Rewrite

Ethics Representation

King

I read the third volume of King at the library. The art was a lovely stark black and white. It was drawn very well and the artist used it to enhance the story about equal rights. Balancing hand drawn images with actual photographs really reminded the reader that this was a historical piece. It was a relief to see black people draw as people and not simians.

The monologues of different people giving their opinion about the king were also an interesting bit of story telling. It almost seemed like a story telling device people would use at a play. They all had different personalities; one even called him a white-lover. They didn’t all speak of King sometimes they spoke of the rights movement itself . This really gave us an idea of the mindset back then which though it was the recent past is drastically different from today.

I’m fond of the way Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t overly glorified. He was a great man but he was still a man not a god.  Seeing King act casual, seing him swear, and seeing him arguing with his wife made him seem more real. His personal life is what we didn’t learn in our high school US History class. The moment when Coretta had to tell her daughter that she couldn’t go to the amusement park (because it was whites only) was heartbreaking. It was such a strong. This little girl didn’t even understand racism, because her parents protected her from it, it didn’t make sense to her. But she had to face that some people not only believe that this little girl was equal with white children but that she shouldn’t even be around white children.

Chicken with Plums

I’ve read Persepolis before and I was looking forward to this book, which wasn’t from her point of view. This book told the story of one of her relatives, Nasser. The wonderful thing about this story is the way that your opinion is constantly changing about Nasser as Marjane reveals more and more information about him through out his story. In the beginning we see Nasser is on his way to buy a new sitar to replace the one his wife broke. He thinks he sees a woman from his past but she doesn’t remember him. The new sitar isn’t good enough, so he decides to lie down and die. At first I was judging this strange man, I didn’t understand why he’d give up on life because his sitar broke. Later we realize that the sitar was the only thing that kept him going when he wasn’t allowed to marry the woman he loved. That lover was the woman that didn’t recognize him in the beginning. So in one day he loses sitar, which symbolized his love, and he sees that the woman he loved forgets him. It was such a well put and told story I had to read it twice.

The story also goes beyond Nasser and tells the tale of his children and his wife. I honestly felt bad for his wife. She held the relationship up all by herself. These other stories were entertaining but they did get bizarre. Like the story of Nasser’s son’s daughter who became pregnant without realizing it.