O N W R I T I N G P E R S E P O L I S By Marjane Satrapi, as told to Pantheon staff Chances are that if you are an American you know very little about the 1979 Iranian Revolution. "This revolution was normal, and it had to happen," says Marjane Satrapi, author of P e r s e p o l i s , a totally unique memoir about growing up in Iran after the Shah left power. "Unfortunately, it happened in a country where people were very traditional, and other countries only saw the religious fanatics who made their response public." In her graphic novel, Satrapi, shows readers that these images do not make up the whole story about Iran. Here, she talks freely about what it was like to tell this story with both words and pictures, and why she is so proud of the result. W h y I W r o t e P e r s e p o l i s From the time I came to France in 1994, I was always telling stories about life in Iran to my friends. We'd see pieces about Iran on television, but they didn't represent my experience at all. I had to keep saying, "No, it's not like that there." I've been justifying why it isn't negative to be Iranian for almost twenty years. How strange when it isn't something I did or chose to be? After I finished university, there were nine of us, all artists and friends, working in a studio together. That group finally said, "Do something with your stories." They introduced me to graphic novelists. Spiegelman was first. And when I read him, I thought "Jesus Christ, it's possible to tell a story and make a point this way." It was amazing. W r i t i n g a G r a p h i c N o v e l i s L i k e M a k i n g a M o v i e People always ask me, "Why didn't you write a book?" But that's what P e r s e p o l i s is. To me, a book is pages related to something that has a cover. Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both. We learn about the world through images all the time. In the cinema we do it, but to make a film you need sponsors and money and 10,000 people to work with you. With a graphic novel, all you need is yourself and your editor. Of course, you have to have a very visual vision of the world. You have to perceive life with images otherwise it doesn't work. Some artists are more into sound; they make music. The point is that you have to know what you want to say, and find the best way of saying it. It's hard to say how P e r s e p o l i s evolved once I started writing. I had to learn how to write it as a graphic novel by doing. W h a t I W a n t e d t o S a y I'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I think countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad. Perhaps they could become good and knowl ...

1. O N W R I T I N G P E R S E P O L I S
By Marjane Satrapi, as told to Pantheon staff
Chances are that if you are an American you know very little
about the 1979 Iranian Revolution. "This revolution was
normal, and it had to happen," says Marjane Satrapi, author of P
e r s e p o l i s , a totally unique memoir about growing up in
Iran after the Shah left power. "Unfortunately, it happened in a
country where people were very traditional, and other
countries only saw the religious fanatics who made their
response public." In her graphic novel, Satrapi, shows readers
that
these images do not make up the whole story about Iran. Here,
she talks freely about what it was like to tell this story with
both words and pictures, and why she is so proud of the result.
W h y I W r o t e P e r s e p o l i s
From the time I came to France in 1994, I was always telling
stories about life in Iran to my friends. We'd see pieces about
Iran on television, but they didn't represent my experience at
all. I had to keep saying, "No, it's not like that there." I've
been justifying why it isn't negative to be Iranian for almost
twenty years. How strange when it isn't something I did or
chose to be?
After I finished university, there were nine of us, all artists and
friends, working in a studio together. That group finally said,
"Do something with your stories." They introduced me to
graphic novelists. Spiegelman was first. And when I read him, I

2. thought "Jesus Christ, it's possible to tell a story and make a
point this way." It was amazing.
W r i t i n g a G r a p h i c N o v e l i s L i k e M a k i n g a
M o v i e
People always ask me, "Why didn't you write a book?" But
that's what P e r s e p o l i s is. To me, a book is pages related
to
something that has a cover. Graphic novels are not traditional
literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate.
Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be
able to write and to draw it seems a shame to choose one. I
think it's better to do both.
We learn about the world through images all the time. In the
cinema we do it, but to make a film you need sponsors and
money and 10,000 people to work with you. With a graphic
novel, all you need is yourself and your editor.
Of course, you have to have a very visual vision of the world.
You have to perceive life with images otherwise it doesn't
work. Some artists are more into sound; they make music. The
point is that you have to know what you want to say, and
find the best way of saying it. It's hard to say how P e r s e p o l
i s evolved once I started writing. I had to learn how to write it
as a graphic novel by doing.
W h a t I W a n t e d t o S a y

