid-20th
century. Although the book did not gain widespread recognition until
it was reprinted in 1981, it was initially noted for its expressive
dialogue

Cane River by Lalita Tademy
Lalita Tademy had always been fascinated by stories of her
great-grandmother Emily -- a strikingly beautiful, high-spirited woman
who had stared down adversity. As she set out to research her family's
history, she discovered astonishing truths about her ancestors --
proud and fiercely determined women born into slavery. The quest to
understand the realities of their lives took her back to an isolated,
close-knit community along a river in central Louisiana, where white
plantation owners, free people of color, and slaves once coexisted in
convoluted and often non-stereotypical ways. To her surprise, Tademy
found herself walking away from a coveted job in Silicon Valley to
tell the stories of the remarkable women of her past. The result is a
compelling, heartfelt, and sweeping American saga, Cane River.

Open House by Elizabeth Berg
In this superb novel by the beloved author
of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing
Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up
her house and her heart.

Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Icy Sparks is the sad, funny and transcendent tale of a young girl
growing up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky during the
1950's. Gwyn Hyman Rubio's beautifully written first novel revolves
around Icy Sparks, an unforgettable heroine in the tradition of Scout
in To Kill a Mockingbird or Will Treed in Cold Sassy Tree. At the age
of ten, Icy, a bright, curious child orphaned as a baby but raised by
adoring grandparents, begins to have strange experiences. Try as she
might, her "secrets" -- verbal croaks, groans, and physical spasms --
keep afflicting her. As an adult, she will find out she has Tourette's
Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, but for years her behavior is
the source of mystery, confusion, and deep humiliation.

Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England
unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated
from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with
extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep
secret that can never be revealed.