The second half of Persepolis was much more difficult for me, and I never know how to feel about it. I think above all else Satrapi deserves a lot of credit for describing herself realistically rather than trying to paint herself as a good person. (not that she was a bad person, but that she didn't shy away from parts of the story that show her in a poor light) I have a lot of respect for her honesty in the second half of the story, however her time in exile in Europe seemed to be one of self-indulgence, meandering, and minor self-destruction. All of which are understandable for someone who has been through such a traumatic turn of events, however it was a bit sad that the young, rebellious child that was so likable did not seem to survive the conflict.
It seems like you're disappointed it wasn't a modern "noble savage" myth, that it was realistic instead of a fairy tale about a person coming from a bad place to a good place and being happy, wholesome, and free.
This kind of mythology is a pretty big problem in the western world right now as is the kneejerk reaction to it.
I read Persepolis a few years ago, and it’s hard not to come away with a similar impression. The first part often does resemble a fairy tale of sorts, while the second part is a pretty dark story of teenage alienation. The contrast is jarring, and it goes well beyond “duh nobody’s perfect”.
Both parts are excellent in their own right, and quite unlike any other book I’ve read, but there is indeed something strange going on in part 2. Most readers will remember this, I think.
Vulnerable young people becoming low level drug dealers (often for lack of other options) isn't exactly a rare story.
I will second, the graphic novel is excellent. Up there with Maus in terms of showing you a new perspective.
The simple humanity in this candid description brought a small tear to my eyes. I'd say that the classical approach to this is a dry, clinical description of a depression stage, or a description of a how and not a why. Very welcomed in the age of AI slop!
This isn't a fringe conspiracy. There's substantial documentation and well-sourced evidence - verifiable institutional actors with control over media outlets, public figures, and politicians -pointing to a systematic, decades-long negative framing of Iran. 70+ years, traceable to the CIA/MI6 coup of 1953 that overthrew Iran's democratically elected government to protect Western oil interests.
The pattern is consistent: nuclear weapons, terrorists, bad regime, and so on. Iran has genuine human rights problems that deserve scrutiny. But so do Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt - US allies that receive a tiny fraction of the negative coverage Iran has received.
The asymmetry is the tell.
A quote from Marjane:
"The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you.
And our governments are very much the same."
Marjane opposed the Shah.
Marjane opposed the theocratic regime.
Marjane opposed what the West had done/was doing to Iran. Repeatedly, consistently.
I don't know what she would have said about this current war, I'm safely assuming she would almost certainly have opposed it. However I guess she would have been criticising both the Iranian government's conduct and the Western aggression driving it.
To me, that's a mark of someone who was actually telling the truth.
RIP
EDIT:
Marjane became inconvenient to both sides - this is what happens in our world when you don't uncritically and simplistically stick to one side bad or one side good, instead of using your brain to find the flaws, the hypocrisies, in both sides. This world has more than one "bad guy", and people really don't like hearing that.
Persepolis made her unwelcome in Iran for obvious reasons - she depicted the Islamic Republic honestly, including the repression, the executions, the hypocrisy of the ruling class. But she also became uncomfortable for Western audiences who wanted a clean "Iran bad, West good" narrative, because she didn't deliver that.
Even Khomeini was in exile in France until the shah was deposed.
> Left Iran for Europe again at 24 and continued her art studies in Strasbourg, France.
> Now lives in Paris as a French citizen. Since publishing "Persepolis," has not been back to Iran.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/0...
It says so right in the title so I may have misunderstood your question.
And unlike the UK and US, they had no historic bad blood with Iran (Mossadegh et al.)
But of course the other kind of people very rarely have someone writing international bestsellers on their behalf, so this is all we’ll get.
You can read plenty of good about Iran if you read something other than geopolitical news. It's a very interesting country with an incredibly interesting history and language. The news is a pretty poor source for much of anything except for "events are happening" or "politicians have an agenda in [area]" -- I don't mean to belittle those. Both of those matter, but really no one should consider the news to provide thorough treatment for any large topic.
It's always a joy to talk shop with a guy in England, a guy in Iran, and a guy in Poland in the same thread.
I do recognize that the type of person who I might encounter in the workplace is an educated, accomplished, English-speaking person who has likely gone through cultural adjustments to operate in an American workplace. So there’s a filter there.
