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skumar's picture

Surplus of Images, Shortage of Words

I like that Sarina brought up the dynamic of Book of Salt and Persepolis. I , unlike Sarina, did not throughly enjoy reading the Book of Salt. The language in the novel was alluring, however, nothing else about the book resonated with me.This is because I thought the book was centered too heavily on GertrudeStein and Alice B. Toklas (western icons of feminism) and did not effectively delve into the homosexuality of Binh (an international icon of feminism?).  While Binh served as a narrator, his voice was suppressed. Binh had an entire book, all to himself, and he writes on... GS and ABT?  Then, reading Persepolis I found that there were too many images, too many illustrations of the setting and too little dialouge, too little descriptive and informative words.

To me, reading Persepolis and reading The Book of Salt was like reading "Lifting Belly:" entirely confusing. I think Sarina was the one to mention that she likes to know what the author is trying to convey. In the same fashion, I could not translate what Satrapi and Truong were trying to tell me about feminism. My frustration led me to consider the function and strucutre and not the content. Thus, I did what we did in class with "Lifting Belly;" I attempted to better understand the function.

I intrepreted the surplus of images and shortage of words in  Persepolis to mean that there are several "pictures", or faces, of feminism. Additionally, The lack of self-narration in The Book of Salt demonstrates that international voices do not have a say. Western thought of feminism, western images of feminism (ABT and GS) prevail.   Just a guess. Any thoughts on this?

 

 

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