Earlier this year, I read the first part of Marjane Satrapi's memoirs, the graphic novel “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood”. Now, I felt, was a good time to revisit her story that in this second part begins with her difficult years in Austria.

In Vienna, Marjane feels isolated: Her experiences living in Vienna as a young adult highlight the challenges of being a foreigner in a new and unfamiliar culture. Marjane's struggles with language, cultural norms, and social expectations make her feel like an outsider.

Her experiences in Vienna also highlight the cultural differences between Iran and the West, and the challenges of navigating those differences as a young person. Marjane’s rebellious streak and her desire to fit in with her Western peers often clash with her Iranian upbringing and cultural values, leading to feelings of confusion and isolation.

Considering she lived there during the early 80s, a time during which conservatism, xenophobia and intolerance really thrived again, it’s no wonder she had some horrible experiences and, ultimately, decided to return to Iran.

Hardly at what she considered home, though, Marjane has to face the challenges of returning to a familiar but changed culture: Her experiences living abroad had given her a new perspective on her Iranian upbringing, and she struggles to reconcile her Western-influenced worldview with the traditional values and expectations of Iranian society. Her experiences with romantic relationships, gender roles, and political activism all highlight the tensions between her personal beliefs and the expectations of Iranian society.

Marjane's candid and honest portrayal of her experiences also helps to demystify Iran and Iranian culture for readers - like myself - who are not familiar with it. By sharing her personal experiences and perspectives, Marjane allows us to see Iran as a complex and multifaceted society, rather than a monolithic or exoticized entity. This helps to bridge cultural divides and promote greater understanding and empathy between different cultures.

I also appreciate Satrapi's unflinching honesty in her storytelling. She doesn't shy away from difficult or uncomfortable subjects, and her willingness to share her personal experiences and emotions make the story all the more authentic and relatable. Her portrayal of the complexities of Iranian society and the impact of political upheaval on individuals and families is both nuanced and insightful.

Another of the strengths of "Persepolis 2" is Satrapi's unique graphic style, which is both simple and expressive. Her use of black and white illustrations adds to the starkness of the story, and the minimalism of the drawings allows the reader to focus on the emotions and experiences of the characters.

Overall, "Persepolis 2" is a powerful and moving graphic novel that offers a unique perspective on Iranian history and culture, while also exploring universal themes of identity, belonging, and resilience.

Five out of five stars.


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Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam

Rating: 4.5. Just as great as the first book. I highly recommend picking Persepolis up!

In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna.
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This review contains *spoilers*.

It’s been so long since I’ve had that feeling of wanting to read a story long into the night, but Persepolis brought it back.

I felt this indescribable pull from the very first page and I just knew that this book was going to hold a special place in my heart. Persepolis feel so personally important to me that I’m stunned they didn’t appear into my life until these past few days.

Everything featured within; leaving, moving, coming-of-age, family relationships, motherly love— was just captured so personally well.

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I really, really missed Marji’s family (especially her mother) at the start of this volume. I kept hoping for her to talk about or with her mother.

But the conversations she had with Julie were also pretty interesting to read about.
This book had surprisingly many laugh out loud moments when Marji started out in Vienna.

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And the beauty of this story, for me, was that one moment you’ll be laughing, and the next your laughter will turn to tears.

For instance, when she finally got the message that her mother was coming to visit:

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Watching Marjane grow and accumulate on her own was honestly both heartbreaking and heartwarming.

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I’m in tears…again.

The time she spent with her mother made me feel that more closer to both of them:

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The love they hold for each other punctured me deeply. And it made her departure that more painful.

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From there we follow Marji’s journey living and working on her own. And we get introduced to great and not so great (Markus) characters along the way.

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Svetlana was a great surprise.

But Markus… seriously, how insensitive can one person be??

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I was so angry when he had the nerve to say, “it’s not what you think…”

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And everything that went on afterwards left me speechless: from sleeping on the streets of cold-wintery Vienna, to returning to Iran and still feeling helpless, to not knowing how to share everything that went on during the 4 years she spent away from her family, and then the road to recovery.

She went through so much in the span of four years, and it made me that more upset when people took advantage of her situation.

But Marjane allows her past to weigh heavily on her until she finds some like-minded friends, falls in love, and begins studying art at a university.

At her university Marji said the following that’s been on my mind ever since:

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I loved this volume more both because I saw Marji coming of age and also because Persepolis' depiction of the struggles of growing up was raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.

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This book opened up my eyes and gave me a new perspective, and I am now forever grateful.

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And then all too soon the storyline came to an end and I was left with eyes full of tears (both happy and sad).

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It was brilliant, poignant, memorable and just utterly fascinating.

*Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Persepolis 2, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!*
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This review and more can be found on my blog.

S is for Satrapi

I enjoyed this volume slightly less than Persepolis: Story of a Childhood but it was still a really great and interesting read.

