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Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production: A case study of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis Series

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Amy Malek
Amy Malek*
Affiliation:
New York University's Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2005
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Abstract

In this essay, Iranian exile cultural production is examined via a cultural studies approach, applying Hamid Naficy's work on the concept of liminality and its productive potential to analyze the Iranian women's memoir phenomenon of the past eleven years. Focus is placed primarily upon Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis, which is analyzed as part of this larger memoir phenomenon. I will argue that Persepolis is a prime example of exile cultural production—as a site for experimentation within various genres (here, that of the memoir and graphic novel), and also for identity negotiation, self-reflection, and cultural translation—thanks to the liminality and hybridity of an artist and author who feels she is “in-between.”

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 353 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2006

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Footnotes

She currently lives in New York City and is Publications Coordinator for Iranian Alliances Across Borders, a non-profit NGO that works to promote communication, leadership, and awareness in the Iranian diaspora community.

References

1 For example, at the University of California-Irvine and the University of Maryland-College Park.

2 For example, the creation of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the Iranian-American Political Action Committee, and the campaigns for public office of Ross Mirkarimi and Goli Ameri in 2004.

3 Naficy, Hamid, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles (Minneapolis, 1993).Google Scholar

4 Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (New York, 2003).Google Scholar Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (New York, 2004).Google Scholar

5 From the outset, I would like to clarify my use of the terms diaspora and exile. Due to space constraints, I will not go into the numerous arguments regarding these terms. Rather, acknowledging the significant contributions of Safran, Cohen, Gilroy, Marienstras and others to the study of diasporas, and responding to the changes within diasporas and exile that require fluid definitions of both terms, this essay will assume the notion of diaspora as defined by Ted Swedenberg and Smadar Lavie, who argue that exiles can and often do live within diaspora: “Diaspora refers to the doubled relationship or dual loyalty that migrants, exiles, and refugees have to places—their connections to the space they currently occupy and their continuing involvement with ‘back home.’” See Lavie, Smadar and Swedenburg, Ted, Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity (Durham, 1996), 14Google Scholar. In addition, I would argue that the distinction between exile and diaspora is not a comparison between two equal but different notions, but that diaspora requires the existence of communities within which exiles may be (but are not always) included. It should be noted that not all exiles live in diaspora as defined here—indeed, Satrapi's experience in Austria speaks to this community-less experience of exile in Persepolis. Finally, while taking the work of these scholars seriously, this essay insists that semantics not preclude subjects' own understandings of who they are, with whom they hold primary relationships, and how they conceive of the community or communities around them. Therefore, when using Naficy's term exile cultural production or the term Iranian diaspora, I do not intend to suggest that these are unrelated or conflicting concepts.

6 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 8.

7 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 6.

8 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 7.

9 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 7–8.

10 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 8–9.

11 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 10.

12 Scholars have agreed that it is the hybrid nature of diasporic (and exilic) identities that allows for these new productions and reproductions. Stuart Hall has argued that diasporic identities “are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference.” Hall contends that members of diaspora are in a constant state of negotiation and production of their identities, which, he adds, are “lived with and through, not despite difference; by hybridity.” Indeed, Naficy points out that exiles create “hybrid identities and syncretic cultures” that borrow—symbolically and materially—from the home society as well as the new society in exile. See Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Diaspora and Visual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews (London, 2000): 31Google Scholar.

13 Lavie and Swedenberg, Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity, 8.

14 Lavie and Swedenberg, Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity, 8.

15 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 33.

16 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 34.

17 Lavie and Swedenberg, Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity, 9.

18 Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 34.

19 Ogan, Christine, Communication and Identity in the Diaspora: Turkish Migrants in Amsterdam and Their Use of Media (Lanham, 2001), 6Google Scholar. Discussions surrounding hybridity and the third space are abundant; for the purposes of this paper, I will only briefly describe these concepts as they relate to my project.

20 Homi Bhabha in response to Rutherford, Jonathan in “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London, 1990): 211Google Scholar.

