Review: Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi

If the art doesn't overcome reader objection to the source material is it the fault of the art or the reader? Chicken With Plums is getting rave reviews as a film so I thought I'd check the source material out. As always, Satrapi has a beautiful approach to her tale. A few of the art panels (our main character ruminating on Sophia Loren, for example) are exceptional. Her ear for multi-generational family dynamics is solid. The difficulty I have while reading Chicken With Plums is my absolute loathing for the main character.

Satrapi is telling a fictionalized version of a true tale. Her great uncle, Nassar Ali Khan, suffers a disappointment in life and wills himself to die. Satrapi walks a fine line here. One one side of the coin she wants the reader to engage with and feel for Nassar. On the other, he's a terrible human being. He's not evil, he's a self involved child. The reader is told fairly early that he's going to die and I was completely okay with that outcome. At no point did I find it tragic, at no point did I wish he could have a happier ending. Nassar decides to give up on life and I think "Well, okay. That's fine." I don't think that's the reaction I was supposed to have. On the sympathy side, Nassar was estranged from his family, obsessed with a woman he could not have. His only solace in life was his music. Eventually, that is denied him. (Or he chooses to deny it to himself. It's a matter for debate.) Obviously, Nassar is a deeply depressed man. He is probably chemically depressed and all the other things one would have to be to lie down one morning and decide never to get back up.

He's still a self indulgent child who completely shafted his family. Once, decades ago, he was denied the woman he wanted. Therefore he makes another woman suffer. Once, decades ago, his mother didn't favor him. So he chooses not to favor his own son. I don't buy that there is always a golden child, that for every Abel a Cain is required. These are choices we make as people. If the story of Nassar had been told from another viewpoint I would have felt more sympathy for him. Unfortunately the unloved son isn't treated well in the book either. He is disparaged for his weight, the weight of his eventual children, and the perceived lack of moral fiber in Nassar's granddaughter. Is this to say Nassar was right? To somehow justify his poor parenting? I couldn't get behind it.

Satrapi does a beautiful job of showing the tragedy of Nassar being lost in youthful dreams and refusing (or being unable) to create a satisfying life with the woman and children he had. His wife is the catalyst for his decision to die, but can we blame her? I spent only a few pages with Nassar yet I was willing to drive him over the edge. Chicken With Plums may be slow in places but the tale it tells definitely has punch. If it's the punch the author intended, I can't say. I don't think I will seek the movie out. Nassar and I, we just don't get along.

Review: Persepolis 2 The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

 Having talked about Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood I suppose I should address the sequel. Most people are going to read these two books in one volume. I almost wish they were not packaged together. While the story Marjane tells in this second section of her life is no less compelling it is less universal. 

In the first, Satrapi is a young child at the mercy of the forces around her. In the second she is a young adult making the sorts of bad choices many young adults make. Because she is in some control it is easier for the reader to judge her. In judging her the tale loses some of it's universal power. Where young Satrapi is grounded in her family, teenage Satrapi is lost. Her focus moves from the external to the internal. Having become an expatriate she is without family or culture to sustain her during some very formative years. She falls into self destructive habits that ultimately force her back to Iran. As much as Satrapi has changed (her parents don't recognize her) so too has her country. Now we are in an Iran Westerners feel comfortable with. Her struggles feel less immediate, there is a distance that one doesn't feel in The Story of a Childhood. I think the author is a remarkable woman and a remarkable talent. I am certain that some of the events she depicts so honestly in The Story of a Return haunt her to this day. It is to her immense credit that she neither excuses nor defends herself from reader censure. Satrapi reports her life and then stands beside it. 

In The Story of a Return Satrapi covers the drug years, the misguided love years, the years of finding herself in small rebellions that wouldn't have been open to a woman of a different class. She acknowledges her privileges and her limitations. Ultimately, like many displaced by war, the author realizes that she cannot live in her home country again. It is something often forgotten when we discuss immigrants. They are caught between worlds, having children that will always be slightly alien to them, trying to assimilate into a culture they didn't truly choose. When Germany unified all East Germans woke up in another country. The streets were the same, the neighbors were the same, but their home was forever gone. No matter how much they longed for freedom, that is a massive adjustment one can only imperfectly make. I hope there is, or will be, a third volume of Persepolis (The Story of Exile?) covering these years for Satrapi. She has had great success in her adopted country but I wonder what the cost was. 

Review: Persepolis, The Story of A Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Last night I was discussing Habibi and it's affection for rape. Passages of Habibi put me in mind of contrasting passages from Persepolis. There is a scene with Satrapi's mother early in the revolution. she is accosted by a group of young men who threaten her with rape. Late in the book a young refugee is raped and executed. Both of these events happen offscreen. The effect of the events on Satrapi's family is the focus, not the events themselves. There is no loving close up of violence against women. Any close up is on the revulsion and fear that violence created. Two panels of violence's aftermath is more realistic than anything in Habibi. Women live in the constant shadow of sexual violence in a way men, although often victims themselves, do not. While Habibi used this violence frequently, in Persepolis it is barely mentioned but far more devastating.

Persepolis is one of the gold standards in graphic memoir for a reason. It might seem unfair to treat it as a fictionalized book but the power of it's real life events further illuminate the failure of imagination present in sexualized fiction. Satrapi comes completely alive in her book. We know who she is, we know the people around her, we care about their fates. A young child when the Shah is overthrown, Satrapi travels through her country's journey from a modern state to a repressed region. (Given that we will likely be at war with Iran before the end of the year, Persepolis becomes even more important.)

As a young girl, Satrapi has a personal relationship with Allah. She is educated in French schools and lives a life of comfortable affluence with her own servant (slave) and material comfort. As her country falls into disquiet and revolution, so does she. Marx slowly replaces God in her dreams, her goal of being The Prophet is replaced by dreams of revolution. Her parents march in the streets until the Shah is deposed and victory seems at hand. Satrapi struggles to make sense of the conflicting revolutions. War with Iraq arrives as long lost uncles and parents stream out of the prisons. The religious right scoops it's own political prisoners up for torture or execution and the veil is imposed. Western schools are closed and segregated. The cultural revolution isn't going the way her family intended. Classmates disappear through emigration or death. Even in her protected bubble of wealth and connections Satrapi is forced to confront the millions killed for the protection of political powers. Her own small rebellions, her refusal to relinquish everything about her former life lead her to a crossroads. Satrapi can either embrace radicalism or she can embrace exile.

When Neda Soltan was killed in 2009 many Westerners thought surely that would bring down the regime. Our Persian friends had a clearer view. They knew, as young Satrapi would have, that she was just one of the many. Yet another girl killed in the name of power, in the name of a narrow view of faith that must be upheld above all reason. In the early days of the revolution Satrapi's uncle thought that religious radicalism could not last. He believed that the men of faith would return to their temples and leave the daily running of the land to a new idealistic democracy. (Obviously, he misjudged that one. A cautionary tale for women in the current American political climate.) With so many books like Habibi, Aaron & Ahmed and Holy Terror on the market it is a gift to read Persepolis again. When we demonize  the people of Iraq or Iran instead of the institutions holding them captive, we demonize young Satrapi. Read Persepolis; The Story of a Childhood and think about who the enemies really are.