This volume deals with Marjane right after she starts boarding school in Vienna and mostly deals with themes of identity and those awkward teenage years everyone faces no matter where they live or what they look like. Marjane was no exception.


And I think the reason I liked volume 1 more is because I enjoyed Marjane's voice as a young girl more than I liked her voice as a confused teenager/young adult. There was less about what was going on politically, socially, and religiously in Iran, and dealt more about Marjane's quest to find love, losing her virginity, finding friends who value her, and missing her home more than anything. She is a girl who was raised in the east and educated in the west and has a really hard time melding those two worlds together. Even when Marjane decides to leave Europe and return to Iran, she falls into a depression as a result of a failure to find the balance in both eastern and western culture. She feels alienated in Europe because she feels so different from those who have never known a world like the one in which she was raised. Her friends only seem to be drawn to her because they find the horrors she encountered fascinating, when she just wants to forget the pain in her past. I loved it when Marji stood up to them.


Yet when Marji returns to Iran, she feels disillusioned since she no longer feels a part of the country she once loved. She doesn't know how to act, has no interest in college or catching up with her old friends. She feels lost and alone. It was this part of the book that dragged the most for me, mostly because it dealt with the mental illness that she faced every single day, and never really scratched the surface of what was really going on. It seemed like it was just pages and pages of moping and depression. And cigarettes. Lots of smoking cigarettes.


The book picked up more at the end, and I ended up really enjoying this volume as well. There were parts I could relate to, having once been a teenage girl dealing with my own forms of everything Marjane was going through. And just like the first volume, I really loved the relationship Marji has with her parents. I know those relationships are what eventually saved her and made her go one to become the woman, the artist, and the writer she is today. I'm so happy to have finally read this second volume, and I know I will read both books again.

4 stars.

Persepolis 2 felt a lot lighter in some aspects from the first book but I think had a good representation of how hard it is for refugees to grapple what they went through when they finally make it to a safe place. I liked that the author delved into mental health and how it’s often harder mentally after you’ve come out of survival mode. I’m glad to have read the Persepolis series and feel like I’ve gained a lot of knowledge from having read them!

"Bad people are dangerous but forgiving them is too."

The Story of a Return contains the last two part of this four part illustrated autobiography of a Iranian girl fleeing from her autocratic country to Austria where she was faced with adolescence and an entirely different culture.

This part focuses more on her personal struggles and shows her evolution from a terrified with low self-esteem girl to a confident and opinionated woman.

Even though a lot of us face alienation, judgement, self-doubts while growing up, it's how we go down a pit to climb back up to maybe go down again and keep fighting, is what counts.

Marjane Satrapi's sudden exile from her war inflicted country, her vain attempts to adapt to Western culture, her haunting memories of the past and a constant need to be surrounded by love is what gives this graphic novel its structure and makes it more relatable.

Tämä toinen osa Marjane Satrapin nuoruusmuisteluista ei ollut aivan yhtä vaikuttava kuin ensimmäinen. Toki hän on koki tälläkin kuvatulla ajanjaksolla rankkoja ja surullisia asioita, mutta kaiken yllä on jonkinlainen turtumus. Parhaita kohtia olivat kaikki ne pienet kapinalliset teot systeemiä vastaan. Opin todella paljon Iranin lähihistoriasta. Näistä asioista pitäisi puhua koulussakin.

Second read for #getgraphic. Such a beautiful story about growth, identity, and more. I loved that we were able to walk through each struggle with Marjane and learn what she had to overcome. I definitely will be doing a full review of both volumes when I get the chance.

I didn't end up liking this book as much as Persepolis 1 , but I'm not exactly sure why. The story picks up the narrative of the first one, and I had to wonder how a reader’s encounter with Persepolis 2 would be without having read the first. The book marks Marji's unhappy time in Austria, her return to Iran, and her departure from Iran, mirroring the first book. It is a coming-of-age tale of adolescence into young adult hood. Satrapi’s skill as a graphic novelist is astonishing. Her ability to use drawings, words, and space to capture emotion startles me. The descriptions of the body’s awkward physical changes in the teen years, and of meeting her roommate Lucia made me laugh out loud because of the way they captured the scenes so appropriately and in such a relatable fashion. The book turns on some heavy themes, such as the narrator’s experience of alienation in Austria, the romanticization of a homeland lost, and ways of adapting to changing cultural mores and constant war. I admire Satarpi’s depictions of moments of shame, actions that I think most people would deny (like having an innocent person arrested) or avoid thinking about. This gives the book a sense of raw authenticity and accountability. It is a book that I think will stay with me for quite a while, and I mentally sort through the various issues it raised.

