Today we are highlighting: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
I first read Persepolis when I was in fourth grade. It is a graphic novel, and my childhood self associated graphic novels with quick, easy-to-understand stories, like the Marvel comics. Everyone knows that Batman is the good guy and the Joker is the bad guy. Persepolis was not the simple story of good and evil that I expected.
Persepolis is the true story of Marjane Satrapi’s childhood in Iran. Between the ages of six and fourteen, Satrapi witnessed the Shah’s regime end, the Islamic Revolution, and the impacts of the war with Iraq. The time in which she lived made her life inherently political, but the history of the book is not what stuck with me. It was the way she represented childhood and coming of age in a time where your life is political no matter what you do. Satrapi grapples with her state using whippings as a punishment as well as feeling like her
friends are infinitely more interesting than she will ever be. Satrapi ties the personal to the political in a way many authors can only hope to dream of.
There is a scene where Satrapi, a young teenager at the time, walks to the store to buy a new record. She dressed up to look the part in the way only a teenager can, allowing a few strands of hair to stick out from her hijab in order to showcase the rebellion of rock music. Unfortunately, she was accosted by the morality police, which is a group in Iran in charge of making sure the hijab is worn correctly, and was forced to make up a story in order to escape being arrested. This scene always stuck with me because of how it proved that nothing can simply be about growing up when you live in a time where the political encroaches on the personal.
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Written By: Ocean Muir
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