Persepolis the First was touching. Persepolis the Second was not. The teen-aged Marjane is sent to Vienna where she is bounced from place to place by both circumstance and her own big mouth. Marjane, abandoned and isolated, turns to drugs and questionable friends and lovers to get through this time. Though she is apparently bright, she barely gets through school. After she catches her boyfriend cheating on her, she spends three months on the street and then returns to Iran. Once in Iran, it really gets jolly and fun. Marjane is depressed. She attempts suicide. There are some ups, but a lot of downs. I won’t list them all and spoil it for everyone else, but REALLY!

All of this bad, sad, and terrible stuff is going on, and I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. Maybe it’s because a lot of the sadness was caused by her own actions. (It should be noted that I generally have a low tolerance for stupid teenagers.) Maybe it’s because it was told in a detached way. Maybe it’s because I’m heartless. In any case, it didn’t feel personal. It didn’t feel as though the events in the book happened to the author. I didn’t relate to Marjane, and I didn’t sympathize with her. Also, the graphic element in this book didn’t really add anything for me. I don’t know. This book just left me cold.

A couple things did work for me, though. Marjane turns to reading at lonely times in her life, and remarks that “one must educate oneself.” True. True. One other item rang true to me: when Marjane gets to Austria, one of her first purchases was scented laundry detergent. It wasn’t available in war-torn Iran. She mentions that even today she keeps a dozen or so boxes of scented detergent in her house.

I wish there had been a few more of those personal moments in the book.

Didn't move me the way the first part did. I couldn't exactly relate to Marji and her problems. On one hand she grew up into a liberal, headstrong, take-no-shit-from-others kind of woman, while on the other she was insensitive enough to get an innocent man arrested just to protect herself from being caught wearing make-up. And here I was thinking she didn't care for make-up and outward appearances. She repeatedly contradicted herself and her own opinions and yet had the gall to assume a predominantly self-flattering tone while portraying herself in this novel.
And Marji aside, this book did not focus on Iran as much as it did on Marji's personal life and that made it infinitely less interesting. Besides, what's the deal with her grandma saying 'A first marriage is only a dry run for the second.'?
I am a woman of the 21st century living in the largest democracy of the world and criticisms aside, I believe it does manage to live up to its reputation as a nation with more or less liberal ideals. But I would never view a marriage in such a nonchalant, irreverent fashion. A marriage is not a social experiment or a dry run for anything. I am not against divorce, but I believe that should be the way out when a marriage no longer works or is irrevocably over. A way out doesn't necessarily give us the right to view a social institution with so much disrespect.

3,75/5

Sorry to report that this second volume is not as good as the first one. It’s exhausting following somebody that’s so bitchy all the time.

4 stars

It took a few years of people telling me that I had to read the autobiographies in graphic novel form but after years of forgetting to I finally have read both of the “Persepolis” and “Persepolis 2.” Yay! It honestly feels good to read one of the most recommended books I've gotten throughout my life.

If I had to choose, I would say I definitely liked reading “Persepolis 2” more than “Persepolis.” There we’re darker tones and personal hardships and struggles for Marjane that I could connect to. I can see why so many friends enjoyed learning about the Iranian War in the 1980s. It’s not necessarily a time period that’s taught much in schools. It was neat how Marjane’s parents and grandmother served as intellectuals on the history of Iranian culture and complex ideas. It was also interesting seeing how many mistakes were made in the past by her. She includes moments of reflection now that she is older, which I thought added a nice touch. While some things were never shown, like her intimate physical relationships with her boyfriends, the author did mention them as her ideas on them are important to her then and now. There is a glimpse into her personality and beliefs but I never felt I truly understood and knew the author.

It was a bit hard for me to figure out the rating for this book. Originally I thought it was a 4.25 but after some time I decided that this book was a solid 4 stars. This was a book series that I'm glad I read and can say that it was quite enjoyable to read a graphic novel styled autobiography.