3. I'm a pacifist. I believe there are ways to solve the world's
problems. Instead of putting all this money to create arms, I
think
countries should invest in scholarships for kids to study abroad.
Perhaps they could become good and knowledgeable
professors in their own countries. You need time for that kind
of change though.
I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn't know any
people from other countries, I'd think everyone was evil based
on
news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is
no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn't it possible there
is the same amount of evil everywhere?
If people are given the chance to experience life in more than
one country, they will hate a little less. It's not a miracle
potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the
basement of a country, not on the surface. That is why I wanted
people in other countries to read P e r s e p o l i s , to see that I
grew up just like other children.
It's so rewarding to see people at my book signings who never
read graphic novels. They say that when they read mine
they became more interested. If it opens these people's eyes not
to believe what they hear, I feel successful.
Y o u H a v e t o T h i n k F r e e l y t o K n o w W h a t t
o W r i t e
My parents were very proud when they read P e r s e p o l i s .
If I criticize them once in a while, it's because it's the truth, and
they laugh. My father always says, "It is only an idiot who
never changes his mind." My parents accept that times change,
and they are not right anymore. They've taught me that you can
make mistakes.

4. They were extremely open-minded about what I said and they
were demanding. I'm also tender with them because they
were magnificent parents. They gave me the most important
thing -- the freedom of thinking and deciding for myself. The
best present anyone can receive is not being formatted because
the world or a religion wants you to be.
XXXXX 1
Marji’s Internal Conflict and Evolution of Her Identity in
Persepolis
In the graphic memoir Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood,
Marjane Satrapi depicts her autobiographical persona, Marji, as
an Iranian child who grows up during the Iran-Iraq war and the
Islamic Revolution. Social injustice and the lack of freedom are
two crucial problems within the social and cultural context of
the story, and Marji’s own struggles with personal freedom
often mirror the struggles of the Iranian people under the
Islamic regime. In her book The Art of Memoir, renowned
memoirist Mary Karr theorizes that successful memoirs involve
a “psychic struggle” (91) of the writer, who crafts his or her life
story around the evolving conflict with an “inner enemy” (92).
According to Karr, this internal struggle is a “journey toward
the self’s overhaul by book’s end” (92), which means that the
memoirist is journeying toward a significant shift in self-
understanding. When applied to Marji’s voyage of self-
discovery, Karr’s theory leads to a logical question about what
Marji’s inner conflict teaches her about herself by the end of the
book, and if it fundamentally changes her. By exploring Marji’s
interiority more closely, readers will gain greater understanding
about how the internal is presented both textually and visually

5. to readers. Additionally, it is crucial to understanding more
about what drives autobiographical narratives. From the first
pages of the book, Marji struggles with her inability grant and
receive social justice and unlimited personal freedom. Though
she does not fully resolve this struggle by the end of the book,
her increased self-confidence, independence, and pride in her
homeland reveal that the conflict has significantly shaped her
identity.
Before examining how Marji’s internal conflict manifests early
in the first volume of Persepolis, it is important to acknowledge
how interiority can be presented visually as well as textually in
a graphic narrative. In his pivotal work on the communication
of images in comics titled Understanding Comics: The Invisible
Art, Scott McCloud details how comic artists use a mixture of
visual symbols and text to relay a person’s emotions and
thoughts: “In dealing with the face itself, the line between the
visible and invisible worlds becomes even less clear. The
cartoon face is an abstract, but it is based upon visual data.
Some indicators of emotion are also visually based, such as the
familiar sweat bead” (130:5-6). McCloud continues by
acknowledging the symbolic role that these visuals play for
readers to understand emotion by seeing them. He then adds,
“Even when there is little or no distortion of the characters in a
given scene, a distorted or expressionistic background will
usually affect our ‘reading’ of characters’ inner states” (132:2).
So, a combination of a facial expression, a symbol, and an
expressionistic background can all reveal a character’s
interiority.
In Persepolis, Satrapi uses both visual and textual elements to
reveal her 9-year-old self’s struggles with social injustice and
limitations of freedom in her memoir’s very first chapter, “The
Veil.” As Karr theorizes in The Art of Memoir, “the split self or
inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the
book’s thrust or through line” (92). Indeed, in this first chapter,
Marji is repeatedly depicted as suffering from the injustices that
she perceives around her, within her own home and family. In

