Marjane Satrapi and The Voices of Revolution Through Art and Storytelling
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| Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies. |
by Bahar Momeni, Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies
She throws the paper airplane she had been making while we discuss the interview logistics, saying, “I always make paper airplanes while talking.” The airplane gently flies out of the frame. Relieved, she lights a cigarette and looks at the monitor with bright, curious eyes. “Alright, now I will concentrate. Let’s get started!” she says as she grins. It’s no surprise that this is how the interview begins with Marjane Satrapi, the celebrated Iranian-born French graphic novelist, filmmaker, artist, and one of the most recognized figures within the global Iranian diaspora. Her playful, honest, and adventurously creative spirit is best exemplified in her graphic memoir Persepolis (Pantheon 2003, 2004), which garnered international acclaim for its powerful and compelling depiction of life during and after the 1979 Revolution in Iran. While she’s done so many exciting projects since, this book is what put her style and her vision on the global literary map.
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| Persepolis (Pantheon). Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies. |
“Persepolis helped readers understand what’s happened in Iran. I believe graphic novels are such an impactful genre for making this information accessible. Because, even before the alphabet, drawing and painting, it was how humans communicated,” Satrapi says.
Persepolis marked the start of Marjane Satrapi’s influential career in graphic novels, setting the stage for subsequent graphic works such as Embroideries (Pantheon, 2005), Chicken with Plums (Pantheon, 2006), Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon (Bloomsbury, 2006), and The Sigh (Archaia, 2011). Following the immense success of the film adaptation of Persepolis in 2007, Satrapi shifted her focus to filmmaking. Her second feature film, an adaptation of Chicken with Plums in 2011, was another successful collaboration with French filmmaker Vincent Paronnaud. Satrapi’s cinematic journey continued with films such as Gang of the Jotas (2012), The Voices (2014), Radioactive (2019), and her most recent feature, Dear Paris (2024), exhibiting her versatility and creative evolution across different mediums. After spending recent years focused on filmmaking, Satrapi has returned to her cherished genre, comics, with her latest work, Woman, Life, Freedom.
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| Woman, Life, Freedom (Seven Stories Press). Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies. |
Sparked by the tragic death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police in September 2022, massive protests erupted across Iran, united under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The spirit of this uprising echoed, inspiring solidarity events worldwide, and artists around the globe joined the movement to amplify the voices of Iranians in their pursuit of fundamental human rights.
“This uprising and this historic moment in Iran needed to be documented. It was necessary because the world watching Iran’s situation was curious to understand this movement better!” Satrapi mentions. By intertwining words and powerful illustrations in the Woman, Life, Freedom collection, Satrapi once again turns her keen eye to the themes of resistance and resilience. She elaborates that the project aims not only to document and preserve history, primarily when international journalists cannot obtain visas to enter Iran, but also to provide unbiased coverage of the events on the ground. She points out that this project also serves as “a message of solidarity to the Iranian people, affirming that they are not alone in their fight.”
This book is particularly important in Satrapi’s career as it revisits the struggle for women’s rights, a theme that engaged her in several creative initiatives through a women’s rights movement in Iran that has gained significant momentum in recent years.
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| Winshluss and Jean-Pierre Perrin- Woman, Life, Freedom- (Seven Stories Press). Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies. |
“Iran has always been very important to me, but after writing Persepolis and making the film adaptation, I felt I had already shared all I could about my personal experiences with Iran. I didn’t want my perspective to be influenced by emotions or nostalgia, especially after being away for so many years. That’s why the story of Persepolis ends in 1994, the year I left Iran for the second time. But this recent movement was and is different. While the fight for women’s freedom has deep roots in Iran, ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ represents a full-blown feminist revolution demanding real, asking fundumental changes and a major cultural shift. It needs global recognition!” Satrapi continues.
Satrapi has made a concerted effort to stay current and connected with the younger generation in Iran by directly engaging with some of the protesters still inside Iran. This allowed her to gain firsthand insights into the situation, which helped her develop the Woman, Life, Freedom project based on actual voices and perspectives from those on the ground rather than relying on her memories of Iran or outsiders’ views.
“I tried to keep close contact with the young protestors who could communicate with me through VPNs to get around the internet filtering… I was amazed by their deep insights. Young men supporting women’s rights and this movement differ from their older generations,” she explains.
