Cultural Diversity in 'The Story of a Childhood' by Marjane Satrapi

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Reflection
In Persepolis, the Story of a Childhood, Marjane tells the turbulent history of her country,Iran, through her own eyes from childhood to adulthood. The novel is closely linked with Iran’s politics, history and changes in Iranian politics in the late 1970s onwards where there was growing interest in integrating religion in different spheres of life including political Islam. There is rejection of one's own culture and reconciliation with it as well as religious changes within Iran while One World, Many Cultures looks into different cultures and those who experience a foreign culture away from their homelands.
While Persepolis focuses on the experiences of the narrator in Iran and outside the country, One World, Many Cultures is a collection of stories on culture from the writers around the world including those who have immigrated to foreign countries and their quest to maintain their identity. Persepolis is the story of a family and an Iranian person through the eyes of Marjane who is forced by circumstances to live outside the country after the Islamic Revolution, but still has to navigate a new culture and being accepted by people in unfamiliar culture. In Firoozeh Dumas’s story she focuses on the Iranian wedding rituals while married to her non-Iranian husband in the US, and she highlights the need for Americans to understand the Iranians better even as she was accepted in the US (Hirschberg and Hirschberg 120).
Despite the diversity of cultures, religious and traditional traits, there can still be good relations and understandings when there is mutual respect. For instance, Marjane was vulnerable when she first moved to Austria as a teenager, but she was accepted over time the problem for her is being lonely and getting homesick despite having connected with ...