By: Marjane Satrapi
Publisher: Pantheon Books
This is my favorite kind of comic - substantial, meaningful, funny, tense, and extremely readable. Marjane Satrapi tells stories from her childhood in Iran, which includes the time period just after the Shah was overthrown and a fundamentalist Islamic government took power. In addition to being a funny, touching coming-of-age story it provides an important context for current events in the middle east.
The introduction provides a brief political overview of the modern history of Iran, including the USA's overthrowing of a democratically elected government to install a dictatorship so the UK could continue to have access to Iran's oil. This imposed government is what gets overthrown in 1979, allowing a strict Islamic theocracy to take its place.
We get to see Marjane learn about a lot of these events indirectly. She comes from a well off family that has an independent streak that obviously is carried by Marjane. She begins to learn that things are more complicated as her father teaches her that everything she is taught in school is not necessarily true, and as she learns of other relatives and family friends that participated in different political groups.
The most touching stories, though, are the ones where we see Marjane struggle to establish an identity as a grade school student after more and more restrictions are put in place by the religious leaders.
The scenes become more intense as the Iran-Iraq war begins, and Marjane is forced to deal with political situations at a very personal level, learning how to balance between her home life, which is not religious, and her life outside, where she must follow increasingly strict regulations. A coming of age story often deals with these themes in a much more abstract way, but this extraordinary political situation makes the conflicts much more intense and dramatic.
Her sense of humor and strong spirit often come through, as in the time she gets caught wearing a Michael Jackson button, which she claims to really be a picture of Malcolm X, who she says is a leader of the Muslims in America. After reading this you are sure that Marjane must turn into an adult with intelligence, a great sense of humor, and an emotional strength that would make her a wonderful friend to have.
The cartoonish artwork effectively softens some of the stories, as if filtered through the memories of childhood events. It conveys the important details of situation while allowing the stories to flow quickly. It does an amazing job of keeping so many conversation scenes feeling fresh and exciting, with excellent depictions of emotions on the characters with a minimum amount of lines.
The book strikes a wonderful balance between politics and autobiography, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions about the situation without becoming strident. It is a nice change of pace from lots of other comic autobiographies, which are usually done by self-obsessed people whose stories don't have the inherent drama that is used so effectively here. I think it is a wonderful addition to my bookshelf, and can't wait to see the sequel.