Is it Literature, though?

I'm asking myself if this counts. When I read it, I am moved by it, and although there are pictures, I do not think this is a book intended for young children. On these points alone I deem it acceptable for my final project for English Literature, and I move forward. I cannot spend a lot of time second guessing, because life is so tormentingly short. The author I have chosen for my final project is Marjane Satrapi.

  Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran in 1969, according to, well, Satrapi herself. She grew up in the chaos that was the Islamic Revolution, and only escaped it briefly when her parents sent her to school in Vienna. She is best known for her graphic novel "Persepolis" and the film adaptation of this award winning novel. Satrapi now makes her home in Paris, and continues to write graphic novels and contributes articles to magazines and newspapers such as The New Yorker, and The New York Times.


Works Cited
Satrapi, Marjane. "PAGES FROM PERSEPOLIS 2: THE STORY OF A RETURN." Women's Studies Quarterly 34.1 (2006): 129-32. ProQuest. Web. 30 Oct. 2015. 
       Very limited article that gave me a bit of a summation of the contents of Persepolis, as well as a view into what Satrapi is doing currently. 


            Satrapi's work "Persepolis" is considered a graphic memoir. Satrapi both wrote AND illustrated this work.  According to Root this makes them "....more fully the creative vision of a single person". 
NOTE--- "She followed Persepolis with Embroideries, a book in which seven women discuss their

lives in Iran, and more recently with Chicken with Plums, a book about the life
and death of an uncle. The first two books were a continuous narrative, one about
childhood, one about young maturity; the third was very much like a play, carried
mostly by dialogue; the fourth resembled, in style and form, a folk tale."
"Satrapi states in her interview with Robert Root that some of her work is fiction, but just simple things like changing the names of some characters, or perhaps giving a  story based in fact a more interesting angle. "Of course you have to make fiction, you have to cheat,
you have to make some angle around there, because the story has to turn,
so that is the reconstruction of what we do." Satrapi labels herself as a "lousy writer" in terms of writing a novel. She seems to feel much more comfortable writing short articles rather than having an entire book based around her stories or ideas, which is why she employs art- to help to tell a story she cannot put into words. She finds comics very actively engaging as a storytelling medium. Satrapi explains how in Iran women are educated, but only respected or worth half as much as men. They cannot have their concerns heard, because they have no rights. If men speak to their rights, they often end up imprisoned. Typically, men have no complaints, so they do not need to be heard as much as the women. 
Satrapi claims that when she works, she enters a trance like state, where she is unaware of what is going on around her, and sees only the work. Satrapi states that all work is a story and should be read as such, she thinks people get to hung up on the details. A story even based in truth can be misremembered, or parts can be fuzzy. i find her very self deprecating in a way, and extremely self aware. I am fascinated by her thoughts on intellect, life and death, and what it means to be a "nasty" person. We are all nasty and imperfect to Satrapi, and it seems that she is both gleeful and baleful about that fact. 

" In the story my limit is to try not to hurt any-
one, so I change the names and faces and everything of everybody—not
that I care so much to not hurt people, but basically it’s because my point
of view and their point of view are certainly not the same, so at least I
know that my point of view is certainly not the right one, because there is
another one. I had a husband who for me was a very nasty man, and I don’t
have his face and his name [in the book]. Of course if you ask his point of
view, for him I would be the nasty one, and certainly for him he is right,
for his own reasons. So in the knowledge of that, that there are two points
of view, I would never permit to myself to draw him, because then I would
be judging him. It’s extremely shameless to judge people in this way. So of
course I have limits. Of course I believe I always give myself the freedom
of speaking and saying what I say, but my freedom also stops where the
freedom of others start. So I am careful about that."
Satrapi's work is unique too, in the sense that she does not come from the culture of comics. If you read "Persepolis" you understand that western goods and things such as posters and music were considered contraband, so Satrapi literally had no access to comics or graphic novels as an art form (aside from some early Batman and Dracula in her youth), yet this is how she decided to tell her own story.

Satrapi states that as soon as she knows how to do something, it no longer holds interest to her. Satrapi has never sought fame and fortune, she is just happy to be able to do what she wants to do.


Works Cited
Root, Robert. "Interview with Marjane Satrapi." Fourth Genre 9.2 (2007): 147,157,181. ProQuest. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.  A 13 page interview by Robert Root. Root has not a lot if interesting comments or questions, but Satrapi gives us more than enough insight into herself and her creative process in this interview from 2007.

Humor is very important to Satrapi.


The first time I
left Iran for Austria I was 14 (that
was 1984), and I heard people with
all kinds of prejudices—especially
about countries like mine. They
were completely wrong, so I kept
telling my story over and over. It be
-
came an obligation—I
had
to write
because I was so fed up by all these
misunderstandings. I couldn’t do
anything else but write about myself
because I’m not a politician. I’m not
a historian. I’m not a sociologist.
I’m not any of those things. It hap
-
pened that I was born in a certain
place and at a certain time. As much
as I can be uncertain about lots of
things, I know what I have lived. 
 "NEWSMAKER: MARJANE SATRAPI." American Libraries 45.9 (2014): 18.

yr:2014 vol:45 iss:9-10 pg:18

ProQuest. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.

 A very short article, mostly talking about the banning of Satrapi's book for a brief time in Chicago (2013). Satrapi clamined this is the best way to get people to read a book. It piques their natural curiosity. She talks about the fact that books were banned under the Shah in her country, and then that many more were banned after the revolution. She thinks it is good that America is a country that likes to read. 

      Satrapi states that she never intended to be a comic writer and artist, although she did intend to write and create art. She was inspired by Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus "I had was that comics were for adolescents. But then you read ‘Maus’ and realize comics are just a medium for expressing yourself and it was a revelation. ... You see it’s possible to make that.". Satrapi's works, Persepolis and Chicken with Plums would both win the Coup de Couer Award at Angoulême . She would also be nominated for an Oscar, for her onscreen adaptation of "Persepolis". She enjoys touring colleges and reaching America's youth, claiming that "you can't change someone who is 60". Her works are taught in many colleges in the United States. Satrapi speaks six languages; Farsi, Swedish, German, Italian, French and English. She writes her works only in French, and then they are translated. " All big changes of the world come from words."

Work Cited


THE COMIC RIFFS INTERVIEW: ‘Persepolis’s MARJANE SATRAPI comes not to bury American culture but to (mostly) praise it [*even if modern Hollywood is incapable of ‘Casablanca’]

 

punks not Ded- http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/a-canvas-for-popular-dissent-zahras-paradise/
Smoke-http://ffffound.com/home/tabac/found/
war-http://ravepad.com/page/persepolis/images/view/1629083/The-stills-from-the-movie
skelamerica- http://www.w12.fr/2/persepolis-movie.html
Marjane- https://ncacblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/marjane-satrapi-to-cps-find-your-brain-again-stop-lying/ 
Marjane cartoon-https://satrapism.wordpress.com/introduction-to-the-author/  

From the book:PERSEPOLIS
by Marjane Satrapi. Translation Copyright ©
2003
by L'Association, Paris, France. Originally published in French by L'Association in
2000
and
2001
.

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