Placentia-Yorba Linda school district discusses ban of Iranian Revolution book
As school districts across the country ban books in classrooms, parents and students in the district worry that the school board will prevent high school students from reading the book. Photo from The Panther Archives
Efforts to ban books are on the rise over the past couple of years. One of those efforts has reached a local Orange County school district.
Parents and students in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District (PYLUSD) are concerned that the school board will ban “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood,” an autobiographical graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi about her personal experience growing up during the Iranian Revolution.
PYLUSD board trustee Leandra Blades believes that teachers should not be allowed to teach the book because of the vulgar words and imagery that the novel displays.
“In this book, they’re calling the women sluts and whores, and people are pissing on people in here — there’s graphic pictures of that,” Blades said at the March 14 board meeting. “So are we saying that this is acceptable behavior to put into our classroom?”
Blades’ criticism of “Persepolis” comes as school board members and lawmakers across the country crack down on the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools by limiting or banning the materials that teachers can use. PYLUSD made local headlines one year ago after becoming the first school board in Orange County to ban CRT.
According to a Reuters article, CRT is the theory that racism — even if it is not intentional — is ingrained into American laws and institutions, challenging the belief that America is in a post-racial society. Conservative politicians, parents and media denounce CRT, arguing that it creates racial divisions between children and makes students uncomfortable.
Freshman political science major Darian Hojreh, who currently serves as the vice president of operations and secretary of the Iranian Student Cultural Organization at Chapman University, read “Persepolis” in his ninth grade English class.
He finds the book important for students to read because it debunks Americans’ stereotypes of Iranians, including those of his classmates. He told The Panther that Americans often stereotype Iranians as terrorists since Iran is in the Middle East.
“After reading Persepolis, when you get to learn about the Iranian Revolution as Marjane Satrapi goes through that revolution process, people really actually get to understand the struggles that Iranians went through, and they actually find a lot of similarities with them because, just like Americans, we went through a lot of struggles and a lot of wars, and they’re just starting to see Iranians go through that too,” Hojreh said.
Hojreh said that PYLUSD’s potential decision to ban “Persepolis” angers him because it is barring high school students from learning about a major historical event in Iran, as well as analyzing the role that the graphic novel’s imagery plays in the story.
“I think it’s really upsetting that in 2023, stuff like this still happens,” Hojreh told The Panther. “I understand that high schools and school districts have to follow a set curriculum because there are standards that they have to teach, but I think that knowledge is not something that should be restricted. We shouldn’t have black-and-white lines drawn when it comes to what books we can and cannot read.”
Nubar Hovsepian, a political science professor at Chapman, told The Panther that Blades’ argument is unjustified.
“That argument is lazy, ethnocentric (and) racist,” Hovsepian said. “People object to it because it covers Iran (and) it covers the Iranian Revolution. In other words, it dignifies the other rather than pisses on the other. These comments… are destroying our structure of education. They’re destroying our love of learning. They’re destroying our ability to think out of the box. In other words, it’s the closing of the American mind that is taking place.”
William O’Mara, a history professor who teaches a course in 20th-century political violence, told The Panther that despite the offensive language in “Persepolis,” it is important to learn about events like the Iranian Revolution to prevent similar ones from happening again.
“The point of (my) class is to get people to recognize the patterns (of political violence) so we can avoid these kinds of atrocities,” O’Mara said. “When we turn away from them, (when) we say, ‘This is too uncomfortable,’ ‘This is too sad’ and ‘I can’t look at these horrible things,' you’re making it more likely that they get repeated.”
Shahrzad Khosrowpour, coordinator of acquisitions and cataloging and librarian at Chapman’s Leatherby Libraries, said that banning books limits students’ breadth of knowledge, creating an uneducated society.
“Removing books has a negative impact because it is a type of censorship,” Khosrowpour sent to The Panther via email. “When there is a censor to certain ideas and beliefs, it creates an ignorant society. It teaches people (and) students that it is okay to ignore a viewpoint because some people don’t agree with it. Reading books is a vessel that can provide representations of marginalized communities. Banning books enforces a narrow way of looking at the world, at different cultures, different religions and the worldviews on social justice and human rights.”
Editor’s note: In a previous version of this story, the quote sent to The Panther from Shahrzad Khosrowpour was originally attributed to a different source — Essraa Nawar, the development librarian and chair of the arts, exhibits and events committee at Chapman’s Leatherby Libraries. We regret the error.