21 Lavie and Swedenberg have introduced the “third time-space” as an extension of Bhabha's third space, adding a temporal feature. They argue that this concept “stakes out a terrain that calls for, yet paradoxically refuses, boundaries, a borderzone between identity-as-essence and identity-as-conjuncture.” (See Lavie and Swedenberg, Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity, 9)

22 “Campaign of One Million Iranian Americans against Categorical Visa Ban Enters New Stages,” (6 May 2002), http://www.payvand.com/news/02/may/1027.html.

23 Adibi, Hossein, “How Iranians View Their Return Migration to Iran: A Case Study,” Iran Encountering Globalization—Problems and Prospects (London, 2003): 211.Google Scholar

24 The largest Iranian diaspora community in the world is in the United States (particularly in Los Angeles, California—known as Tehrangeles—with large, active communities in Washington, D.C., New York, and Texas), but there are large communities in several countries within the European Union, with one estimate placing Iran as one of the top ten countries of origin of asylum seekers to the EU during 1990–2000. See Castles, Stephen and Miller, Mark J., The Age of Migration (New York, 2003), 108Google Scholar.

25 See, for example, Bozorghmehr, Mehdi and Sabagh, Georges, “High Status Immigrants: A Statistical Study of Iranians in the United States,” Iranian Studies 23 (1988): 3–35Google Scholar and Fathi, Asghar, Iranian Refugees and Exiles Since Khomeini (Costa Mesa, 1991)Google Scholar; for more recent online surveys, see the 2004 Iranian-American Survey at http://www.iasurvey.org/iasurvey_2004/report.html/ or the ISG 2005 Iranian-American Community Survey at http://web.mit.edu/isg/survey.htm/.

26 See, for example, Friedlander, Jonathan and Kelly, Ron, Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles (Berkeley, 1993.)Google Scholar

27 Indeed, as one surveyor noted, the California census had Iranians “lumped under” the category of “Hispanics or Some Other.” See Bruce Bahmani, “Iranian American Survey Results,” The Iranian 9 (September 9 2004), http://www.iranian.com/BruceBahmani/2004/September/Survey/.

28 The second-generation seems to be taking a more active approach to civic responsibility and politics in diaspora, though it remains to be seen how widespread or effective this surge will be.

29 See for example, Naficy, Hamid, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For films, see Maryam, by Ramin Serry, about an Iranian family living in New Jersey during the Revolution and hostage crisis of 1979, and films by Amir Naderi, such as Manhattan by Numbers and A,B,C…Manhattan. For art, see for example Mottahedeh, Negar, “After Images of a Revolution: On the Work of Shirin Neshat and Gita Hashemi,” Radical History Review 86 (spring, 2003): 183–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Balaghi, Shiva and Gumpert, Lynn, Picturing Iran: Art, Society, and Revolution (London, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For music, see Shay, Anthony, “The 6/8 Beat Goes On: Persian Popular Music from Bazm-e Qajariyyeh to Beverly Hills Garden Parties,” in Armbrust, Walter, Mass Mediations (Berkeley, 2000): 61–87Google Scholar. For television, see Naficy, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, 1993. For literature, see Karim, Persis and Mehdi Khorrami, M., A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian-Americans (New York, 1999)Google Scholar.

30 Far Near Distance: Contemporary Positions of Iranian Artists. Exhibition 19 March–9 May 2004 at House of World Cultures, Berlin, (March 2004), http://www.universes-in-universe.de/islam/eng/2004/02/hkw/.

31 Cultural translation was introduced as a concept by Homi Bhabha to suggest that “all forms of culture are in some way related to each other, because culture is a signifying or symbolic activity,” and that “all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity.” See Rutherford, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” 209–211.

32 Adams, Kate, “The Way We Were,” Women's Review of Books, xvi, no. 12 (Sept. 1999): 8–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As quoted in Buss, Helen M., Repossessing the World: Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women (Toronto, 2002)Google Scholar.

33 Miller, Nancy, “But Enough About Me, What Do You Think of My Memoir?” Yale Journal of Criticism 13, no. 2 (2000): 421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Parini, Jay, “The Memoir Versus the Novel in a Time of Transition,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 44, no. 44 (10 July 1998): A40Google Scholar. (Quoting Philip Roth.)

35 Parini, “The Memoir Versus the Novel in a Time of Transition,” A40.

36 Miller, “But Enough About Me, What Do You Think of My Memoir?” 430. (Many disagree with the premise that memoirs are only newly popular, and have noted the history of memoir far outstretches that of autobiography. See, for example, Parini, “The Memoir Versus the Novel in a Time of Transition”).

