Re-writing the History of the Oppressed

This book aims to examine the oppression undergone by female characters in two completely different cultures, the African American culture and the Iranian culture respectively. It attempts to conduct a comparative study between two female characters that belong to two completely dissimilar cultures and compare two different mediums of narratives to explore the forms of oppression experienced by these female characters and their people as well as their constant quest for identity and liberation. The study rests on Frantz Fanon’s and Robert Young’s contributions to post-colonialism and attempts to show postcolonial theory creates intellectual spaces for subalterns to speak for themselves in their own voices and re-write history. The comparative study is conducted between Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) and Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis I (2000) relying on Susan Bassnett’s concept of Plurivocality which voices of the oppressed, in addition to Sara Clark’s concept of “Social Death”.