One Book Author Marjane Satrapi Reads at Free Library

Still from the film by Sony Pictures Classics

Last Wednesday night, the Free Library held its first major event since the resolution of the budget crisis. When Mayor Nutter arrived to introduce Marjane Satrapi, the author of 2010's One Book, One Philadelphia choice The Complete Persepolis, he was met with loud applause. He opened with a joking commentary of the fickle nature of politics: "What a difference a year makes." In her introduction to Satrapi and the citywide book group, the chair of the literacy program, Marie Field, asserted the importance of the board's unanimous choice of text, The Complete Persepolis. She hoped the book would not simply give Philadelphians a knowledge of the Persian culture, but that such knowledge would break down "barriers" in a diverse city. This idea of breaking down barriers was a recurring theme in all of the talking coming from the podium that night, and in light of last week's events in Iran, perhaps a study of life in Iran could not come at a better time.

The library itself was packed with people. By 7 p.m., the free reading had filled the lecture hall and the overflow seating area. Satrapi was greeted with a standing ovation. Her French accent immediately charmed the room as she asked for patience from the crowd; she wanted to have five minutes to smoke a cigarette between the reading and the signing. She began with a talk about the book's medium; her desire to call it a "comic" and not the industry's term "graphic novel"—which she said sounded like Lady Chatterly's Lover—was clear, that just as with the term "movie" there can be those that are bad and good, that in the world of comics, we could find the same standard. Phillyist found her discussion of comics interesting, for she openly confessed that the form allowed her distance from the painful story of growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Something about drawing her story allowed some of the anger over her uncle's execution and other atrocities to dissipate. Or at least not get in the way of her telling the story of them. Secondly, the medium of drawing allows her to reach a wider audience, citing the Lascaux Caves as humans' first foray into the desire to use art to convey victory and struggle. The audience uttered a shared "mmm" sound to show they understood the importance of Art Spiegelman's Maus when Satrapi mentioned it as the moment she understood her story could be told the way she wanted to tell it.

Satrapi charmed the crowd with stories of wanting to be a child vampire after reading Dracula (a desire that left her and her cousin with worms from eating stolen bites of raw chicken all summer), of her grandmother who had no problem saying Satrapi looked terrible, and of her friends in Paris trying to shut her up as she talked so much about her life in Iran; it seemed that they were the ones who told her to write a book, if only to get a moment's peace from their friend. She drew guffaws from the crowd when an alarm went off and she quickly responded with "somebody's coming to steal me." Her ability to make not just light of, but to find humor in an otherwise humorless situation, was what caught Phillyist off guard the most. The black and white comic feels so grim and heavy, so to be greeted with a cheery, optimistic Satrapi was a delight. Her jokes about Iran just being part of an "axis" of evil instead of the world's sole evil roused the crowd.

But she used that levity to convey an important message: that to know others in a way that transcends the broad politicization of a culture can bring about the peace so many of us crave. In a shift away from her novels and toward the larger world, Satrapi left the audience with the desire to break down the same barriers those who introduced her mentioned. She explained that she wants every one person to feel dignity and to have a decent life complete with food, shelter, and health care. As she reminded the crowd, you can't ask someone to think about issues of human rights if that person is starving. Fanaticism is the evil, not people in Iran or in the United States. And she clearly sees her role as an artist as crucial in this fight against fanaticism; she ended her talk with a reminder that any work of art in a strike in the face of fanaticism, that art asks the other person, the viewer, to try to be smart and to learn about something new. (And if reading isn't your style, then her beautifully rendered film can serve a similar purpose). With that message, it is clear her book is an excellent choice in the attempt to not only bring a city together, but to ask the city to work toward a world that feels smaller and more compassionate for those they do not know.