Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is considered a groundbreaking novel/graphic novel and rightly so. Marjane Satrapi fantastically combines deceptively simple black and white images and deceptively sparse words to create a dramatic and emotion-filled portrayal of a childhood.

Persepolis is a memoir that chronicles Marjane’s earliest years in Iran. With upper-crust parents who were nevertheless revolutionaries and communists, she has interesting first-hand experiences with many of her country’s major happenings. We see how events like the Iran-Iraq War and the Islamic Revolution affected Marjane, her family, and her neighbors.

I read this a few weeks before Iran became a daily news leadoff story. Rightly or wrongly, I feel like I have a better sense of what might be going on there because of this book.

Marjane’s experiences as an Iranian youth are amazingly unique and universal at the same time. For example, make-up as a rebellion tactic takes on a new seriousness when one is able to be arrested because of it. Yet, the author is able to convey a young girl’s obliviousness of this difference and gets across that her younger self really didn’t think through this act of defiance too much. Yes, it was about making a statement, but it was also just something to do.

I found this book really engrossing, informative, and amazing.

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return picks up her story at about age 14.

I think Persepolis 2 is the less successful volume because life (as it does for all of us) starts to get so much wordier later on.

Persepolis charms and communicates in an almost mysterious way. At times, I found myself staring at the panels trying to figure out why the series worked so well.

In Persepolis 2, sometimes the words threatened to overwhelm the panels. It’s a worthwhile read because if you can resist picking up P2 after the last panel of P1, you must have not enjoyed the original very much at all.

In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi uses art to communicate childhood emotions and understandings. Language was used selectively. While Persepolis 2 still could not use a lot of words given the nature of the presentation, the reliance on conveying information was shifted towards describing rather than illustrating.

As a memoir, P2 serves well to continue Marjane’s story, but as a literary work, it is just not as special as P1.

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