Hooked on YA books 2015 discussion

Marji is a 10 year old girl living in Iran in the midst of tensions resulted by the Islamic Revolution (1979). She is living in an era of violence and oppression, when every voice is silenced except for the ones who support the new Islamic Republic and its extreme regulations.
In this time period, public schools function as ideological and political institutions aimed to lead Iranian youth towards believing in Islamic Republic as a liberating and justice-serving regime. However, the experiences of many teenagers in their family social worlds are totally different. They have family members executed because of their political beliefs, their parents have friends in prison, and they have heard many stories about violence and abuse in political prisons.
This discrepancy between what they learn in their family social worlds and what they are exposed to in the school social worlds create dilemmas for them which are not easy to negotiate.
The moment of realization about this situation happens for Marji when a teacher in school is talking about how Islamic republic has no political prisoner, and Marjan speaks up about her uncle who has been executed by the Islamic Republic due to political activism (page 144).
The tension created in school is followed by a more emotional tension at home with her Mom (145). Her mother is worried about the consequences of talking about such issues in schools, while Marji thinks she is responsible for talking the truth.

Juxtaposition abounds in this text. Examples of this are the multiple split-panel portraits (pg 6, pg 75), the clash of religious and political ideologies, and the comparison of ideas in youth and ideas in young adulthood.
The split-panel portraits reflect the contrast of our inner vs outer selves and also the division of how we view our own selves in our varied roles. The idea of the protagonist as strongly religious opposes(in her view) her self-perception as a "very modern and avant-garde" young woman. The division of religion and politics is deeply felt and experienced by Marjane, and the visual representation of this rift is very impactful. This idea is carried throughout the text, as Marjane learns about and experiences the struggle to understand the shift from a secular government to an Islamic Republic. The separation of church and state is explored at length and in great detail from the perspective of a young woman who feels this same struggle within herself, and the resulting text encourages reflection about the internalization of these ideological quandaries.
Readers also watch as Marjane grows from a very inquisitive and self-assured child into a still-inquisitive and self-assured adult. While her attitude and self-perception remains somewhat constant, the girl we meet in the first chapters is very different from the young woman who leaves Iran. While there is no direct comparison made in the text, readers can view this progression as a juxtaposition of her attitudes and beliefs at two very different points in her life, one at the beginning of the Revolution and the other after the Revolution has changed her whole world.