Persepolis is an autobiography written as a graphic novel based on Satrapi's life. The genre of graphic novels can be traced back to 1986 with Art Spiegelman's Maus, portraying the Holocaust through the use of cartoon images of mice and cats. Later, writers such as Aaron McGruder and Ho Che Anderson used graphic novels to discuss themes such as Sudanese orphans and civil rights movements. This genre has become an appropriate forum for examining critical matters by using illustrations to discuss foreign topics, such as those discussed in Persepolis.[9] The "graphic novel" label is not so much a single mindset as a coalition of interests that happen to agree on one thing—that comics deserve more respect.[10] Nima Naghibi and Andrew O'Malley, English professors at Ryerson University, believe that Persepolis is part of a larger movement of autobiographical books by Iranian women.[11] Satrapi wrote Persepolis in a black-and-white format: "the dialogue, which has the rhythms of workaday family conversations and the bright curiosity of a child's questions, is often darkened by the heavy black-and-white drawings".[12] The use of a graphic novel has become much more predominant in the wake of events such as the Arab Spring and the Green Movement, as this genre employs both literature and imagery to discuss these historical movements.[7] In an interview titled "Why I Wrote Persepolis",[13] Marjane Satrapi said that "graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate."[13]
Persepolis uses visual literacy through its comics to enhance the message of the text. Visual literacy stems from the belief that pictures can be "read." As defined by the Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education, "Visual literacy traces its roots to linguistic literacy, based on the idea that educating people to understand the codes and contexts of language leads to an ability to read and comprehend written and spoken verbal communication."[14]
Due to the nature of artistic choices made in Persepolis by virtue of it being an illustrated memoir, readers have faced difficulty in placing it into a genre. The term "novel" most commonly refers to books that are fiction. Thus, there is some controversy surrounding how to classify the genre of Persepolis, being that it is non-fiction. Nima Naghibi and Andrew O'Malley, illustrate this by stating how bookstores have had issues with shelving Persepolis under a single label.[11] Furthermore, scholars like Hillary Chute argue that Persepolis, like other similar books, should be called a "graphic narrative" instead of a "graphic novel."[15] She argues that the stories these works contain are unique in themselves and challenge popular historical narratives.[15] Chute explains that graphic narratives defy convention portraying complex narratives of trauma emphasize a different approach on discussing issues of "unspeakability, invisibility, and inaudibility that have tended to characterize recent trauma theory-as well as a censorship-driven culture at large."[15] She adds that this technique of uncovering the invisible is an influential feminist symbol.[15] Chute contends that Persepolis highlights this 'unseen' by appearing to be visually simplistic so that it can draw attention to the intense political events happening in the story.[15]
Professor Liorah Golomb from the University of Oklahoma states about Persepolis and related books; "As time went on the comics still tended towards the autobiographical, but storytelling gained importance. Most of the women creating comics today are still doing so from a woman's point-of-view, but their target audience seems more universal.[16]
An article from a journal on multicultural education written about teaching Persepolis in a middle school classroom acknowledges Satrapi's decision to use this genre of literature as a way for "students to disrupt the one-dimensional image of Iran and Iranian women."[17] In this way, the story encourages students to skirt the wall of intolerance and participate in a more complex conversation about Iranian history, U.S. politics, and the gendered interstices of war."[17] Satrapi utilizes a combination of the text and accompanying drawings to represent Iranian and European culture through both images and language, asserts Marie Otsby in an article for the Modern Language Association of America published in 2017.[17]