37 Gornick, Vivian, “Foreward,” in McDonnell, Jane Taylor, Living to Tell the Tale: A Guide to Writing Memoir (New York, 1998), vii–viii.Google Scholar

38 Gornick, “Foreward,” vii–viii.

39 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., “Contemporary Memoirs, Or, Who Cares Who Did What to Whom?” The American Scholar 68, no. 3 (Summer 1999), 35.Google Scholar

40 See, for example, Guppy's, Shusha two memoirs, The Blindfold Horse: Memories of a Persian Childhood (Boston, 1988)Google Scholar and A Girl in Paris (1992), or Farmaian's, Sattareh Farman Daughter of Persia: A Woman's Journey From her Father's Harem Through the Islamic Revolution (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

41 Bahrampour, Tara, To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America (New York, 1999).Google Scholar

42 See Bahrampour, Tara, To See and See Again (New York, 1999)Google Scholar, Asayesh, Gelareh, Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America (Boston, 2000)Google Scholar, Ramazani, Nesta, The Dance of the Rose and Nightingale (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East) (Syracuse, 2002)Google Scholar, Dumas, Firoozeh Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis: Story of a Childhood (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, Nafisi, Azar, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, Goldin, Farideh, Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman (London, 2003)Google Scholar, Satrapi, Marjane Persepolis 2: Story of a Return (New York, 2004)Google Scholar, Hakakian, Roya, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (New York, 2004)Google Scholar, Pahlavi, Farah, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah – A memoir (New York, 2004)Google Scholar, Moaveni, Azadeh, Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran (New York, 2005)Google Scholar, Latifi, Afschineh, Even After All This Time: a Story of Love, Revolution, and Leaving Iran (New York, 2005)Google Scholar.

43 I have in mind Banisadr, Masoud, Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (London, 2004)Google Scholar, Farmanfarmaian, Manucher, Blood & Oil: Memoir of Iran, from the Shah to the Ayatollah, (New York, 1997)Google Scholar, re-released as Blood & Oil: A Prince's Memoir of Iran from the Shah to the Ayatollah in 2005, Ganji, Manouchehr, Defying the Iranian Revolution: From a Minister to the Shah to a Leader of Resistance (Westport, 2002)Google Scholar, and Gregorian, Vartan, The Road to Home: My Life and Times (New York, 2004)Google Scholar. Milani, Abbas, Tale of Two Cities (Washington, D.C., 1996)Google Scholar was published earlier, and although it could be argued that Molavi, Afshin, Persian Pilgrimmages (New York, 2002)Google Scholar has elements of memoir, I would argue against its classification as such.

44 Goldin, Farideh, “Culture of Iran: Iranian Women and Contemporary Memoirs,” Iran Chamber Society (Fall 2004)Google Scholar, http://www.iranchamber.com/culture/articles/iranian_women_contemporary_memoirs.php.

45 Heilbrun, “Contemporary Memoirs, Or, Who Cares Who Did What to Whom?” 37.

46 Ellerby, Janet Mason, Intimate Reading: The Contemporary Women's Memoir (Syracuse, 2001).Google Scholar

47 Heilbrun, “Contemporary Memoirs, Or, Who Cares Who Did What to Whom?” 36–37. It should be noted that Heilbrun herself later confesses, “…pushed against a wall with a gun to my head, I would have to admit that I wish the flood [of women's memoirs] would abate.” She is quick to rationalize this “flood,” however, by saying, “Women, so long silenced, now seemingly speak in chorus; but what else is to be expected?”

48 Roya Hakakian, in a presentation given to the International Conference on the Iranian Diaspora, 23–24 April 2005, Washington D.C., on a panel entitled, “Expressing our Immigrant Experiences: Writing Ourselves into History.”

49 Hakakian, “Expressing our Immigrant Experiences: Writing Ourselves into History.”

50 Hakakian, “Expressing our Immigrant Experiences: Writing Ourselves into History.”

51 Moaveni, Azadeh, Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran (New York, 2005).Google Scholar

52 Sciolino, Elaine, Persian Mirrors: the Elusive Face of Iran (New York, 2000).Google Scholar

53 Kelly Hartog, “Mullahs, Mini Skirts and Carson Daly,” California Literary Review, (16 June 2005), http://www.calitreview.com/Interviews/moaveni_9015.htm.

