WHAT TO READ AFTER PERSEPOLIS

Disillusioned by the propaganda of Nazi Germany, Sophie Scholl, a young German college student, her brother, and his fellow soldiers formed the White Rose, a group that wrote and distributed anonymous letters criticizing the Nazi regime and calling for action from their fellow German citizens

Major Event: World War II

Tells the true story of one family's desperate struggle to survive the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge seizes power in the capital city of Phnom Penh. Immediately after declaring victory in the war, they set about evacuating the country's major cities with the brutal ruthlessness and disregard for humanity that characterized the regime ultimately responsible for the deaths of one million citizens.

Major Event: Cambodian Genocide

A memoir of artist/author Joel Christian Gill, chronicling his youth and coming of age as a poor Black child in a chaotic southern landscape of rough city streets and foreboding backwoods during the crack cocaine boom of the 1980s. Propelled into a world filled with uncertainty and desperation, young Joel is pushed toward using violence to solve his problems by everyone and everything around him. But fighting doesn't always yield the best results for a confused and sensitive kid who yearns for a better, more fulfilling life than the one he was born into.

Major Event: Crack Cocaine Epidemic of 1980's America

Over 30 years ago, on April 15th 1989, the occupation of Tiananmen Square began. As tens of thousands of students and concerned Chinese citizens took to the streets demanding political reforms, the fate of China's communist system was unknown. When reports of soldiers marching into Beijing to suppress the protests reverberated across Western airwaves, the world didn't know what to expect.

Major Event: Chinese Democracy Movement; Tiananmen Square Massacre

Omar and his younger brother Hassan live in a refugee camp, and when an opportunity for Omar to get an education comes along, he must decide between going to school every day or caring for his nonverbal brother in this intimate and touching portrayal of family and daily life in a refugee camp.

Major Event: Somali Civil War

Redniss’s deep reporting and haunting artwork anchor this mesmerizing human narrative. Oak Flat tells the story of a race-against-time struggle for a swath of American land, which pits one of the poorest communities in the United States against the federal government and two of the world’s largest mining conglomerates. The book follows the fortunes of two families with profound connections to the contested site: the Nosies, an Apache family whose teenage daughter is an activist and leader in the Oak Flat fight, and the Gorhams, a mining family whose patriarch was a sheriff in the lawless early days of Arizona statehood.

Major Event: Oak Flat Conflict

Grass is a powerful antiwar graphic novel, telling the life story of a Korean girl named Okseon Lee who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War―a disputed chapter in twentieth-century Asian history.

Beginning in Lee’s childhood, Grass shows the lead-up to the war from a child’s vulnerable perspective, detailing how one person experienced the Japanese occupation and the widespread suffering it entailed for ordinary Koreans. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim emphasizes Lee’s strength in overcoming the many forms of adversity she experienced.

Major Event: World War II

Actor, author, and activist George Takei recounts his childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II and the impact the experience had on his later life.

Major Event: World War II; Japanese Internment Camps in America

The graphic novel collaboration and true story of two sisters. Anaële, a writer, leaves for Palestine volunteering in an aid program, swinging between her Palestinian friends and her Israeli friends. Delphine is an artist, left behind in Liège, Belgium. From their different sides of the world, they exchange letters. Green Almonds: Letters from Palestine is a personal look into a complex reality, through the prism of the experience of a young woman writing letters to her sister about her feelings and adventures in the occupied territories. Green Almonds is an intimate story with big implications. A young woman discovers a country, works there, makes friends, lives a love story, and is confronted with the plight of the Palestinians, the violence on a daily basis that we see on our screens and read in our newspapers.

Major Event: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Early morning on Monday, October 9, 2017, wildfires burned through Northern California, resulting in 44 fatalities. In addition, 6,200 homes and 8,900 structures and were destroyed. Author Brian Fies’s firsthand account of this tragic event is an honest, unflinching depiction of his personal experiences, including losing his house and every possession he and his wife had that didn’t fit into the back of their car.

Major Event: California Wildfires

Brigitte Findalky shares memories of her middle class childhood in Iraq touching on cultural practices, the education system, Saddam Hussein's state control, and her family's history as Orthodox Christians in the arab world ... Signs of an oppressive regime permeate a seemingly normal life: magazines arrive edited by customs; the color red is banned after the execution of General Kassim; Baathist militiamen are publicly hanged and school kids are bussed past them to bear witness. As conditions in Mosul worsen over her childhood, Brigitte's father is always hopeful that life in Iraq will return to being secular and prosperous. The family eventually feels compelled to move to Paris, however, where Brigitte finds herself not quite belonging to either culture.

Major Event: 1960's Iraq under Sadaam Hussein

When she learns of her beloved father's fatal car accident, Mapa flies to Manila to attend his funeral. His sudden death sparks childhood memories. Weaving the past with the present, Mapa entertains with stories about religion, pop culture, adolescence, social class and politics, including her experiences of the 1986 People Power Revolution which made headlines around the world. It is a love letter to her parents, family, friends, country of birth, and in the end, perhaps even to herself.

Major Event: 1986 People Power Revolution / EDSA Revolution Philippines

Tony Sandoval was born and raised in northwestern Mexico, where the temptation to cross the border in the US becomes a matter of the heart. Drawn by Love, his urge to visit his American girlfriend can’t wait for the lengthy, frustrating visa process standing in the way of their relationship. So he makes the ultimate romantic gesture: smuggling himself across the border, despite the dangers he’ll face from the heat, coyotes, barbed wire, and – most daunting – the US border patrol…

Major Event: Mexican-US Border