From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 15:06:10 -0500

The other night I read Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi, the second volume of her 4-volume graphic memoir to be published year in the U.S.
(Pantheon, 2004). It picks up where the original Persepolis left off, with 14-year-old Marjane arriving in Vienna after her parents arranged for her to leave Iran in the early 1980s.

I had to keep reminding myself for much of it that she was a teenager, because she was living in the world--in a foreign country--essentially on her own for the entire time she was away from home. So she navigates school and friendships, finding a group in which she seems to fit, as well as groceries and housing issues--nasty landlords and limited funds--very much an outsider and very much an adult in many ways. Strangely--or perhaps not so--it's much darker than the first book, although with fewer scenes of terrific intensity. There is still the deft balance of humor with frightening realities (here, those include drugs, homelessness, and severe depression). But whereas the first book very much captures the horror of what happened wiht the Islamic Revolution, Marjane's youth and her parents efforts to shelter her made those horrors she described, while very affecting, less personal. In Persepolis 2, she is experiencing all the difficulties of being a refugee firsthand, and that colors the tone of the narrative.

The book follows Marjane's time in Europe as a teenager, and her return to Iran, where she is suddenly displaced in a new way for having been away. She is in her 20's, already married and divorced and ready to leave Iran again, when this volume ends.

Megan

Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, UW-Madison 600 N. Park St., Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706

ph: 608&2?03 fax: 608&2I33 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 26 May 2005 03:06:10 PM CDT