Yes, Persepolis Is Banned!

Marjane Satrapi’s 2003 graphic memoir recounts her childhood in Tehran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Drawn in stark black-and-white panels, the book shows young Marjane watching her country transform: relatives imprisoned and executed, women forced to wear veils, bombs falling on her neighborhood. Her parents eventually send her to Vienna as a teenager to escape the regime. The memoir was a critical sensation, winning the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Prize, and was adapted into an Oscar-nominated animated film.

The first U.S. school ban came in March 2013, when Chicago Public Schools administrators abruptly pulled the book from 7th-grade classrooms and libraries overnight. The district cited “powerful images of torture” but offered no formal explanation. CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett later reversed the full ban but restricted the book to 8th grade and above. Satrapi called the restriction “shameful.” The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and National Coalition Against Censorship condemned the decision. The book has since been challenged in Houston ISD, Beaverton, Oregon, and multiple Florida districts under the state’s expanding book review laws.

Why You Should Read This

Satrapi drew herself as a child watching her uncle get executed by the state. She drew herself as a teenager, alone in Vienna, sleeping on park benches. She drew the bomb that hit her neighbor’s house. The images are simple, almost childlike, which makes them harder to look away from, not easier.

The people who ban this book for “graphic violence” are banning a firsthand account of what a child actually lived through. Satrapi didn’t imagine the torture scenes. She drew them because they happened. Telling kids they can’t handle this book is telling them the real world is too much for them. Meanwhile, the real world keeps happening.

Persepolis is funny, angry, and heartbroken, often on the same page. Satrapi’s parents are leftist intellectuals who throw parties in secret and hide wine in the basement. Her grandmother puts jasmine in her bra. The book is full of warmth, even in its darkest moments. That combination of tenderness and rage is what makes it one of the best graphic memoirs ever drawn.