A Few Words on Wake Now In The Fire by Jarrett Dapier
Persepolis at the Center of the Fire: What Wake Now in the Fire Taught Me About Books That Refuse to Behave Reza Shirmarz I used to imagine censorship as something loud. A shouting match at a school board meeting. A dramatic scene. A moral panic with a microphone. But Wake Now in the Fire reminded me that in real life censorship is often quiet, so quiet it can hide inside “normal” work. It shows up as an email, a bullet list, a deadline. And the book at the center of this particular storm, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis , is not just a title. It becomes a body that institutions try to move, contain, rename, and “process.” There’s a moment in the novel where the principal’s message is relayed as a set of instructions. You can almost hear the administrative voice trying to sound neutral: go into each school, confirm the book isn’t in the library, confirm it hasn’t been checked out, confirm it isn’t being used, and then collect it, by Friday. No explanation is provided. T...
