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 enforce the Westernized laws established by his father, known to "discourage democratic political expression in the public sphere" and condemned Islamic fundamentalism (Khosrokhavar 3). Iranian citizens, largely conservative, have protested changes in multiple movements in response to Westernization, financial failures and the belief that the Shah was controlled by Western powers for control of vast oil reserves from Iran. In January 1979, the Shah went into exile in Egypt and devoted Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini took power, restoring strict Islamic law: "The Constitution allows all laws to be revised [...] by an Assembly of experts, dominated by conservative ecclesiastics” (Khatami 122). In 1980, Iraqi troops invaded Iran in hopes of seizing the oil-rich country amid revolutionary turmoil, contributing to Iranian emigration to European countries. The Iran-Iraq War continued until 1988. The massexodus resulted in "forced dispersal, immigration, displacement, and the establishment of reconfigured transnational communities", today known as the Iranian diaspora ( Agnew 19). Such a brutal uprooting of a citizen's identity and physical connection to their homeland. leads to a conflicting sense of identity and belonging among individuals involved in this sudden transition. As a member of the Iranian diaspora, Marjane Satrapi endured many hours...... middle of paper ......2010. N. pag. 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, Short 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, MM Insurgency 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, Texas: LFBScholarly Pub., 2012. Print. Talebi, Shahla and Sūdābah Ardavān. Ghosts of the Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2011. Print.