Persepolis

Sartrapi, M. (2004).   Perseplis. NY:  Pantheon.

In 1979, during the Islamic Revolution, Marji’s life is forever changed.  Her bilingual school is closed and she is separated from her friends.  Boy and girls were no longer allowed to go to the same school.  They made all girls wear veils.  Marji is very religious and believes she is the last prophet of God.  She secretly writes her own holy book.  She doesn’t want her parents to know that she wants to be a prophet. She later changes her mind because of the revolution. Her mother and father would attend political protest.  She grew very close to her Uncle Anoosh.  He teachers her about the world.  He is later executed and she has a hard time dealing with it.  She is very headstrong and her behavior gets her expelled from school.  Worried at what can happen to her, her family sends her to Vienna.  There she is put in a boarding house ran by nuns and it does not go well for her.  She misses her family and becomes depressed and homeless. She ends up sick and moves back home to Iran giving up her freedom once more.   She continues to do social activism.  She then gets married to Reza, parities, and then gets divorced.  She felt trapped and drew herself behind bars after she was married.  Her father new she wasn’t happy. She realized Iran was not for her and moves back to Europe.  She only gets to see her grandma one more time before she dies.   I like this book because it lets you see the world in a different perspective.  Sometimes, we get to wrapped up in our lives and forget about what other people around the world go through.  This book would be age-appropriate for middle school students.  I would say as young as 5^th graders.  You can analyze the characters in this book and compare how their life is different in Iran compared to ours in the USA.  As a teacher, you can teach students how governments are ran differently in other countries and how freedom is taken away from people.  This is an autobiography graphic novel.  The author wrote about her life in Iran and how she dealt with politics, growing-up, and family. Some of the themes used in this book are family, politics, freedom, confinement, morality, and religion.  All these themes play a vital part in the book.  Her family was very important to her, especially her grandma, but she also liked her freedom from Iran and all its political and religious confinement. Sartrapi uses black and white illustrations to show how Iran is black and white in many aspects like dress codes and rules.  She doesn’t use a lot of adjectives because she uses pictures to reflect her writing.