Nyt ymmärrän täysin kaikki Satrapin omaelämäkerrallisen sarjisduologian saamat kehut. Harvinaisen vahvaa ja vaikuttavaa sarjakuvaa, Satrapi avaa lapsuuttaan Iranissa ja elämää fundamentalistisessa maassa hienosti. Kurkkua kuristavaa luettavaa myös nykymaailmassa. Sarjakuvamuoto ja Satrapin valoisa ilmaisu tukee raskasta sisältöä täydellisesti ja tekee siitä helpomman omaksua.

This is quite a bit different than the first part but is just as fascinating. Now living in Vienna Marjane manages to convey not only teen angst but the heartache of being alone and so far away from those that love and understand her. It's hard enough being a teen so her puberty transformation was both touching and funny. She also has her first awakening as to her own identity. Proudly declaring she is Iranian to a group of rude teens.

Back in Iran she sees the toll the war has taken and finds that her friends seem either greatly changed, lost or damaged. She muses that “In every religion you find the same extremists.” and how right she is. Her own epiphany coming some time after being redressed by her Grandmother for falsely having a man arrested. She is finally being true to herself.

I already have the DVD and fully intend on watching it this evening.

3.5

Me siento muy tocado por la historia que narra Persepolis, que increíble poder de la escritora de narrar algo tan feo a traves de dibujos y oraciones sencillas aunque la realidad sea inconcebible.
Hubo muchas partes en las que ver los dibujos antes de leer me decían "detente, no lo vas a soportar, llorón " pero pues llegaba al texto y me convertía en uno con mis lágrimas.

Everyone needs to step off! Geez! This book is great. It doesn't have that cute little panache of the first book because, duh, it's not about pre-teen issues which are cute and naive--it's about the world of impulsive effacement that drags a teenager to become a young adult. She comes to be a part of the Western world she idealized and finds it colder, in a more subtle, acute way, than the repressive regime she escapes in the first book. Because as violent and absurd as the regime is, she still exists in a harbor of love. She finds the West to be devoid of real faith in people. Everyone is deceptive, all points are theoretical. The criticism she has is of the dullness and hypocrisy of rebellion, arguing that the Europeans are selfish and mundane. It's not as fiery as the first book, because it's a rehashing in a different context; i would even say it's more interesting than the first book, because of this. Yet the cute little blips are still there, take for instance the panel where she goes through puberty in a month and showcases the bizarre morphings that her body goes through, going to her roommates farm in the middle of the mountains and her mother has a moustache and her sister is heidi.

there's not so much connection to the revolution and personal relationships effected by the regime. Because this book is more about her and her exile, the formations of characters killed by the autocracy are kept out. So that indulgence of catharsis is staid from, besides her character. But she feels so much! In this tiny book, she grieves and is frustrated time and time again, and the pace with which she moves out of it--it's compelling. She doesn't form these heroic relationships, really at all, so to try to contrive them would be lame. Though there is the point where she goes to chat with a legless soldier whom she knew from her childhood and the awkwardness is very thick, until he tells a joke about a maimed soldier trying to get married and the passive exchange, the white elephant, is lifted. Suddenly, they can talk like souls.

If this book has anything to say independently of the first book, it's in the contrast of the West to the East, a cold and free menagerie versus a familiar zone of horror. And still she dances through it, like roberto benigni in "Life is Beautiful."

Another thing i wanted to mention is this is a great documentation of supportive parents that i feel should be warranted. The liberal values and hospitality towards adolescence they exhibit are warm and i feel like the novel is based on that, that structural support of family which is the basis for her ability to grow out of both sides, her punk-european facade and the seemingly inescapable plague of fundamentalism. So hurrah for Satrapi's folks, eh!

Review of 2nd read

I read Persepolis in 2020, 4 years ago, when I was in the final year of undergrad. In the 4 years I have changed. That book along with a few other books shaped my changes, my perspectives. I am a bookworm and it’s no wonder almost every book I read leaves something in me. When re-reading it after four years, I got to look at what this book left inside me.

For me, the most enjoyable part of reading this book is- it’s a book about the long road to freedom. Marjane illustrates the urge for freedom through her sketches- sometimes it’s freedom of speech, sometimes it’s freedom of identity, sometimes freedom under the scarf, sometimes freedom from men.

