These three comic/graphic novels were all excellent stories and made understanding lenses of history easier through the graphics. I have not read many graphic novels, and I don’t think I will continue to read many. It was quite difficult to read them for more than 30 minutes because the words and pictures were overstimulating, but I also don’t like subtitles cause they distract my focus. I appreciate that we were encouraged to try reading graphic novels/comic books, and the ones we read each were so different from each other.

Persepolis is a book I have read three times now, and each time I learn something different. I read it once in high school, once in a women’s studies class, and now again in popular culture studies. The book humanizes Islamic culture, as well as shows many Americans that people from the middle east are not the negative images that our media portrays them as. By using the comic book style to convey her story, it has been accessible to many levels of readers. Through the translation from French to English, Persepolis has reached millions of readers, and has allowed them to see portions of what life was like growing up in Iran during this war. My favorite part of the book is when she shows how punk culture and wearing denim jackets was a big trend in Iran despite the strict rules that ban such much and memorabilia.

The book March #3 was an inspiring story of activism, and persistence through injustice by the legal system. I had wished the book could have had trigger warnings or have stated that there was explicit violence shown and explained. I think that more people should be taught how the Civil Rights movement actually went. Most white Americans love to quite Martin Luther King, and talk about how his nonviolence was so powerful. However, often white folks believe that MLK’s nonviolence was not disruptive, yet in reality, disruptive and attention grabbing is exactly what it was. Black Lives Matter is the modern-day MLK style movement, and more people should see that and not be confused by those people suggesting MLK would not be proud of BLM activist. March #3 did an amazing job at showing us the women that were involved in the organizing and activism. Lewis was honorable when including the scene where the black women stood up for themselves and stated that the men did not treat them with equal respect in the movement.

The Unwanted was a difficult story to read, especially knowing that so many people have become refugees due to war in recent years. This story displayed the racist views of Maltanese people, and how their xenophobia effected the lives of refugee in Malta. It is unfortunate that people use the economy as an excuse to not help people in need like refugees. The use of picture of the Maltanese people was powerful, mostly because the photos helped show the anger, they felt by the refugees entering ‘their’ country.

I am excited to read the comic books for next week, especially because they are shorter than graphic novels we read for this week. The short the story, the more time I can spend reading it and absorbing all the lays of the comic.

In our class discussion on Persepolis, we talked about the use of black and white coloring. The graphic novel used solid black ink on white paper, with no shading. The people were not defined and realistic, rather more cartoonish. I found that this made the story easier to relate to and also allowed for the author to break the rule of reality. Like the scene where god comes and talks to her. The graphic format allows these scenes to flow with the other scenes more easily than if the graphics were more realistic. While discussing March #3, many of us were shocked by the histories that are not main stream. A few people stated that they wanted to read the first and second book of the series after reading the third book. This book used black, white, and grey shading which allowed for more distinctive graphics. While the faces were not too defined, the grey shading allowed for the reader to identify which person was being talked about. Many people were talked about in this book, which we thought was why the author used grey coloring instead of just black and white like Persepolis.