In the 1970s a great power struggle began in Iran, leading to a profusion of civil unrest and mass emigration. In 1941, Iranian monarch Reza Shah was removed from power by the United States and replaced by his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who westernized the highly conservative and religious nation. He continued to implement the Westernized laws established by his father, known to “discourage democratic political expression in the public sphere” and condemn Islamic fundamentalism (Khosrokhavar 3). Iran's largely conservative citizens protested the alterations of multiple movements in response to Westernization, financial failures, and the belief that the Shah was controlled by Western powers for control over Iran's vast oil supply. In January 1979, the Shah went into exile in Egypt and the devout Muslim leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, assumed power, reinstalling strict Islamic law; “The Constitution allows all laws to be reviewed […] by an Assembly of Experts, which is dominated by conservative clerics” (Khatami 122). In 1980, Iraqi troops invaded Iran in hopes of capturing the oil-rich country amid revolutionary unrest, further contributing to Iranian emigration to European countries. The Iran-Iraq War continued until 1988. The mass exodus resulted in “forced dispersal, immigration, displacement, and the creation of reconfigured transnational communities,” now known as the Iranian diaspora (Agnew 19). This abrupt uprooting of a citizen's identity and physical connection to their homeland leads to a conflicted sense of identity and belonging in individuals caught up in the sudden transition. As a member of the Iranian diaspora, Marjane Satrapi has endured many h...... middle of paper ......2010. No. page Print.Parsa,Misagh. Social origins of the Iranian revolution. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989. Print. Safizadeh, Fereydoun, Persis M. Karim, and Mohammad M. Khorrami. A World Between: Poems, Stories, and Essays by Iranian Americans. New York: George Braziller, 1999. Print.Satrapi, Marjane. "On the writing of Persepolis.". Pantheon Graphic Novels 1 (2005). Satrapi, Marjane and Marjane Satrapi. The complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon, 2007.Print.Salehi, M.M. Insurrection through Culture and Religion: Iran's Islamic Revolution. NewYork: Praeger, 1988. Print.Diaz 13Shavarini, Mitra K. Desert Roots: Journey of an Iranian Immigrant Family. El Paso, TX: LFBScholarly Pub., 2012. Print.Talebi, Shahla, and Sūdābah Ardavān. Ghosts of the Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Captivity in Iran. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2011. Print.