Book #2: Persepolis

I don’t remember reading a whole lot of picture books when I was little. Once I knew how to read, I went straight to big, fat, no-picture books. I remember informing my first grade teacher that I had permission to look all sections of the library, whereas I believe kids at my school weren’t allowed out of the picture book section until like, the second or third grade.

I only bring this up because I feel like it makes my selection of a book with pictures, especially as an adult, much more significant. I just finished “The Complete Persepolis,” by Marjane Satrapi, which is told in graphic novel form. It’s a memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Now, if someone had handed me a big, fat, no-picture book on the same subject, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get around to it than a picture book did. I guess that’s the point I’ve been trying to make for two paragraphs.

Anyways, once I started reading this book, I had to spend about an hour on Wikipedia figuring out exactly what was going on. I’m not the most knowledgeable person about the Middle East. Once I figured it out, I read the first 30 pages or so again, felt caught up, and then just let the story wash over me. Not having much experience reading picture books, sometimes I felt like I had to remind myself to look at the pictures. Then I got in the groove.

The first half deals with Satrapi’s childhood in Iran, and it ends with her going off to Vienna to pursue a western education and to leave the danger and repression behind. Vienna proves no easier though, and after finishing high school she returns to Iran. Despite how much she’s been through, you have to keep remembering that she’s only 18. But going back to Iran is a whole other can of worms because she can’t quite determine her identity. As she says at one point, “I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West.”

In the introduction, Satrapi says that writing “Persepolis” was important to her because after living in the West, she knew the kind of perspective some people had of Iranians, and she didn’t want the whole nation judged by the extreme fundamentalism and terrorism of a few. I think the book succeeds on that count. It’s a very relatable tale of growing up, except for all the war. And the pictures.