6. the very first pages of “The Veil,” it is 1979 and 9-year-old
Marji is having difficulty understanding and accepting divisions
of social class the expectations and unfair judgments that comes
with them. Her trouble to coping with these injustices cause
Marji to decide to become “a prophet” when she grows up (6:6),
thinking a prophet could solve all those problems. In the first
panel of Figure 1, Satrapi illustrates her younger self at the
dinner table with her parents, whose abstract facial
expressions—her mom’s slight smile and her father’s satisfied
closed eyes as he drinks—visually inform the reader that they
are enjoying their meal together. Yet, Marji’s eyes are wide and
blank, staring forward instead of looking at her parents or at her
meal. She is not eating, in fact, her arms are at her sides and her
silverware is on the table. As McCloud explained earlier, this
panel gives us visual symbols to understand Marji’s internal
state: she is clearly distressed about something, which is
isolating her from those she loves (her parents). The clue to the
cause of her distress is shown in the background of the panel,
where the families maid, Mehri, sits alone at a table in the
another room. A caption at the top of the panel reads, “I wanted
to be a prophet,” with borderless text below it that explains,
“because our maid did not eat with us” (Satrapi 6:6). Marji
views it unjust that her maid cannot sit at their table with them
like a member of their family, just as later in the book, she will
not understand or accept that Mehri is judged not suitable
romantic partner for their neighbor who is also a higher social
class than Mehri as a maid (Satrapi 37-39). Additionally, Mehri
is sitting in view of the family, with Marji’s back turned to her
so she doesn’t have to see the separation, but Marji’s eyes show
that she is still very aware of Mehri’s presence behind her in the
another room.
Figure 1 (Satrapi 6:6-7)
The second panel of Figure 1 continues Marji’s discomfort with
the injustice of her family’s higher social position. In this
panel, she drives in the backseat of her father’s Cadillac—an

7. American-made car symbolically associated with wealth and the
West—and a man looks on with his mouth hanging open. The
car is moving up at an angle driving out of the frame of the
panel emphasizes that they are moving toward their higher
social position above the common society. All we can see are
Marji’s eyes and the top of her head, as though she’s trying to
hide from society while in this car. Her eyes are wide open
again like first panel of Figure 1, meanwhile, her dad faces
forward in fashionable sunglasses. In these two early panels of
the first chapter of the memoir, then, readers are already
learning from both the graphic and textual elements of the
panels that Marji is struggling with her family’s social position
and the limited freedoms of others. In just the first few pages of
the book, Marji’s internal struggles forecast the inner turmoil
that will follow her throughout both volumes of her memoir.
Word Count: 1061
Works Cited
Elahi, Babak. “Frames and Mirrors in Marjane Satrapi’s
Persepolis.” Symploke, vol. 15, no.
1/2, 2007, pp. 312-325.
Esfandiari, Haleh. "Iran Primer: The Women's
Movement." PBS.org, 27 Oct. 2010,
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2010/10
/iran-primer-the-womens-movement.html. Accessed 17 June
2017.
Karr, Mary. “Ch. 9: Interiority and Inner Enemy—Private
Agonies Read Deeper Than External Whammies.” The Art of
Memoir. Harper Collins, 2015.

8. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.
Harper Collins, 1993.
Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pantheon, 2004.
Applying a Theory to Achieve New Understanding:
In this second project, rather than using an argument source to
provoke your question and argumentative response, you will be
using a theory source: Karr’s theory of the inner enemy as the
driving force behind a memoir’s narrative, an inner conflict that
“holds it together, either thematically or in the way a plot would
keep a novel rolling forward” (92). Because this is a theory
rather than an argument, your task is not to agree or disagree
with Karr; instead, your task is to apply her theory to one or
both of our graphic memoirs with the goal of understanding the
creator and his or her narrative in a new way, revealing tensions
that may be working above and/or below the surface of the text.
Assignment Description & Requirements: You will write an
argumentative paper of 1500-1800 words (roughly 5-7 pages) in
which you formulate a question regarding the inner enemy of
your exhibit source’s narrator and assert your own well-
reasoned argumentative response. You may ask generally about
the nature of the memoirist’s inner conflict that he or she is
seeking to resolve and/or whether that conflict is resolved by
the end of the work, or you may formulate a more specific
question connected to what you understand the inner conflict to
be.
Additional Requirements:
· An original title connected to Karr’s theory and the claim
you’re making

9. · An introduction paragraph following the 3-part structure
(Background/Common Ground > Problem/Question >
Claim/Response) and responding to the “so what” question
· Logical organization and development of your argument in the
main body
· Main body paragraphs that include well-selected and sufficient
evidence from your exhibit source(s)to help guide your
discussion and illustrate your point of view. Include at least
three images from your exhibit source(s) to highlight important
visual representation of your author’s inner struggle.
· Meaningful engagement with each of your secondary sources
(Theory, Argument, and/or Background sources) in the main
body of your paper to help you develop your argument
· In-text (parenthetical) citations in proper MLA style for all
images, quotes, and paraphrases
· A conclusion paragraph following the required 3-part structure
· Word count included after your conclusion paragraph (1500-
1800 words)
· Works Cited page in proper MLA style, with sources listed in
alphabetical order according to the author’s last name
· Proper formatting and careful proofreading prior to
submission
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Rocı́o G. Davis
A GRAPHIC SELF
Comics as autobiography in Marjane
Satrapi’s Persepolis
This essay traces a crucial transition in the enactment of the
autobiographical text and
addresses its creative appropriation by Marjane Satrapi, an
Iranian immigrant living in
France, in Persepolis. I will examine her use of comics – a
thematically and
representationally complex form that deploys the strategic
juxtaposition of sequential text
and image – as the medium for her memoir that enacts her
process of self-identification and

16. negotiation of cultural and/or national affiliation. Here, the
juxtaposition of image and
words constitutive of graphic narratives yields a new artistic,
literary, and creative
experience – a revised aesthetic. Combining theories on the
childhood memoir and comics, I
argue that we must approach contemporary graphic
autobiographies as increasingly
sophisticated forms of inscribing the past and read Satrapi’s
text as a site for the negotiation
and management of the memory of childhood perceptions and
positioning, family, history,
politics, religion, and art.
Keywords comics; autobiography; Marjane Satrapi; Persepolis;
childhood
memoirs
A sustained analysis of the forms of life writing being enacted
in this century obliges us to
reconsider the notion of the autobiographical act itself.
Specifically, when we analyze
increasingly complex questions about self-formation and the
process of signification and
the expansion of the boundaries of traditional autobiography by
negotiating narrative
techniques, the consequences in the context of transcultural
self-representation become
complicated.
1
In this essay, I trace a crucial transition in the enactment of the
autobiographical text and address its increasingly creative and
subversive appropriation
by a transcultural writer, Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian immigrant

17. living in France, whose
recent autobiography, Persepolis, was published to critical
acclaim.
2
I will examine her
artistic project, particularly her use of comics – a thematically
and representationally
complex form that deploys the strategic juxtaposition of
sequential text and image – as
the medium for her memoir that enacts her process of self-
identification and negotiation
of cultural and/or national affiliation.
3
As contemporary transcultural autobiographies negotiate
renewed forms of
experiences, these texts become experimental and revisionary
narratives, which
challenge textual authority and prescriptive paradigms. I want
to argue that a significant
challenge to the prescriptive paradigms of autobiographical
writing comes through
genre. In the case of Satrapi, the juxtaposition of image and
words constitutive of
Prose Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 December 2005, pp. 264-279
ISSN 0144-0357 print/ISSN 1743-9426 online q 2005 Taylor &
Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI:
10.1080/014403500223834