But when you get to know people, especially when they talk about their family and childhood, the idea that a nation is full of bad people full of hate is just laughable.
> Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran (2006) is a travel book written by British travel writer Jason Elliot.
And a fascinating history of mathematics as well.
I also believe that your claim of seven "official allowed" haircuts is bs, as with almost everything I ever read about Iran.
Source: I see that Tehrani men have the same variety of haircuts and facial hair styles as in any other city on the planet.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
1. Departure - from a humble background the subject leaves amid struggle
2. Growth and Initiation - the subject discovers who they are building themselves into the hero they'll become
3. Heroic Return - the now hero makes a return to their beginnings to great success
Instead, Persepolis is a much more realistic story and each act is around three very different kinds of strife experienced by our hero and only in the very end a kind of coda where things go well.
My criticism of the criticism is that Persepolis is tremendously more realistic than the hero's journey and people are jarred by it because it doesn't represent their imagination of what real world struggle is like, the fact that it upsets people is one of those deep core societal issues because of the wrongness of the lens people see the world through.
For reference, I also really enjoyed the Catcher in the Rye, and there are some superficial similarities: a young person is scarred by events in their lives and succumbs to depression. (there are a myriad of differences between the two stories -- I'm not drawing an equivalence, just making one comparison)
Catcher in the Rye is probably best read as an angry teenager: you meet Holden Caufield and he's witty, cynical, funny, defiant, etc. You might fall in love with the character, but what you ultimately learn is that he's a miserable failure; he lost the battle with his depression and so many of the people he was cutting down were just normal, decent people trying to enjoy their lives.
Crucially, we never meet Holden when he is young, bright eyed, and innocent. The narrative structure shows us who he is right away, and we the reader learn that this is actually quite a bad thing throughout the course of the story.
Persepolis works a bit differently: we spend the first half of the book with innocent, bright-eyed Marjane and we fall in love with that character. The character we fall in love with is taken from us by the way, by the events of the story, by living unsupervised in exile, etc. It's nothing but sad. It's well-written, it's very memorable, but I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling unhappy about an unhappy turn of events.
Indeed, the story is quite Western overall, which is perhaps unsurprising, given that the author had already been living in the West for over a decade when she wrote it.
It didn't send its military for that reason, if that helps.
Hell, if you read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, you would find plenty of similar examples. The haircuts are just the cherry on top of that authoritarian cake.
Also, the west is not just the US. Trump failed to find anyone willing to join him in his military adventures.
And yet, you think that Tehrani's are somehow different in their haircut styles compared to other places in Iran?
I can tell you about nuances you won't read anywhere. Like, many Tehrani's obviously derive a lot of their fashion/styling sense from Shirazi's (whether they like to admit it or not). Indeed, I've spent more time in Shiraz than Tehran. So many good times in Esfahan, Yazd, Kashan, Tabriz, Zanjan, and countless others. I've travelled around the Kurdish region, to the Caspian Sea, and to the Persian Gulf. I honestly could not count the number of times I've visited, and each visit was between one and six months. Not working - just enjoying Iran and getting to know the place and it's people, over a period of more than a decade (up until recently).
I have a "VIP" card from a Mullah at Qom, who was present as a young man when Khomeini was giving pre-revolution speeches. I've been places almost zero (possibly zero) foreigners have been for many decades. I've been drunk inside speak-easies in small towns. I've been inside the tomb of Xerxes I - not even local professors get to do that, ever. I've had to organise access to specific sites with the IRGC. I've seen more of Iran than almost all Iranians. I've had my own apartment, and I have a reasonable level of Farsi.
Just think how many "actual iranians" I would need to have spoken with - in Iran - to make these things possible in my life. Not just passing conversations - dinners, family events, long cafe chats, I've even been invited on family vacations.
But, you read a book, spout disinformation about "official" haircuts, and now you double down it.
> I wasn't personally insulting nor aggressive in any comment I have made. I didn't spread disinformation. This thread is inherently political by nature, and I have been objective.
> It just goes to show, even here on HN, if you don't stick to the "THIS SIDE GOOD THAT SIDE BAD" narrative, your voice WILL be restricted.
> Again, RIP Marjane, you taught me a lot about Iran and the world.
You're not shadow banned, but comments peddling objectively false conspiracy theories and whining about downvoting do not play well here.
But complaining about upvotes and moderation is bad decorum and will get you downvoted out.