To undertake this crucial time-sensitive project, Satrapi invited a diverse group of more than twenty contributors from many different locations and professions—including journalists, activists, academics, artists, and writers—to create a compelling anthology of graphic novel-style essays, narratives, and reflections. “I reached out to the artists I admire and invited them, regardless of their nationality,” Satrapi notes. Among the featured artists are Joann Sfar, Coco, Mana Neyastani, Catel, Pascal Rabaté, Patricia Bolaños, Paco Roca, Bahareh Akrami, Hippolyte, Shabnam Adiban, Lewis Trondheim, Winshluss, Touka Neyastani, Bee, Deloupy, Nicolas Wild, and Satrapi herself.
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| Woman, Life, Freedom (Seven Stories Press). Courtesy Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies. |
A team of scholars also contributed to the project, offering critical analysis of one of the most important social movements in contemporary Iranian history, including Stanford University’s Dr. Abbas Milani, with whom Satrapi has worked previously. “I also invited Farid Vahid, who brings scholarly insight and personal experience, having been raised in Iran and belonging to the generation of young people who have actively participated in the protests,” she describes.
Satrapi expands on how Dr. Milani, the director of the Iranian Studies program, provided intellectual depth in linking the current feminist uprising to Iran’s broader historical struggles for freedom and democracy.
“We also needed a specialist who wasn’t Iranian but knew Iran well—someone with the emotional distance necessary to confirm that our personal feelings didn’t influence the interpretation of the narratives,” Satrapi explains. This need led to the inclusion of Jean-Pierre Perrin, a journalist and writer specializing in the Middle East and Iran. “The rapid completion of this project in just about seven months is proof of the passion and dedication of every collaborator involved,” she adds.
The nature of this collaboration between multiple voices, along with the anthology’s structure and form—featuring chapters of varying formats, lengths, and styles—poetically mirrors the unifying goal of promoting freedom and diversity. It clearly reflects the multitude of groups within Iran—different ages, genders, ethnicities, and religious perspectives—all collectively representing the aspirations of this movement and a recognition of its continuing importance.
“This movement is about respecting human dignity. Inside Iran, even many courageous women with hijab, such as Fatemeh Sepehri and Gohare Eshghi, raised their voices against the mandatory hijab law and wanted religious beliefs to be separated from politics,” Satrapi asserts. She adds that this uprising has been revolutionary, targeting an expansive patriarchal system rather than singular laws, such as wearing an obligatory hijab. She suggests that this change is an indication of the maturing of the Iranian people and their desire for fundamental change.
“A substantial cultural shift has already occurred across different sections of society. Protestors emphasize that one of their main demands is removing religion from the ruling system, advocating for a complete separation of power and religion (as a personal belief) to achieve true democracy,” she adds.
Woman, Life, Freedom was quickly translated into several languages, with the Persian edition available as a free download for readers in Iran so that a broad audience, including those directly affected in the country, can read it. Considering the significance and impact of the work, it is no surprise the Islamic regime in Iran was deeply irritated. In a rather absurd response, just a few months after the publication of Woman, Life, Freedom, the regime’s propaganda machine released a graphic novel with the same title. This state-sponsored publication presented a distorted narrative of the ongoing movement, falsely claiming that it was orchestrated by the country’s Western enemies while also criticizing the Western world for its alleged ignorance of human rights and women’s rights violations within their borders. In a desperate effort to veil the truth of this liberating movement, the regime manipulated search engines so that anyone searching for ” کتاب زن، زندگی، آزادی” (Woman, Life, Freedom book in Farsi) would be directed to their version, a parody-like book designed to confuse readers into downloading the regime’s propaganda.
“You can expect anything from those #$#%?.!” Satrapi comments when recounting this parody of the collection she published. Through the work of multiple authors and artists, Woman, Life, Freedom recasts Satrapi’s vital voice not only in the artistic world but also in the broader cultural conversation about Iran and the global social movements of today. She highlights the collaboration between Iranian and non-Iranian scholars and creators, emphasizing the effort to raise awareness about such movements as an essential part of the ongoing battle for freedom. As Satrapi passionately states, “The most beautiful thing in this world is freedom. There is only one thing more beautiful than freedom, and that is fighting for freedom…” This effort demonstrates the reality that the quest for liberty is a long, ongoing, and challenging path that requires determination from people worldwide to unite and fight for it. “Our caravan will move forward whether the dogs bark or not!” she remarks with a smile.
To learn more about Satrapi’s latest work and to read more interviews with her, you can visit her website: https://aboutmarjanesatrapi.weebly.com/.
You can also download the Farsi version for free here.
Bahar Momeni is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas, Dallas
Via With a Trace: Documenting and Sharing the Experiences of the Iranian Diaspora, Center For Iranian Diaspora Studies
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