18. lesleyyoder
Sticky Note
Publication info for citing
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Scholarly articles sometimes begin with an abstract and key
words, such as you see here. An abstract is a type of summary
and statement of purpose.
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Sticky Note
You are not required to read anything highlighted in yellow.
Your reading for Tues, 1/23, begins on p. 266.
graphic narratives yields a new artistic, literary, and creative
experience – a revised
aesthetic. Indeed, to engage these narratives effectively, we
must move beyond an
analytical model of merely reading the surface of texts for
potential meanings and
attend to the cultural and generic codes addressed by the
authors to unravel what the
texts execute within the contexts of larger questions of cultural
and political
mobilization. Genre definition and choice directs the act of
writing as well as readers’
reception of the ideological issues and concerns embedded in
the narrative. This
affirmation implies that a reconstruction of the memoir is
necessarily inflected by the

19. relationship between creative writing and immigrant or ethnic
configurations of
subjectivity and national affiliation. Writers sensitive to how
differences in cultural
contexts and paradigms create specific responses revise
established genres to destabilize
ideology and conventional strategies of meaning in order to
enact distinct sociocultural
situations. Readers who encounter these revisionary texts are
thus obliged to
reexamine their expectations and critical perspectives.
As they gesture towards new perceptions of cultural contexts
and choices,
transcultural autobiographies challenge the generic scripts
prescribed by
Euro-American autobiography. The transaction between formal
and cultural
modes produces texts that consistently challenge inherited ideas
of autobiographical
structure and content. Importantly, the nuanced approaches of
these narratives clearly
serve a significant didactic purpose. The increasingly dialogic
nature of life writing
reflects a multi-voiced cultural situation that allows the subject
to control and exploit
the tensions between personal and communal discourse within
the text, and signify on
a discursive level. Issues of ethnic representation therefore
become central to the
autobiographical strategies employed by these writers and the
manner in which each
text performs individual processes of self-awareness. The
engagement with the act of
narrative evolves into a strategy that blends subjectivity and

20. history, in an attempt to
stress individual sensibility, challenge contextual authority, or
claim agency.
From our renewed appreciation of the constructedness and
performative potential
of life writing – where saying something is also doing
something – we need to consider,
albeit briefly, the author’s choice of this particular
autobiographical form. Satrapi’s
memoir of her childhood in Iran explains in particular ways the
present self, and
reasserts how the past can only be known and understood
through narrative – in her
case, a multilayered form of narrating. In a sense, reading her
text involves asking
pressing questions about the act of construction (or
reconstruction) of the self-in-
narrative. Her strategy serves as a highly effective vehicle for
two fundamental
concerns of transcultural self-inscription: the performance of
selfhood and how
meaning itself evolves. Importantly, transcultural
autobiographers, particularly of
experiences of childhood set outside Europe or the United
States, may also be engaged
in a didactic project – the reader accompanies the writer as her
self-as-child learns
about heritage culture and experiences historical events,
fashioning a seemingly artless
insider perspective that is, nonetheless, complexly layered.
4
These revisionary models of transnational and transcultural
position and affiliation