54 Indicative of this, perhaps, is the inclusion on Random House's Persepolis “Reader's Guide” webpage of a Suggested Reading section, including Reading Lolita in Tehran, also published by Random House, and a Further Viewing section, including Iranian art films, http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=037571457X&view=rg/.

55 Indeed, Satrapi visited her parents in Iran numerous times before the publication of Persepolis and it is only after its publication that she has chosen not to return for fear of potential harassment by government authorities. See Vincent, “Interview M. Satrapi, Persepolis, une enfance perse,” BD Selection, (4 January 2002) http://www.bdselection.com/php/?rub=page_dos&id_dossier=51/, (accessed 23 March 2005).

56 Quote from Naficy, in Vanessa E. Jones, “A Life in Graphic Detail: Iranian Exile's Memoirs Draw Readers Into Her Experience,” Boston Globe (4 October 2004), http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/10/04/a_life_in_graphic_detail?pg=full/, (accessed 23 March 2005).

57 Germaine Bree, “Autogynography,” in Olney, James, Studies in Autobiography (New York, 1988), 178–179Google Scholar.

58 Indeed, several Amazon.com reviewers remarked that their disappointment in the book stemmed from their misunderstanding of the book's premise (likely a result of clever marketing): “It is not that I disliked the book as much as it did not meet my expectations. This is NOT a book about a book club, which is what my book club wanted.”

59 Jean-Paul Gabilliet, “Fantastique bande dessinée,” Image [&] Narrative (September 2001), http://www.imageandnarrative.be/fantastiquebd/jeanpaulgabilliet.htm.

60 Persepolis was the winner of the 2004 ALA Alex Award and was included as a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, Booklist Editor's Choice for Young Adults, the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, and the School Library Journal Adult Books for Young Adults. These awards reflect both the broad appeal of Persepolis as a graphic novel, but also the continued limitation and false classification of the genre as one intended only for young adults and children.

61 Far Near East Exhibition, Berlin 2004.

62 Marcia Austin-Zacharias, “Sense of Place, Sense of Self: Windows Into an Examined Life,” Women's Studies 33 (September 2004): 787–803.

63 Miller, The Age of Migration, 423.

64 Miller, The Age of Migration, 403.

65 Brah, Avtar, Cartographies of Diaspora (New York, 1996), 181.Google Scholar

66 Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, 181.

67 Response from informal discussion, International Conference on the Iranian Diaspora, 23–24 April 2005.

68 Response from informal discussion, International Conference on the Iranian Diaspora, 23–24 April 2005.

69 Response from informal discussion, International Conference on the Iranian Diaspora, 23–24 April 2005.

70 Lisa McLaughlin, “Girl, Expatriated,” TIME Magazine (23 August 2004), http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,994937,00.html/, (accessed November 5, 2004).

71 Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis—Tome 1 (Paris, 2000). Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis—Tome 2. (Paris, 2001). Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis—Tome 3 (Paris, 2002). Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis—Tome 4. (Paris, 2003).

72 For the duration of this paper, I refer to the English versions of this work as the graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2.

73 Jones, “A Life in Graphic Detail: Iranian Exile's Memoirs Draw Readers into Her Experience,” 2004.

74 Literally “drawn strips,” bandes-dessinées refers to comics and comic books in the Franco-Belgian tradition, and is often translated to graphic novels in English, though not without its controversy. Its established place in Francophone scholarship and criticism has led to its distinction as le neuvième art (the ninth art).

75 For more on B.D. and graphic novels, see Groensteen, Thierry, Système de la Bande dessinée (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar; Eisner, Will, Comics & Sequential Art (Tamarac, 1998)Google Scholar; McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics, the Invisible Art (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; and Gravett, Paul Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life (New York, 2005)Google Scholar.

