Persepolis Themes

You might know Iran from that time they stood in the streets chanting death to America. Or that other time they chanted death to America. Or that time Homer Simpson wore an Ayatollah Assaholla t-sh...

Turn on the TV and you'll see numerous shows judging what women wear: Fashion Police, What Not to Wear, countless hours of red carpet footage, Duck Dynasty. Okay, not that last one so much (th...

Teen angst is the same everywhere in the world. Whether teens are growing up in the U.S., Vienna, France, or Iran, they're busy learning about themselves and exploring their identities. They learn...

No matter where you live in the world, you probably know what war is like in some aspect. (Even if you live under a rock somewhere, you must have an Xbox under there with you to play Call of Duty w...

U.S. politics may be dirty, but we'd take mudslinging over bomb-slinging any day. Politics in Iran are a life-or-death situation. While the U.S. has The Daily Show and The Onion to satirize politic...

It's easy to take certain freedoms for granted: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to wear white shoes after Labor Day. Many times, we don't notice our freedoms until they're gone. Thi...

"You have nothing to fear but fear itself" is the biggest lie we've ever heard. Higher up on our Top Ten Scariest Things list, we'd like to add tarantulas, driving in Russia, and living in Iran. Th...

People die every day, claimed by old age, cancer, doing stupid tricks to be the next YouTube sensation, and so on. But in Iran, it seems like there are a lot more ways to die than usual: war, relig...

When an entire country is cast as the enemy, it's easy to forget that the people we are fighting against are people, too, with their own lives, personalities, hopes, careers, and families. In Perse...

Freedom of religion is a wonderful thing. If you've seen our "Freedom and Confinement" theme elsewhere in this section, however, you know that Iran isn't too big on the whole freedom thing. (Confin...

Different people cope with life's trials in different ways—some tackle them head-on, while some retreat into the virtual world of an MMO. Others, and this is the case with Marjane in Persepolis,...