21. have transformed reductivist ideas of the idea of otherness, and
the process of othering.
I suggest that Satrapi’s comic autobiography can exemplify that
new “intermittent time and
interstitial space” in literary studies that Bhabha refers to
(1994: 312). Many writers engage
in increasingly complex ways of understanding and articulating
migrant and ethnic identity
by choosing a transnational position, one that is neither purely
assimilationist nor
C O M I C S A S A U T O B I O G R A P H Y I N M A R J A N
E S A T R A P I ’ S P E R S E P O L I S 2 65
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oppositional. Writing the self the way Satrapi does – privileging
the transcultural
experience through a genre that has not completely achieved
mainstream acceptance –
illuminates the more challenging strategy of normative self-
fashioning and self-
representation. As such, the performance of the Iranian child
who will become the
transcultural adult complicates issues in the discourse of
nationalism and affiliation. In this
context, William Boelhower’s approach to ethnic autobiography
stresses historical
contexts as well as the socially-constructed dimensions of the
cultural discourses adopted
by immigrants, specifically the macrotext of immigrant
autobiography which revolves
around the contrapositioning of different worlds. Boelhower

22. explains that the process of
transculturality becomes a metaphor for the contemporary,
postmodern, condition and he
argues that “the more one’s local ethnic encyclopedia is
disestablished, the more its
semiotic nowhere becomes a cultural everywhere, with the
ethnic subject now forced into
a floating practice of genealogical ordering and interrogation”
(1991: 137). When the
spaces represented in the text are located outside Europe or the
United States, the
implications for national and cultural allegiances become more
complex.
Comics as autobiography: possibilities and challenges
Will Eisner, in his germinal work, Graphic Storytelling and
Visual, posits that the last
decades of the twentieth century have obliged us to rework the
definition of “literacy.”
The proliferation of the use of images as a communicant,” he
argues,
was propelled by the growth of a technology that required less
in text-reading
skills. From road signs to mechanical use instructions, imagery
aided words, and at
times even supplanted them. Indeed, visual literacy has entered
the panoply of
skills required for communication in this century. Comics are at
the center of this
phenomenon (Eisner, 1996: 3).
Similarly, William Nericcio notes that the study of comics
operates a significant link
between textual and visual studies and that “the time seems

23. right for the critical
community to confront the innovative space of graphic
narrative: to understand it as
both epitome of and reaction against an age obsessed with
‘moving’ pictures” (1995:
106). But the renewed position of graphic narratives in cultural
production did not
evolve from merely technological innovations, and requires that
we, as critical readers,
consider the multilayered strategies marshaled in this creative
endeavor. Graphic
artists/writers are increasingly conscious of the possibilities of
the form itself – the
way the interaction between word and image reconfigures
manners of meaning – as a
medium of communicating complex ideas and positions. Though
comics are still often
considered a popular (read “inferior”) form, Matthew
McAllister, Edward Sewell, and
Ian Gordon argue that the nature of comic art deploys
significant ideological meaning,
in the manner in which it combines words and pictures allowing
for much “flexibility in
the manipulation of meaning”, which has important implications
for “both
representation and interpretation of ideological images and
meaning” (2001: 3).
On the one hand, the communicative elements in comic art
encourage the form to
occasionally create a closed ideological text, imposing on the
reader preferred
P R O S E S T U D I E S26 6

24. lesleyyoder
Sticky Note
For Tues, 1/23, begin reading here and continue until the
heading "Persepolis: the graphic memoir" on p. 269. Consider:
What conversation is Davis entering about comics? What does
she say about the "possibilities and challenges" of comics as
autobiography? In other words, what does she add to the
conversation?
lesleyyoder
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meanings. The limited space in which the artist/writer has to
work, for example,
may entice the creator to use stereotypes to convey information
quickly. Similarly,
the use of storytelling devices such as captions and thought
balloons can make the
themes and values in a comic especially explicit. On the other
hand, techniques—
such as the use of comics to visually change the point of view in
a comic strip or
book and the semantic space created by the sometimes
ambiguous relationship
between the word and the picture—make comics a potentially
polysemic text,
encouraging multiple interpretations, even ones completely
oppositional to any
specific artistic intent (McAllister, Sewell and Gordon, 2001: 3
– 4).
The possibility of multiple, even palimpsestic, meanings
constitutive of the graphic text has
been harnessed in increasingly sophisticated ways by
contemporary graphic artists who

