Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

I will always carry with me a love for comic books. As a child I remember waiting for new editions to come out. Over the years I have read fewer and fewer comics, but I will always hold them in my heart. I do like the fact that comic have brought out a while new genre in writing. While growing up I had to hide the fact that I enjoyed comic books from my friends because it was something geeks did. This is no longer the case (well comic books this still might be the case). There is a new genre that stems from the comic book genre: graphic novels. Whereas comic books are usually about some sort of superhero of villain, graphic novels are simply that, novels told through one long, or many shorter comics. While this genre has been out for a while, until this week I had yet to read a graphic novel. Not because I had not wanted to, it was because I had not had the time. However, after reading Persepolis I realize why this is becoming such a popular genre among teens.
I would be very interested to sit down with Marjane Satrapi to discuss how she went about writing Persepolis. One of the parts that I loved so much about the text was the story itself. It is a story that I feel would also be a great novel, so I found myself wondering if she wrote this story before creating a graphic novel out of it. Satrapi does a great job weaving this wonderful story and mixing-in the beautiful graphic artwork. It is a story that I feel many students have not heard, and told through the eyes of a person that they can relate to. Being from America brings with it a great deal of benefits, but it does also have some downfalls. One area that I feel we need to do better is learning about other cultures. I fear that many young students know nothing about Iran other than the fact it is in the Middle East, and some students may not even know that. And for the students of this generation the words Middle East bring with it a wide array of emotions, and almost all of those negative. While Persepolis may not be a way to get students to fall in love with the Middle East or the governments that run countries like Iran, it does give students a great view of the way that many of the citizens feel living in the countries. It is a lot easier to dislike another culture when we know nothing about them, Satrapi changed that for me, and I feel she would for many students.
Through Satrapi’s (Marji) eyes I was able to see the beauty of the culture, both in the pictures and the words. One of the things that stuck out for me was the closeness of family and friends. Satrapi’s uncle Anoosh was a person that I was able to connect with immediately, even though he has such a small role in the story. It was cute to see how much Marji loved her uncle Anoosh even though she had never met him. It is the idea that he was a hero to her because of everything that he had to live though as a political prisoner. He was a person though that I feel told an important story himself about what it was like for people who spoke out against his government. Another person that I loved was Satrapi’s grandmother. She reminded me a great deal of my own grandmother. That lady who is always there for you, and always seems to show up when you need them the most and know exactly what to say.
Satrapi was another person I found myself caring deeply about. She had the ability to keep her sense of humor amidst the chaos that was happening around her. She was also the voice that I wanted her to be. She stood up for herself and fought for what she believed, even when at times it might have been smarter for herself if she had not. When she was stopped by the Guardians of the Revolution, she was able to show hard it was for people living there. In the briefest of instances a person can stop you and arrest you without even letting your parents know. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to live in fear everyday wondering if a person who did not like you would turn you in.
Overall, this was a book that I feel many students would really enjoy, especially women. It was a true coming of age story, in a place that many children in America could never imagine. Hopefully it would give them the opportunity to see what growing up in a place like that would be like. There was one minor issue that I had with the text, the fact that it was hard to keep track of who was who in terms of governments, and ‘bad’ people. It was confusing because it seemed that everybody in power was bad, which may be true, but because it was told through the eyes of a girl it is not always clear who is who. But with that said, that minor detail is not enough reason to put this book away. It is a book that I feel is important for all ages, races and genders. Like all good literature, even though this is a graphic novel it still tells an important story.