PERSEPOLIS

Satrapi, M. (2004). Persepolis. NY: Pantheon.

This non-fiction graphic novel chronicles the author’s childhood in Iran. It’s striking black and white ink drawings are sure to lure reluctant readers. The novel begins in 1980, a year after the Iran’s “Islamic Revolution.”

The protagonist of the novel is Marjane and her close-knit family- mother, father and grandmother. Marjane is ten-years old at the start of the story and she and her classmates are not taking kindly to having to wear the veil in school. As with most graphic novels, the pictures themselves tell a story with tiny nuances that help explain the story the author is telling.

This is holds true on the first page where on the bottom pane Satrapi has drawn rambunctious girls waving and rough-housing with their veils as opposed to meekly wearing them.

Meek, is not a word that describes Marjane. She is a girl full of conviction, whose family are activists against the new Iranian regime and extreme adherence to Koranic law. Marjane’s family, she learns, are deposed royalty.

Satrapi does not sugar coat her story for readers. She not only mentions the horrific burning of 400 Iranians at the Rex Cinema, she depicts it in a two-page spread. Her unembellished tale, is often intercut with Marjane’s conversations with God, and his eventual silence, when after her uncle’s execution, she banishes him from her life.

Satrapi also chronicles her pre-teen rebellion against her parents. They wish to protect her from the hostile world outside their apartment, but she fights against their attempts to protect her by skipping class, smoking a cigarette and daring to venture the streets wearing a jean jacket and buying contraband music. Eventually her parents decide to send her to the relative safety of France, and the book ends on a cliffhanger when Marjane’s mother collapses in the airport.


This would be a perfect fit for cross-curricular high school teaching. History and English teachers alike would be able to use this book in their classrooms.