25. want to limn political, social, and personal agendas, or
challenge the dominant tropes of
writing.
5
For instance, Joseph Witek asserts that comics are currently
“one of the most
dynamic cultural forms in the United States” and “while some
cartoonists do aspire to social
and commercial respectability, others turn to comics as a
readymade tool for critiquing and
subverting the values of mainstream America” (1992: 71 – 72).
Because ideological
positions are consistently deployed in these texts, it is necessary
to interrogate the
intersections between the possibilities offered by the form and
effectiveness of this strategy,
as part of an attentive reading of the layers of meaning offered
by comics.
Since the 1960s, comics for older readers have developed into a
variety of genres and
styles, and autobiographical comics in particular are a
distinctive and rewarding domain for
exploration from a critical, cultural and gender perspective.
6
In this study, I read comics as
a sophisticated and developed medium, a set of cultural
signifying practices in which the
intersections of culture, history, ethnicity, and gender can be
effectively negotiated by
cartoonists and their adult readers. Moreover, the potential of
the graphic narrative as a

26. highly dynamic text, as opposed to the more static single-image
narrative painting or plain
text, determines the dialectic between text and image, providing
creators with a wider
range of artistic and imaginative possibilities. Thus Satrapi
writes within a tradition of
comics that is becoming increasingly multilayered in Europe
and the United States.
Creators of autobiographical comics use a uniquely palimsestic
graphic medium (both
visual and textual) to narrate and construct a life story. Paul
John Eakin’s idea that “the
tension between the experiential reality of subjectivity on the
one hand and the available
cultural forms for its expression on the other always structures
any engagement in
autobiography” encourages us to critically negotiate Satrapi’s
generic choice (1992: 88).
For writers who want to creatively limn their experiences, the
specificities of the comic
book format, Will Eisner argues, which “presents a montage of
both word and image,”
obliges the reader to
exercise both visual and verbal interpretive skills. The
regiments of art
(e.g. perspective, symmetry, brush stroke) and the regiments of
literature
(e.g. grammar, plot, syntax) become superimposed upon each
other. The reading
of the comic book is an act of both aesthetic perception and
intellectual pursuit
(2003: 8).
Autobiographical comics have existed for almost as long as
comic art has. Susanna

27. Egan explains that Art Spiegelman’s Maus “produced an
(auto)biography so powerful
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that the role of comics in autobiography must now be assured”
(1999: 16). Spiegelman
successfully deployed comics to portray the horror of the
Holocaust – to draw the
indescribable, so to speak.
7
Hugo Frey and Benjamin Noy, in their introduction to a
special issue of Rethinking History on the use of the graphic
novel in historical
representation, note that this text, more than any other,
transformed the status of
comics as a legitimate vehicle for the telling of history.
8
It has also become a staple in
women’s comics, with important comic artists such as Jessica
Abel, Erika Lopez, Julie
Doucet, and Lynda Barry expanding the possibilities of the
form. Barry, in particular,
considers issues of self-representation in the introduction to her
One Hundred Demons,
where she introduces the concept of “autobifictionalography” to
describe her project,
interrogating the limits between truth and necessary invention
or elaboration: “Is it

28. autobiography if parts of it are not true? Is it fiction if parts of
it are?” (2002: 7).
9
These
graphic artists have demonstrated the flexibility of the comics
to literally represent
memory, dreams, possibilities, and engage the idiosyncrasies of
the present. Terri
Sutton considers women’s autobiographical comics as the most
“adventurous” of the
genre, noting how their art is enacted most significantly in the
private sphere (1993:
111). Interestingly, Trina Robbins explains that:
big chunks of women’s comix tend to be about the artist’s
dysfunctional family,
miserable childhood, fat thighs, and boyfriend problems.
Although [Aline]
Kominsky seems to have invented the form, the
autobiographical comic actually
harkens back to the confessional style of mainstream romance
comics (1999: 91).
10
Robbins’s perspective links women’s graphic autobiography
with earlier forms, even as
she notes that these contemporary women significantly
transcend the limits of those
earlier texts – artistically, thematically, representationally.
Contemporary graphic autobiography dialogues with other
narrative conventions,
as well as furthers the possibilities of graphic expression.

