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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
by Authors:
Marjane Satrapi
Hardcover Description:
Picking up the thread where her debut memoir-in-comics concluded, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return details Marjane Satrapi's experiences as a young Iranian woman cast abroad by political turmoil in her native country. Older, if not exactly wiser, Marjane reconciles her upbringing in war-shattered Tehran with new surroundings and friends in Austria. Whether living in the company of nuns or as the sole female in a house of eight gay men, she creates a niche for herself with friends and acquaintances who feel equally uneasy with their place in the world.
After a series of unfortunate choices and events leave her literally living in the street for three months, Marjane decides to return to her native Iran. Here, she is reunited with her family, whose liberalism and emphasis on Marjane's personal worth exert as strong an influence as the eye-popping wonders of Europe. Having grown accustomed to recreational drugs, partying, and dating, Marjane now dons a veil and adjusts to a society officially divided by gender and guided by fundamentalism. Emboldened by the example of her feisty grandmother, she tests the bounds of the morality enforced on the streets and in the classrooms. With a new appreciation for the political and spiritual struggles of her fellow Iranians, she comes to understand that "one person leaving her house while asking herself, 'is my veil in place?' no longer asks herself 'where is my freedom of speech?'"
Satrapi's starkly monochromatic drawing style and the keenly observed facial expressions of her characters provide the ideal graphic environment from which to appeal to our sympathies. Bereft of fine detail, this graphic novel guides the reader's attention instead toward a narrative rich with empathy. Don't be fooled by the glowering self-portrait of the author on the back flap; it’s nearly impossible to read Persepolis 2 without feeling warmth toward Marjane Satrapi. --Ryan Boudinot
Average Customer Rating:
BRAVO!!!!!
Bravo. A wonderful seamless melding of history, memoir, fiction, and visual art. I was skeptical about the ability of the graphic novel to communicate, but what better way than a visual illustration to show how uncomfortable and dehumanizing is the hooded scarf. The main character (fictionalized author/first person) is lovable: full of faults, sometimes wavering in whether she should conform with the others (the easier path), but ultimately true to herself, as her wise grandmother advises her to be. What a wonderful family she has, her parents really let her be herself, regardless of the impossible oppressive social environment that is the Iran of the 1970s and 1980s. This story is a testament to how a family cannot just bow to the status quo, but has the power to influence their only child, a daughter, to stand up to political oppression, even if it means self-exile. Again, not only is this a wonderful story of a family, but on a parallel level, is an excellent history of Iran the nation, the conflicts in the Middle East, and the ambivalent aftermath of colonialism and centuries of war and conquest. I am looking forward to the translation of Persepolis 3 (my French will never improve fast enough to read it in the original).
Second volume slightly better than the first.
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (Pantheon, 2004)
Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis took the world by storm a few years ago, first in its native French, then in English. Of course, since the graphic autobiography ("graphic" in terms of "graphic novel," not as in 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed) stops when Satrapi is fourteen, you know there has to be more.
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return takes us through Satrapi's adolescence-- her years in Europe, then, as the title promises, a return to Iran during her eighteenth year after a cascade of nasty events (some her fault, some not) that leave her homeless and ill.
Where Persepolis is good, its sequel plays on the first book's strengths while more successfully integrating the overarching issues of the never-ending wars in which Iran finds itself. When Satrapi discusses the regime's reasons for using the veils in the book's most important panels, it doesn't seem intrusive at all, despite stopping the action (briefly) and having no use other than imparting sociopolitical values. It's a very rare thing when that works.
Persepolis is good stuff; Persepolis 2 is even better. *** ½
Yawn
Persepolis 2 is everything Persepolis 1 wasn't. In fact it's a bit of a yawn. The author's story of life as a student in Europe is ho-hum. It does pick up a bit when she returns to Iran, but never reaches the heights of the first book.
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DVD's
BRAVO!!!!! 
Second volume slightly better than the first. 
Yawn 
