by Lauren Wrenn
age 12

The white blanket
melts away.
Hear the flowers
moaning.

Waking up
Spring sees
the birds come back.

Warm is here again.

This is a very important question that I often ask people around me. Sure it's nice to get to know someone a little better, as shown by their choice of books. But really, I ask because I'm selfish. BECAUSE I always need something to read. And I like to go to people whose taste I trust. Just a few months ago, Audra gave me a good recommendation: Disgrace by JM Coetzee. Bryon and Deb once made me read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. All good recommendations!

And to tell you the truth, I really like to push my own agenda, too. I mean, I like to get people to read my favorite books. I made Bryon read The Poisonwood Bible and he got sucked into it. (Audra, Deb, Amy, what about you? I thought we all were going to bond over this book.)

Well, I just found a new way to get book suggestions and push, I mean recommend my own. It's goodreads.com, where all types of readers list, review, and recommend books. I feel that my reading possibilities have broadened more than I could ever think. And I get to count all the books I've read.

So far, I'm up to 140 that I remember. Here's to many more!

SATRAPI: Well all of those things. But I believe there is no culture clash between east and west. If people are educated, they have culture, and if they are open minded, no matter where they come from, then there is no clash. The clash comes from ignorance. Many people say that I made it clear in this book that it is very anti-theology. And I say, 'no, it is not anti-theology, it’s anti-repression.' That was how [this book] started. That was what I was most focused on, remembering. Remembering how it feels to when you are 6 yrs old, 10 years old going through that.

SATRAPI: Absolutely. Education is everything. I really believe that it is a weapon of mass construction. If you want to build something it has to go through education. Education opens your mind. Education makes you understand that the other one is exactly like you.

SATRAPI: Yes! You realize how similar we are.

SATRAPI: No matter what the government is, it doesn't stop people from thinking. Being in a free place doesn't necessarily make you free in your mind, either. Plus the fact that we knew we were living in a dictatorship opened our eyes even more.

SATRAPI: It makes us a schizophrenic people because we have to have behavior outside, but inside we are the same. And you have to find ways to transcend your situation. That's why I believe in human beings, because no matter what they do to us, I think, in your mind, if you are free, if you have a brain and you use it, than you cannot take any kind of [nonsense]. I consider everybody who is against repression my friends. No matter where they come from. They are my people; they are my nation. My nation is full of people who think clearly with the brain and with emotion.

READ: Our readers are American students in middle school. They are adolescents,and they, too, can relate to the themes in Persepolis.

SATRAPI: Right. The nation of brains.

SATRAPI: Well, it's not really a documentary about my life. It is based on my experiences, but it is not all true. For example, there is a scene in the book and the movie where extremists come and kill our neighbor. This thing happened, but not when I was 12. It happened when I was 18, and when I came back from Austria. But for narrative reasons, I wanted to my coming back from Austria to be the end of the war because I didn’t want to restart the war. In storytelling, it’s very important to know where to put the events. But when you work this way, even my own character becomes fictional to myself. Its from my own experiences and to convey my own feelings. The reality itself doesn’t interest me so much. The impression it has on the reader, the feeling, this is much more important.

SATRAPI: I have been thinking about that. I never think about it when I work, but now that I look back. It is like a baby growing up in a baby. It doesn't have first one eye, then one arm and the one leg, the other leg. All of them grow up at the same time. Once in a while I can start writing, but always have the drawing in mind, or I draw, but still I have the text in mind, but always it happens at the same time.

SATRAPI: Oh my poor parents! Putting themselves in danger for two stupid posters. They could have just told me [no], but they did understand how important it was to have these posters. Like all the other adolescents in the world, we loved pop music, but also, since our country was cut off from the rest of the world, this was a way to have the feeling that we were connected to the rest.

SATRAPI: Oh yes, they did so. My parents say that your kid doesn't belong to you, so if you love your kid, you let them go. That's what they did. They were very brave, I think.

By Jessica Confer

Your smile
is so sweet
you put tons of smiles upon my face
when i see your smile ,my eyes open so wide
i know those smiles of yours will never tell a lie
i know those smiles will always tell the truth
When i see your smile i just go wild

Your smile
just makes me happy
and it will never fade away
it'll never die
your smiles will never get old
i get excited when i see that smile
they put me in a mood

Everytime i see your smile i just lighten up so bright
and i just what to laugh
they just brighten up my day
your smile is just so beautiful
and amazing to me

Your smile
Your smile gets bigger everyday
i hope your smile stays permanently
just like how it is now
i hope your smile never wears away
your smile is so deep
just like mine

Ethics and factuality are the time-honored pillars of the autobiography and memoir genre. Yet in the past two years three identity scandals have rocked the book publishing world. These three authors have lost their credibility and made their publishers look lazy and unethical as well. James Frey, J.T. Leroy, and most recently Margaret Seltzer are the authors of books describing lives they never lead. Each of them published celebrated, successful books, all of which were marketed as autobiographical, or containing autobiographical content. The reading public was fascinated by the drama and resilience of individuals who lived extraordinarily difficult lives.

In 2003, James Frey became famous for publishing a memoir entitled A Million Little Pieces. The memoir detailed his tumultuous battle with addiction. In his memoir he recounts his drug and alcohol problems and his difficult journey toward rehabilitation. It was wildly successful. But in 2006, a public documents website called The Smoking Gun discovered that several of the events described in the book were largely embellished or made up entirely. One particular chapter describes a nasty run in with the law, which resulted in his spending 87 days in jail. In fact, The Smoking Gun found that he had only been in jail for a few hours, and that most of the incident was made up. His publishers, Doubleday and Anchor books, initially backed up the author, but eventually they were confronted with too much evidence that he was lying. Frey defended himself by saying that all memoirists embellish events for literary effects, but his readership felt unquestionably duped. 

Another notorious literary hoax is that of JT Leroy. Leroy was a young male novelist whose persona and personal history deeply influenced his writing. His career began in 1996, when he was 16, and he became most famous for the 1999 novel The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. Leroy was known as an extremely talented youth who had lived a horrifying childhood, much of which was detailed in the novel. Leroy had made only a few public appearances, and when he did so disguised himself in a wig, hat, and sunglasses. He hid under tables at his own book signings due to shyness. After a series of questionable responses from Leroy during interviews, it was discovered in 2006 that JT Leroy was actually a pen name for a writer named Laura Albert. The character who had been interviewed for so many years was actually played by her friend, Savannah Knoop. Although Leroy never officially published a memoir, most readers believed his stories contained largely autobiographical content. 

Most recently, Love and Consequences, a memoir of one woman's experiences growing up in gang-infested south central Los Angeles, has proven to be fiction. The author, Margaret Seltzer, who posed as an impoverished gang member, who had been moved from foster home to foster home, is actually from an intact family from an affluent part of LA. It is apparent that her publisher, Penguin Books, did insufficient fact checking on her sources. At the same time, she created several alibis suggesting that she was who she claimed to be. Seltzer’s true story is still unraveling, but what is clear is that her real identity is wholly unrelated to the person represented in her memoir. 

"Reader beware" appears to be the growing trend in the memoir world. Writers strive to publish readable, thrilling books, and publishers seek to print the stories they know will sell. But is it at the cost of the reader's trust? In a world of Wikipedia and reality TV, the lines between fact and fiction blur together. We seek entertainment and we seek the truth. Now both are being marketed to us as a single product in an unprecented way, making our cultural intake into a chillingly realistic dream.