Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir, Persepolis, deals with her experiences growing up under the fundamentalist regime in Iran. Satrapi shows herself, as a child and then as a young woman, dealing with violence, with sexuality, with moving away from her parents to the West and failing, and trying again.
Persepolis includes a certain amount of violence and (especially in its second volume) a certain amount of sex. In the first part of the story, Satrapi talks about how friends and relatives were tortured, both by the Shah and by the Revolutionary government. There's a picture of a man dismembered by the authorities. She also talks about the Iran-Iraq war, and there are pictures of wounded soldiers.
Most of the story however, concentrates on her life after she escapes from Iran to Austria, and talks about her sexual adventures as a young woman living on her own. This part is full of bad language: Satrapi tells her landlady to "go fuck yourself" and calls various boyfriends names such as bastard, prick, asshole, etc.and she frequents parties with drugs and drinking and sexual scenes. She describes her suicide attempt. She talks about her gay roommates. She shows herself as a young child having imagined conversations with God. She shows herself as an adolescent smoking cigarettes and dealing pot. There is a definite Feminist theme running throughout the story and Satrapi is advised by her grandmother to get a divorce as "everyone knows that the first marriage is just practice for the next".
Verdict: This is not good quality literature and is not suited to be read in classrooms full of already depressed and struggling teenagers. It does not give us enough information about the Iran-Iraq struggle or life under the regime, to merit study.
I gave this to my teenage daughter recently to read and review and she found it very depressing and questioned why it was chosen for the curriculum at all because, as she exclaimed herself, "Why would I want to aspire to be like a girl like that?!" (depressed, no morals, no direction in life, no self-respect)
Renee G, Co.Cork