7/18 Readings

Questions
This week's readings were A.D and an interview with Marjane Satrapi. A.D. is a graphic novel about Hurricane Katrina and its effects before, during and after it hit. The writer uses many different characters throughout this piece of writing. Some of the characters chose to leave for when the hurricane hit, some chose to stay and some felt as if they didn't have a choice. The prologue has two parts. Part one shows only pictures of everything leading up to the hurricane; what the city looked like, what the hurricane looked like as a it was building up to it's massive size. Part two of the prologue is only pictures (just like the first part) except the pictures show the effects during the hurricane and the final panel shows the city after the hurricane. Chapters one through twelve are about people preparing to leave or preparing to stay through the hurricane at the home or wherever they can get to. These people all get to listen to the radio for updates and the ones who left are completely shocked but the ones who stayed are mad because no one is trying to help them. In the end, the people who left know that they won’t be able to make it home for months and the people who did stay and are still alive believe that they are trying to be killed by the government.
In the interview with Marjane Satrapi, she talks about how when she wrote Persepolis it was autobiographical. But even though it’s true to her life, she changed some things. If something bad happened to someone she wasn’t going to put their name in there and draw them exactly as she remembered them. She also talked about how when she started writing it, she didn’t really know what a comic was. Other people who wrote graphic comics as she did grew up reading comics so they already knew what they were doing; she didn’t. She also says how she wants people to be able to read it and see that it's true. She doesn’t want anyone to doubt her writing.

Reaction
After reading A.D, I got a new sense of how the people who went through Hurrican Katrina really felt about it. I now see why some people thought the government was out to kill them. And I see why people stayed there and didn't leave. Most people thought it would just be like the last big hurricane they had. They thought it was just go turn east. No one was expecting what happened next. Reading this showed me that no matter what someone tells you, if you're a stubborn person, you're not going to do what they say. And by that, I mean that Ray Nagin told them to leave New Orleans and some people still didn't leave, even after he called an emergency evactuation.
After reading the interview with Marjane Satrapi, I got a new sense of how she thought. After watching Persepolis and now reading this interview, I understand why she put some of things in the movie that she did. You can tell she's just a regular person who went through something that not a lot of people ever have. I like the fact that in the interview she says that her ex-husband is a nasty person but if you were to ask him, he'd say she was the nasty one. She knows that everyone has their own point of view and even though you think you're right, to someone else, you might not be.

Questions
1. What made the writer of A.D. want to write it?

2. Did he make up most of the things in A.D. or are these victim's actual stories?

3. Does Marjane Satrapi feel any connection to the victims of Hurricane Katrina because of what she went through as a child?