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Showing posts from March, 2020

Response on Persepolis

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I like the point of view and the visual language of Persepolis. In Persepolis, the POV is focused on Marjane herself, making her the main character growing up from childhood to adulthood in the times of war. I like it because it is much more impactful and also entertaining to see the effect of war and pressure of society form a young girl's point of view than history books. It reminds me of the feeling of reading "The Diary of Anne Frank". Both characters are telling their story of living in wartime and from oppression by their leaders. Persepolis let me understood a lot about Inequality, and lack of freedom, and especially women's rights at the time period. The strong visual and verbal representation used in the graphic novel is very impactful to me. Visually, I found this panel in page 95 is very impactful. The composition is repetitive, enhancing the fact that every woman is forced to be the same. The mass amount of black used in the image creates a depressi

Response on American Born Chinese

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The first thing I noticed while reading "American Born Chinese" is that the design language is very graphic and easy to read. It is very interesting to read the monkey king's story with this visual style. The version of the "Monkey King" that I used to read as a kid was something like this: The format is called "小人书", which basically is comic strips printed in a palm-sized book. After I read further into "American Born Chinese", I felt like a lot of connections were made between the protagonist's experiences and my own. I was born in China and had my education in a Chinese local school until elementary third grade. Afterward, I was transferred to an international school in which all the teachers and curriculum are in English. A a few years later, I moved to the US. I always had the feeling that I was stuck between the two cultures, In the US, I am unable to understand many aspects of the American pop culture, and In China, I

Response on Maus

I enjoyed reading Maus a lot. I was drawn into it within the first few pages because I found the characterization of the Jews, Nazis into cats and mouses very interesting. It turns the characters into a simple metaphor that helps me understand the social hierarchy and relationships straight away. Maus reminded me a lot of my personal experience with my grandma. Just like the dad in Maus, my grandma has lived through a lot of war and conflicts. She was a child during Japan's invasion of China in WW2, then her family was being persecuted in the Chinese land reform movement, and afterward, she became a nurse at the Korean war. When I was in middle school, I wanted to turn my grandma's story into a novel, so I started asking my grandma about her story. It was funny that I behaved almost exactly like the author of Maus, being impatient when my grandma starts the ramblings about the old days. I felt guilty afterward for interrupting her and the fact that I care about the continua