Embroideries

Marjane Satrapi excels in the graphic memoir. Her first two books, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, use words and drawings to tell the tale of Satrapi’s girlhood in Iran, adolescence abroad and subsequent return to her homeland. In Embroideries, Satrapi uses a gathering of her female relatives to examine the varied lives of Iranian women. It’s a revealing and funny look at women in often desperate situations and the resourcefulness with which they insist on finding joy in their lives. Satrapi’s ability to tell graphic stories is reminiscent in many ways of Art Spiegelman’s, but she takes it in a completely different direction with this tender and respectful reminder that there’s more than one way to approach womanhood in any culture.