I’ve been amped to see Persepolis since I read an interview with its author (it was originally a graphic novel) Marjane Satrapi several months ago. Tasnim over at Racialicious says it’s a mistake for reviewers to confuse memoirs like Persepolis, which is largely set in Iran, to be an insider’s authoritative take on an “alien world.”
Such neatly phrased praise decorates the blurbs of bestselling books everywhere, and is possibly not intended to be taken as strict truth stripped of all rhetoric. But it seems to overlay a genuine feeling that reading the personal experiences of an oriental is conducive to comprehending “a world, most Westerners can scarcely comprehend”…
It seems to me that having the political depth of the conflict between fundamentalism and democracy requires a lot of ‘depth’. Such depth as might perhaps extend beyond the personal frame of a memoir and into history. These are conflicts that Satrapi’s dry remarks acknowledge. As she says, “if I pretend that I was sitting in a house worrying day and night about my country, that would be a big lie.”
More at Racialicious.