76 While it is true that Reading Lolita in Tehran has also met with great critical acclaim and commercial success, I would argue that Persepolis appeals to an audience of a wider age range, including younger readers and particularly young Iranian-Americans, who can appreciate her work in a way they can not yet with Reading Lolita, which is thick with literary criticism of English literature. In addition, Persepolis provides a different service to the Iranian-American community in that it both adds to the cultural production of hybrid literary genres, but also provides a cultural memory that Reading Lolita does not, by describing life both in Iran and in exile and dealing with the issues related to each of these locations.

77 Dominique Le Duc, “XX1st Century Graphic Novels,” Belphégor, 5, no. 1 (December 2005), http://etc.dal.ca/belphegor/vol5_no1/articles/05_01_Leduc_graphnov_fr.html.

78 Vincent, “Interview M. Satrapi, Persepolis, une enfance perse,” 2005. My translation from French.

79 Douglas Crets, “Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, by Marjane Satrapi,” The Asian Review of Books On the Web (23 March 2005), http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/arb/article.php?article=437/.

80 Patricia Storace, “A Double Life in Black and White,” New York Review of Books 52, no. 6 (7 April 2005), http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17900/.

81 Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, 112.

82 Indeed, 1/3 of these Iranian memoirs of the last six years not only speak of the Iranian-American experience at some length, but, interestingly, all four include some mention of this growing up and/or living between Iran and America in the post-colon portion of their titles.

83 For more on the combination of self-reflective text in Satrapi's graphic novel, see Mélanie Carrier, “Persepolis et les révolutions de Marjane Satrapi,” Belphégor, 4, no. 1 (November 2005).

84 L. Levy, et al., “The Newcomers, 2002–03,” Book 26 (January/February 2003): 35–52.

85 Reviews posted on Amazon.com under both books were considered; Persepolis received an average 5 out of 5 stars with eighty-five percent of reviews giving this score, while Persepolis 2 received an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars, with eighty-one percent of reviews giving it a 5 out of 5 score. It should be noted that even lower rated reviews noted the value of Satrapi's work, with one low-rating reviewer of Persepolis 2 remarking, “It's a must read, but less charming than the first Persepolis.”

86 Sante, Luc, “She Can't Go Home Again,” The New York Times Book Review 109 (22 August 2004): 7.Google Scholar

87 Andrew D. Arnold, “An Iranian Girlhood,” Time.comix (16 May 2003), http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,452401,00.html/, (accessed 10 November 2004).

88 Storace, “A Double Life in Black and White,” http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17900/.

89 It should be noted that Amazon.com also operates separate Canadian, French, German, and British websites on which reviews are also written, though les extensively, and mostly by readers in those countries.

90 Response from informal discussion, International Conference on Iranian Diaspora, 23–24 April 2005.

91 Response from informal discussion, International Conference on Iranian Diaspora, 23–24 April 2005.

92 Weblogs have become a key mode of communication for techno-savvy Iranians, evident by their sheer number. Indeed, according to the ISG at MIT, after English, Persian language weblogs outnumber any other language on the Internet. For more information, see Doostdar, Alireza, “‘The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging:’ On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan,” American Anthropologist 106 (December 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Blogs for the growing importance of weblogs in Iran. See http://blogsbyiranians.com/ for a list of Iranian weblogs in English.

93 “Ketab-e jadid-e Marjane Satrapi,” Chera negah nakardam? (30 November 2004) http://persianblog.com/?date=13831121&blog=yekpanjere2/.

94 Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Introduction.

95 Marjane Satrapi, “On Writing Persepolis, as told to Pantheon staff,” Pantheon Graphic Novels, http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/satrapi2.html, (accessed 10 November 2004).

96 McLaughlin, “Girl, Expatriated,” (23 August 2004), http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,994937,00.html/.

97 “True East,” Elle, http://www.elle.com/article.asp?section_id=22&article_id=2286&page_number=1/, (accessed 10 November 2004).

98 For example, pages that contain almost exclusively conversations with repeated images are pp. 48–49 (war, exile, discrimination), 98–99 (Middle Eastern wars, the Iran-Iraq war, and martyrs in Iran), 124 (chemical weapons in the war), 159–160 (marriage), 168 (Gulf War 1990), 184 and 185 (divorce and moving back to Europe).

99 Satrapi, Persepolis: Story of a Return, 118.

100 Vincent, “Interview M. Satrapi, Persepolis, une enfance perse.” My translation, from French.