29. Satrapi’s use of comics as
autobiography illustrates Egan’s assertion that “[e]very
occasion for mixing genres
demonstrates how distinctive sign systems can intersect and
merge to signify meanings
at which neither one could arrive alone” (Egan, 1999: 21). This
form limns the
interactions between drawing and language, and its ostensible
simplification is actually
a complex strategy for the representation of events and
perspectives that may be
difficult to communicate only through words. Scott McCloud
explains this strategy
when he describes
cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification.
When we abstract an image
through cartooning, we are not so much eliminating details as
we are focusing on specific
details. By stripping down an image to its essential “meaning,”
an artist can amplify that
meaning in a way that realistic art can’t (McCloud, 1994: 30,
emphasis in original).
Interestingly, this approach to understanding graphic art is
structurally related to one of
the constitutive elements of the memoir of childhood, where
specific details acquire
heightened meaning. The process of memory often involves the
symbolic interrogation
of particular artifacts, sensory detail like the taste of specific
food or the smell of a
childhood home, brief conversations or episodes that resound
emotionally in the
author’s memory. Because these texts are written in adulthood,
the significance of

30. P R O S E S T U D I E S26 8
these “shards of memory,” to use Salman Rushdie’s term, is
heightened as they might
be the only remnants left of that lost past and lost time. In
memoirs like Satrapi’s, the
specific event or detail gives meaning to the whole, as with the
comic, where the
simplest drawing might acquire the most universal meaning.
Another structural connection between the writing of childhood
and graphic art
lies in the manner in which both forms negotiate specific ways
of perceiving. The issue
of perspective is fundamental to how we read both
autobiographies and graphic
narratives, as the forms themselves require the reader to
position him- or herself
strategically in order to comprehend the performance which has
been enacted. In
relation to comics, McCloud explains that
Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing.
The ability of cartoons to
focus our attention on an idea is, I think, an important part of
their special power,
both in comics and in drawing generally (1994: 31, emphasis in
the original).
Childhood memoirs similarly focus our attention on specific
ideas and forms of
understanding the world, the writers’ individual itinerary of
selfhood. Noting

31. constitutive intersections in these modes of inscription, we must
approach
contemporary graphic autobiographies as increasingly
sophisticated forms of inscribing
the past. Further, metaliterary elements serve as signifying
strategies and these comics
engage, in particularly effective ways, the writers’ perception of
themsleves and their
process of education. Indeed, graphic narratives are highly
effective künstlerroman (novels
on the education of an artist) – because the subjects of the
autobiographical comics are,
most often, graphic artists themselves. The reader is privileged
to participate in the
performance of both memory and art, and the complex
interaction between them.
Persepolis: the graphic memoir
In the context of transcultural writing that negotiates the
historical and cultural
upheaval in Iran in the latter part of the twentieth century,
Marjane Satrapi harnesses
the expressive possibilities of the comics form to enact the
dramatic changes she
experienced as a child – beginning with the Islamic revolution
and ending with her solo
journey to Austria. I propose to read Satrapi’s transcultural
graphic autobiography as a
literary and cultural site for the negotiation and management of
the memory of
childhood perceptions and positioning, family, history, politics,
religion, and social
transformation. The narrator-protagonist’s emerging
subjectivity in Persepolis is based
upon a series of shifting affiliations and growing awareness of

32. the complexity of
religious, ideological, gender, class, and even literary issues.
Her choice of medium is
deliberate, though it appears to challenge conventional
prescriptive ways of inscribing
experience. As she explains in an essay titled “On Writing
Persepolis”:
People always ask me, “Why don’t you write a book?” But
that’s what Persepolis is.
To me, a book is pages related to something that has a cover.
Graphic novels are
not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are
second-rate. Images are a
way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and
to draw it seems a
shame to choose one. I think it’s better to do both.
11
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