From age 14 to 24, Marjane leaves Iran for the west, from a bombing country to a place where liberation is taken for granted. And she returns from there to a war torn Iran. Nowhere she felt that “that was it!”. She has a deep root in Iran, but she is made for spreading her wings, and not to hide them under her hood in the revolutionary regime of Iran. Nor did she feel at home in the Western cultural set up. She, like so many of us, wants to embrace both, in her own ways.

What would remain inside me from the book is- sometimes our mistakes shape who we are, who we would become. Our mistakes make our thoughts clear and bring us to think more practically.

Will leave some of the pages I have bookmarked while reading…

















Review of 1st read

The world being geographically divided into East and West couldn't hinder the cultural mixing of these two sides. But time to time, leaders, rulers tried to hinder this cultural mixing - resulting in a society of controversy, a life of imposition.

Persepolis, tells the story of a youth from her childhood to turning into a woman. The ups and downs of a journey. A journey mixed by imposition of East and liberty of West.

I very much enjoyed the book. The illustration told me many things at a time. I liked how honestly the authoress portrayed everything - the crisis, mistakes, regret. I hope Persepolis made me think wider than before...

To the extent Satrapi conveys life in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, thumbs up. But both volumes suffer from relentless self-indulgence. I could never identify with her. I realize that Persepolis is a memoir, but memoirs are for memorable experiences, not the trivial disappointments of a teenager. Her angst seemed unconnected with the horrors of Iran. While she suffers from an oppressive regime and the associated loss of extended family, those structures only seem to provide window dressing. Her enthusiasm for political demonstrations felt revisionist; as if she writes through glorified hindsight. The author does not synthesize those limitations and experiences into her personal development. She craves understanding from her audience without developing her own ability to understand. Even Holden, that eternal symbol of young angst, strove with ambition toward reconciliation with the world around him. Holden at least leaves me with hope. Satrapi flees eternally, without direction, and without motivation. Her problem is not the Iranian regime, it is herself.

Persepolis 1, the prequel to this story, was brilliant, largely due to the fact that it presented the Islamic Revolution (a very messy, complicated history of political reform gone wrong) through the eyes of a precociously wise little girl who watched it unfold.
So what happened to that little girl's uncanny wisdom in Persepolis 2? Apparently it disappeared with puberty.

To be blunt, I thought this second book was only slightly better than various cartoons typical of Highlights for Children. Rather than an eloquent presentation of a young woman struggling with her own statelessness and cultural assimilation (which I think was Satrapi's goal), this novel metamorphosed into a self-indulgent, self-pitying, mind-numbingly melodramatic sketch of Marjane's teen angst and isolation from normal social life.
The book just didn't really work.
Why?
I guess overall I felt that any profundity concerning Marjane's temporary loss of cultural identity was overshadowed by the author's overemphasis on the kinds of stupid struggles that attend being a teenager in general. Let's face it: as teenagers, almost all of us experimented with some sort of mind-altering substance (remember Granny's tequila? You know you do). Most of us (minus the religious ones) had sex against the wishes of adult authority figures and despite the apocalyptic warnings of "The More You Know" public announcements. Nearly everybody had his/her heart broken at some point (unless s/he was out doing the heartbreaking, that is). Big effing whoop, that's just standard teenage stuff. Yet the book spends most of its time following Marjane as she lives through these standard teenage experiences and wallows in self-pity. Yippee skippy.

My point is, what Satrapi really forgot to show us was what NOT everyone already experienced as a dumbass kid: the experience of a refugee who can't find sanctuary--whether psychological or physical--in her own country or any other country that she encounters. That's what would have made the book a valuable read. Sadly, it wasn't accomplished.

Aside from that complaint, the story also didn't seem entirely genuine to me in certain places. Anybody who categorizes marijuana as a truly hard drug is CLEARLY an outsider to the culture itself. The whole "I blew my mind out with marijuana, poor me" portion of the novel struck me as extraordinarily poser--and nobody can spot a poser quite like an Oregonian. Are you lying to us about your "hardcore" drug experiences, Marjane?
It just seemed unnecessary and overblown.

The hour grows long, and so does this review, so I'll conclude by saying just this: I love Satrapi's other works and teach them in my upper division high school lit class, but this one was a disappointment.
Read "Blankets" by Craig Thompson instead.