I think Persepolis 1 was the first non-fiction graphic novel I've read and it was amazing. Since then I've read many. It was nice to come "home" to Part 2 of Persepolis. Wonderful writing. Telling a story through pictures is so wonderful. Another way of reading that tells a different story. I much preferred part 1, but that may have been because it was my first, and was so exciting. Give graphic novels a chance!

The girl who originally recommended the Persepolis books to me told me that the second one wasn't as good as the first (which kept me from being motivated to read the second, but when I found out the new Persepolis movie covers both books, well . . . I have this thing about reading books before I see the movies.) I'm glad I did pick this up; although it gets off to a slower start than Persepolis, it's worth the wait. Since Marjane is an adult in this book, it's easier to see how oppressive the Islamic revolution really was, since an adult *should* have so much more agency than a child. Marjane's feeling of being misplaced no matter where she was -- too 'traditional' for Europe, too 'progressive' for Iran -- will ring true to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider. Like the first one, this book brings politics and history that can seem confusing and irrelevant to "Westerners" personal and complex. Reading it is like having the conversation you'd be able to have if you weren't too scared of being politically incorrect or naive to open your mouth.

I've always felt that the second part of Satrapi's memoir is weaker than the first part. Her life in Austria was just not as interesting (...first boyfriend, doing drugs, finding yourself). I wanted more exploration of her life after she returned to Iran and her struggle to fit in with her old community. Unfortunately, the story ends rather abruptly so there is no sense of "closure" or anything.

It's still a strong memoir, and one I'd definitely recommend if you read the first part, I just think it was a bit more random and less well put together.

***

The second part of the series takes place in Vienna where Marji starts her new life at a boarding house because her mother's friend has no room for her at her own apartment. Since she cannot speak German upon arrival, Marji finds it hard to communicate but eventually overcomes it and makes friends. She assimilates into the culture by celebrating Christmas and going to Mass with her roommate. Away from home, Marji's Iranian identity deepens and she is expelled from the school after a verbal altercation with a nun who makes xenophobic comments against Marji.

No longer in school, Marji starts living with her friend Julie and her mother. Here, she experiences more culture shock when Julie talks about her sexual endeavors, as such topics are prohibited in Iran. Soon she undergoes a physical and ideological transformation by using drugs and changing her appearance while continuing to move house. Marji finally settles on a room with Frau Dr. Heller, but their relationship is unstable. Issues also arise in many of Marji's relationships, in which she finds comfort in drugs. She forms a relationship with Markus, but breaks up with him when she discovers that he has been cheating on her. Marji leaves Dr. Heller's house after she accuses Marji of stealing her brooch. She spends the day on a park bench and ends up living on the streets for two months. When she catches bronchitis she almost dies, but is found and taken to a hospital. Marji reaches out to her parents who arrange for her to move back and thus after living in Vienna for 4 years, she returns to Tehran.

At the airport, she recognizes how different Iran is from Austria. Donning her veil once more to go out, she takes in the 65-foot murals of martyrs, rebel slogans, and the streets renamed after the dead. At home, her father tells her the horrors of the war and they talk deep into the night about what she had missed. After hearing what her parents had gone through while she was away in Vienna, she resolves never to tell them of her time there. However, her trauma from Austria makes her fall into depression forcing her to attempt suicide twice. When she survives, she takes it as a sign to live and starts her process of recovery by looking after her health and taking up a job. She also begins art classes at the local university. However, due to the restrictions of showing female nudity, Marji and her friends attend secret sessions and parties, away from the prying eyes of the religious police.

Following her return to Iran Marji meets Reza, also a painter, and they soon begin to date, but this proves to be frowned upon by the religious police. They are caught holding hands and their families are forced to pay a fine to avoid their lashings. In 1991, Reza proposes marriage to Marji, and after some contemplation, she accepts. Her mother, Taji, warns her that she has gotten married too young and Marji soon realizes that she feels trapped in the role of wife. Marji attends a party, but someone warns them about the religious police. They quickly discard the alcohol and the women cover themselves as the police enter the building. The men make their escape by jumping from the rooftop, but Marji's friend Nami hesitates and falls to his death. Later on in 1994, her marriage has deteriorated and Marji confides in her friend, Farnaz, that she no longer loves Reza and wants a divorce. Farnaz advises her to stay with her husband because divorced women are social outcasts, but her grandmother urges her to get a divorce. After much contemplation, Marji decides to separate from a reluctant Reza. She goes to her parents and tells them about her and Reza's divorce and they comment on how proud they are of her and suggest that she should leave Iran permanently and live a better life back in Europe.

In late 1994 before her departure for Europe, Marji visits the countryside outside Tehran. She also visits the Caspian Sea, the grave of her grandfather, and the prison building where her uncle Anoosh is buried. In the autumn, Marji along with her parents and grandmother go to Mehrabad Airport for their final goodbye as she heads off to live in Paris. Marji then reveals that her grandmother died in 1996. The book ends with the message: "Freedom has a price."