Persepolis: Things I looked back on my 2nd read

Book author: Marjane Satrapi

I read Persepolis in 2020, 4 years ago, when I was in the final year of undergrad. In the 4 years I have changed. That book along with a few other books shaped my changes, my perspectives. I am a bookworm and it’s no wonder almost every book I read leaves something in me. When re-reading it after four years, I got to look at what this book left inside me.

For me, the most enjoyable part of reading this book is- it’s a book about the long road to freedom. Marjane illustrates the urge for freedom through her sketches- sometimes it’s freedom of speech, sometimes it’s freedom of identity, sometimes freedom under the scarf, sometimes freedom from men.

From age 14 to 24, Marjane leaves Iran for the west, from a bombing country to a place where liberation is taken for granted. And she returns from there to a war torn Iran. Nowhere she felt that “that was it!”. She has a deep root in Iran, but she is made for spreading her wings, and not to hide them under her hood in the revolutionary regime of Iran. Nor did she feel at home in the Western cultural set up. She, like so many of us, wants to embrace both, in her own ways.

What would remain inside me from the book is- sometimes our mistakes shape who we are, who we would become. Our mistakes make our thoughts clear and bring us to think more practically.

Will leave some of the pages I have bookmarked while reading…