Molly McGinn

It’s not ironic, it’s sad, really, that I know as little as I do about the intertwining histories of America and Iran. This weekend, feet propped on the theater seat in front me, I took in a different kind of history lesson through the story of a spirited young woman coming of age in Iran (as if puberty wasn’t oppressive enough).

This subtitled, black and white cartoon, Persepolis, brought that history closer to my heart than any newspaper, history book, or lecture series could have. By taking in the story of a precocious, political, young girl, and watching her struggle to come into her own both close and far away from home, I could identify with a world and history that at one time seemed beyond my Beaver Dam, WI hometown comprehension.

If you can’t find the movie locally (Sean and I saw it in a theater this weekend in NYC), you can catch the book, and shorten the distance a little between two vastly different worlds.