Banned in Chicago? Really?!? Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis When she was but nine years old, Marjane Satrapi’s comfortable world began to slowly change. At first her family and their neighbors believed the change to be good. Their homeland had succeeded in deposing a tyrannical ruler, in the process freeing thousands of political prisoners and – they thought – bringing western-style democracy (or perhaps socialism) to one of the world’s oldest and proudest civilizations. That’s what they thought, but, as Robbie Burns might have said, “The best-laid plans…
In a classic example of cooptation, the revolution that overturned one repressive regime segued into another – a regime of religious fundamentalism even more repressive than its predecessor. The country’s new leaders shut down the universities to root out the “decadence” and instituted dress codes for men, women and children. War with a neighboring country cost three years and nearly a million lives.
Against this background, Marji grew into a teenager who loved Michael Jackson and denim jackets; Nikes and bootleg cassette tapes. In a country where black-clad tattletales could haul girls to “The Committee” (the Guardians of the Revolution), the Satrapi family’s western ways became increasingly dangerous; until finally her parents sent her abroad to live with family friends.
Twenty years later, Marjane Satrapi published her memoir of the four years from the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty to the day she left Tehran for Vienna: Persepolis.
Persepolis, published in 2003 in the States, is a graphic novel written and drawn by Satrapi and translated from the original French by Mattias Ripa and Blake Ferris. At 153 pages in English, the memoir is a relatively quick read, which – combined with the graphic format – has made it a favorite for classroom studies of non-western cultures and the history of the Middle East. The graphics are entirely black and white – no grayscale – and quite simple, paired with text that seems consistent with a junior-high reading level.
Thematically, Satrapi pulls no punches in her memoir: it is clear that her family lived an upper-class life under the Shah – they have television and an American luxury car, and sent Marji to a European-style school and summer camp in France. In stark contrast to her comfortable westernized home life, torture and murder (at the hands of both regimes) are clearly depicted and frankly discussed. Satrapi and members of her extended family even dabble in Communism – at one point, a nine-year-old Marji decides that God and Karl Marx look alike, except that Marx’s hair is curlier.
Although a memoir of a family that must make a difficult choice as their country evolves into a theocracy,Persepolis is also educational for the historical significance of the time period it covers and for the manner in which the point of view is so different from that presented by American histories. For instance, the hostage-taking at the American embassy is barely mentioned. Instead, readers learn about the historical underpinnings of the Iranian Revolution and more about the Iran-Iraq War, a war most Americans have long since forgotten (if they even knew it existed). From that perspective, Satrapi’s memoir is certainly valuable to a youngster intent on learning about other cultures.
In March, 2013, however, the Chicago Public School System abruptly removed Persepolis from libraries and curricula; it was apparently on a seventh-grade reading list. This unexplained decision drew widespread condemnation from free-speech advocates after Satrapi commented that the only place she knew of where the book is banned is Iran (it is also apparently banned in UAE and Lebanon). In following days, an official of the school system indicated that the book had been found “unsuitable” for seventh-graders because of graphic depictions of torture (including one man urinating on a prisoner; his penis is clearly visible) and profanity (the s-word appears once and there may be a “damn” or two). A challenge was also apparently raised in the Chicago area in 2009. No challenging party was identified in either case. More than a few commenting parties raised the specter of anti-Muslim sentiment, given that Satrapi’s memoir depicts an Iran vastly different from the cadre of glowering, black-clad Ayatollahs the country’s name usually raises in the minds of Americans. It might also be the anti-authoritarian streak Satrapi remembers of her adolescent years. One will probably never know.
The removal of Persepolis from Chicago school libraries, however, raises a question central to debates over free speech and censorship: is restricting access to “age-inappropriate” material censorship? The Chicago school system might have overreacted to a complaint or a few complaints; their solution appears to have been to “re-label” the book as suitable for upper grades, but not for seventh-graders. Protecting the tender sensibilities of 13-year-olds sounds like a suitable compromise… However, given gruesome depictions of death and torture in freely-available graphic novels and video games, it seems that the “solution” is like locking the barn door after the horse is gone.
If you don’t mind that your adolescents see a hand-drawn weenie (that’s not on the restroom walls), read a mild swear word or two, see communism depicted in a neutral light, and learn something about a country whose name itself is a “swear word” to jingoistic Americans, let ‘em read this book. If for no other reason than that they will learn that Iranian kids aren’t so different from them, after all, let ‘em read Persepolis.