Fight the Power!
“I hope my book will lead to renewed interest in Persepolis,” says Jarrett Dapier, about Wake Now in the Fire. (Image courtesy of Jarrett Dapier) In 2013, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) suddenly and mysteriously banned Persepolis, the beloved graphic novel about author Marjane Satrapi’s childhood in authoritarian Iran. In Wake Now in the Fire (Ten Speed Graphic, 2026), Jarrett Dapier, ’01 LAS, MS ’15 IS, tells the story of the CPS students who worked to overturn the ban, capturing both the fearlessness of their activism and the insidious nature of censorship.
Why did you want to tell this story? When I was in library school at Illinois, I wrote a paper about the ban and interviewed all the students who were involved, and I was blown away by how passionate and invested they were. They inspired me, and I wanted to bring their story to a wider audience.
How has book censorship changed since you became a librarian? It has exploded. Right now, there’s a real presence of intimidation in libraries. It’s unpredictable and, because so many instances of censorship are perpetrated by one person, without an official policy, the numbers are underreported, and we have no idea how many books are banned in a given year; or why. The Persepolis ban was significant because it was an order that came straight from the CPS leadership. 
What impact do you hope this book will have? I would love for teens who read it to see their emotional lives and the things they struggle with reflected honestly, and to see that they’re capable of doing amazing things to protect their own community. For adults, I’d like them to take away an appreciation of the difference teenagers can make, and to see that if teens can do this, then they should, too.
