Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

Part one of Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel found her surviving war, the Islamic Revolution, religious oppression and the execution of several close friends. If part two covers less traumatic events, it's also more subtle and, in some ways, more moving. Sent by her liberal, intellectual parents from Tehran to Vienna to get an education and escape the religious police, rebellious but vulnerable teenage Satrapi learns about secular freedom's pitfalls. Struggling in school, falling in with misfits and without a support group, she ends up dealing drugs for a boyfriend and eventually finds herself homeless on the streets. Forced to return to Iran, Satrapi must once again take up the veil, but learns to live within the constraints of her native land, which border on the surreal. For instance, while Satrapi's racing to catch a bus, the religious police tell her to stop running so her bottom doesn't make "obscene" movements. "Well, then, don't look at my ass!" she angrily responds. The book's cornerstone is her relationship with her parents, who seem to have enough faith in her to let her make the wrong decisions, as when she marries an egotistical artist. Satrapi's art is deceptively simple: it's capable of expressing a wide range of emotion and capturing subtle characterization with the bend of a line. Poignant and unflinching, this is a universally insightful coming-of-age story. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Aug.)

ALA Booklist (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2004)

At the end of Persepolis, 14-year-old Satrapi stares aghast at the sight of her mother fainting over her departure from Islamic-revolutionary Iran for school in Vienna. It's an image that demanded this continuation of her memoir-in-comics, which many may find more congenial than its predecessor because of its initial setting in the areligious West. There Satrapi endured initiations into sex, drugs, and partying, and travails over peer and love relationships that mirrored those of her Western fellow students; she was an exile, however, essentially on her own emotionally (though her mother visited once, lifting her spirits as nothing else would) and even physically, especially after breaking up with her first love. Finally unable to cope, she became homeless for three months and, after hospitalization for exposure, returned to Tehran, where the second half of this book transpires, eventuating in an ill-starred marriage to a fellow art student. Satrapi's high-contrast, bold-lined, stencil-ish artwork remains very much at the service of one of the most compelling youth memoirs of recent years.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-In Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon, 2003), Satrapi vividly described her early life in Iran. This second installment covers the period after the 1979 Revolution when, at 14, she was sent to Vienna for a freer education than that allowed in her newly fundamentalist country. At first, the distinct differences in her life were overwhelming and exciting. During the next four years, she made new friends, some very liberal and some quite conservative, had several relationships, became increasingly aware of the sexual freedom of her new milieu, and even dealt drugs for a boyfriend. Eventually, she ended up living on the streets. She became ill and returned home, a somewhat liberated 18-year-old in a repressive land. She married, mistakenly thinking that would allow her freedom, and graduated from art school. At the end of this volume, feeling out of place in her homeland and unhappy in her marriage, she has divorced and is preparing to move to France with the blessing of her understanding parents. (A third volume is soon to be translated.) Satrapi's simple-seeming, black-and-white drawings add a surprisingly expressive depth to her already compelling story. Teens will appreciate this memoir on many levels, identifying with the feelings of alienation and misunderstanding, if not the actual events. Young people who have had to flee to new environments will identify even more.-Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.