The Migrant Experience in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis
The Migrant Experience in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

Summary/Abstract: Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir The Complete Persepolis written in 1999 in France and published 4 years later in English (2003) is an autobiographical narrative that attempts to follow the main character’s personal experiences and coming-of-age while registering her birth country’s (i.e. Iran) complicated and tormenting history, that starts right after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and advances through Iraq-Iran War as well as the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. This paper revisits theoretical problems related to the general process of migration, defining terms and attempting to apply them in the specific case of Satrapi’s exilic experience as it is described in her graphic memoir. It registers and distinguishes different types of migrant figures and modes of migrant-host relationships, as well as theories of cultural adaptation and proposes the application of theoretical background to Marjane Satrapi’s memoir, the analysis focusing on issues of identity searching, fitting in and integration that are defining for the experience of an immigrant girl trying to get accustomed to the harsh reality of the adoptive society she has to fit into.

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