Take an Equal Attitude towards Suffered People

I am interested in the sufferings of Iranians which is similar to the sufferings of Chinese people during the Culture Revolution. However, those people and their offsprings are treated unequally.

Therefore, I will create a Twitter page to present my idea. In my opinion, Twitter is a social media which is used by a large number of people around the world irrespective of gender, age and religion and so on. If I put my idea on the Twitter, then many people will pay their attention to it. My idea will be presented in the following.

I love the Persepolis written by Marjane Strapi. From my perspective, this graphic novel is an autographic work of Marjane Strapi, so it is very persuasive. The novel mainly depicts the experience of a little girl called Marji during the Islamic Revolution. At that time, Marji was deprived of freedom and forced to do things she disliked. “We didn’t really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to.” (Satrapi 3)  She was forced to wear the veil. Although in her mind, she dislikes wearing the veil she still has to do so. Besides, she is not allowed to wear fashion clothes like jeans. The same is true with many other Iranians. In a word, all of the things were in strict control of the Iranian government. In fact, from my point of view, I think what happened to Marji is similar to what happened to Chinese people who went through the Culture Revolution (from 1966 to 1976). At that time, colorful clothes were prohibited and pop music was not allowed to be listened to.

There are some biases toward Chinese people because of historical events. The Culture Revolution is a typical one. “Mao’s Party-state drastically fragmented families, moulding socialist subjects though ‘revolution deep down into the soul’.” (Aihe 27) This describes that many families are separated due to the Culture Revolution. As a matter of fact, from the experience of Marji, we can find Chinese people suffered a lot and it is obvious that what they have gone through is not what they want. I think it is not strange that there are ups and downs during the process of a country’s development so long as the country moves forward in a right way in the long run.

However, “By teaching others about Iranians and translating their cultural experiences, she is helping those in the widespread Iranian diaspora be better understood by their host communities and helping to complicate the media-driven negative images of Iran in the West by providing universal (though, importantly, not universalizing) images of humanity.” (Malek 370) This quote describes that Iranian diaspora may be biased in the West. Therefore, Iranians need to show their true image to the world so that they can be understood well and accepted. I think the same is true with Chinese people. Additionally, in terms of people in developed countries like the United States, they should take an equal attitude towards Iranians, Chinese and other people whose experience is similar to Iranians or Chinese. It is not the fault of the citizens who cannot be to blame. 

 

Works Cited

 

Aihe,Wang. “Apolitical Arts, Private Experience, and Alternative Subjectivity in China’s Cultural Revolution.”China Perspective 15.4(2014):27-36.Print.

Malek,Amy.“Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Produciton:A Case Study of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Series.”Iranian Studies 39.3(2006):353-380.Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis.NY:Pantheon,2002.Print.