Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood | Marjane Satrapi | Graphic Novel as One Child's Diary, A...

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood | Marjane Satrapi | Humanizing tale

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Persepolis: The St...

	Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Marjane Satrapi Pantheon, 2004 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 174 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Graphic Novel as One Child's Diary, A Document of History

First, I want to point out that despite the ostensibly grim subject matter the author's sense of humor, at times insouciant and deliciously irreverent, shines through. This is not a book that will depress you. It educates while involving you intimately with the life of Marjane Satrapi and her entire family.

A second note: too many intellectual blowhards dismiss the graphic novel genre as "comics for kids." Yet ever since Art Spiegelman's Maus, we've seen the rise of a richly developed class of historical graphic novels. These works provide the same level of edification and sophistication as any good historical nonfiction book. It's like reading a diary with pictures. The format doesn't detract from the story. It enhances it.

At its most basic, Persepolis is the touching experience of a young girl growing up in Iran during the reign of the Shah and the turbulent aftermath of revolution and Islamic repression. This biography in graphic form is helpful for non-Iranians, and I daresay Americans in particular. I think many Americans (myself included) have a tendency to see their country as the beacon of democracy. Americans tend to act as though we are the only ones who have struggled so valiantly to achieve democratic equality. In contrast, Americans look at other countries struggling towards (but so far failing to achieve) these ideals as backward and superstitious. Persepolis shows a more nuanced reality. Instead of just viewing Iran as a dangerous and backward Islamic country, this memoir illustrates the country's historic battles for freedom and equality. Against the backdrop of imperialism and capitalism without a political voice, we see how Iran has evolved into what it is today. In other words, Persepolis reveals how Iran's current problems stem from more complex roots than simple "Islamofascism".

A final note - please, please, whatever you do, read the book before seeing the film. The book is far superior at developing the characters so you truly care about them. The film smashes both Persepolis I and II together, abbreviating events in such a way that poignant and fascinating encounters are lost.

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Humanizing tale

Persepolis truly humanized what has happened in Iran in the last few years for me. The young girl's tale is precocious and beautifully told by Satrapi. I have not seen the movie but look forward to it.

Can We Understand ?

This book is about a little girl named Marji during the Iranian Revolution (Against the Shah) and the Islamic Revolution ( Against the Islamic Republic). In this book it jumps between periods of time. It starts out after the Iranian Revolution then goes back to the Iranian Revolution. The book then continues staying in the actual order of events. Another thing that is great about Persepolis is how it is a graphic novel memoir.The illustrations really help you visualize the events and lower the reading time.
This book was great. Yet I wonder will I ever be able to understand what Marji went through.This book made me greatful for how we are not oppresed.

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Thank you Marjane Satrapi!

I've been waiting for a book like this to come out for years...something about a modern girl, growing up in Iran, exactly during this time, presented in a unique way. Persepolis is perfect! I love the fact that Satrapi presented her story as a graphic novel--genius! All of her characters, the names, the places, the stories of her family and neighbors and friends, the atrocities, everything reminded me of the same names and stories I grew up with here in the U.S., told to me by my Iranian father and grandmother. I felt like Marji was a relative of mine, and found myself in tears in several places in this book. I read it with my daughter, too, because I thought that it was a good way to introduce her to one aspect of her heritage. She loved it as much as I did! Neither one of us could put it down. I look forward to reading the second volume of her life in Austria.

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Three-dimensional in 2D

I read Persepolis the day it arrived from the bookstore. I sat down with a cup of coffee, some French downtempo, and proceeded to inhale the entire book, cover-to-cover, in a little over two hours. I reread it recently, and this time prefaced my reading with light research. I checked out an interview with Asia Source, took in a few literary reviews, and brushed up on the history of the ancient city of Persepolis, for which the novel's title is based. I tried to piece together the historical context of the book with the artistic process that inspired the author to write such heady material into a graphic novel.

Let me preface by saying I don't think heady material is too good for graphic novels. I've read a few of these in the last few years -- this and Blankets are notable. I find graphic novels take the best of literature and film, combining them for an eloquent, visually striking experience. The use of light and dark as metaphor is the most compelling, and Persepolis uses this often, and best. The stark, unforgiving illustrations appear at once so bleak and in an instant so bright. In one frame the thick black gashes are the dark bags beneath a dead demonstrators vacant eyes, and in the next frame are innocent and child-like, a squiggling and unsteady black line framing a young Marji's equally gleeful, cherub face.

Reading around I noticed this technique, both jarring and "immature", nearly turned off many a potential reader, and risked undermining the heady politics of the book. After reading Satrapi's interview with Asia Source, however, I understand its purpose: these thick swaths of black and white, with nary a shade of grey, are the same black and white rhetoric that shapes world politics and culture. The characters, sometimes barely more than a stick figure, are the caricatures politicians make of their foes. It's only in the subtle changes of facial expressions -- a widening of the eyes, a furrow of the brow -- that we can see some semblance of a human underneath, small but just as telling as the thought bubbles floating above their heads.

The goal to separate and explain "the people and the terrorist/fanatacist/fundamentalist" stereotype is completely, totally achieved within the first two frames of the novel, where we are ambushed by a row of somber-looking little girls draped in black veils, the symbol of oppression and woman-fearing almost universally despised in the West. With one quick glance we could almost assume these are one portrait of one girl repeated over and over, except for the little whisps of bangs peering from beneath each of the shrouds -- some side-swept, some parted down the center, some curly, some straight. Within seconds we are reminded: these are real people, not soundbytes or 3-second video clips looped over and over for the horrified bemusement of Americans.

Still, while Marji is shamelessly out to shatter the assumption that the Iran people or culture is fundamentalist or oppressive, she refuses to paint the people as shining examples of progressive open-minded goodness who have been unfairly categorized for the one or two freedom-hating fundamentalists. There is evidence of even the kindest, gentlest folk adhering to the more oppressive rules of the regime, but not out of a desire to oppress, but out of faith, tradition, and trust for those in power. Again, this is best exemplified only a few pages in, as we see an image of women demonstrating both for and against the veil. On one side the unveiled women stand erect and angular, eyes narrow yet full of furor, championing the freedom to literally let their hair down. Opposite, a row of veiled women "confront" them, their clenched fists slightly limp, their eyes closed and pious, little Madonnas suffering quietly our sins. The former look young and angry, the latter look almost ancient. They were likely a mixture of the two; there were just too many to tell.

In the current political context, these images are the most striking: little clumps of dogged beliefs squaring off against one another, rows of protesters hurling rocks at soldiers, soldiers aiming guns at protesters, massacred demonstrators lying in the streets, ghostly figures pushing the Shah out of frame and out of power, hordes celebrating the exile of the Shah. Seeing this story unfold through of eyes of a young girl is a very singular, educating, and transforming experience, but even riveting notions like war-from-a-child's-vantage need a kick in the goods, and sometimes the blur of faces could snap me back to the reality the first-person singular was beginning to lose. Images of individuals of many ages, classes, and backgrounds uniting, and eventually overthrowing, a centuries-old monarchy gives a sense of urgency, audacity, and realness to this revolution, which was all but excluded from every single history book I ever read throughout almost two decades of schooling. It made it seem as huge as it was, and is, in a way that neither textbooks nor one little girl can quite describe.

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