Daughters of Persia: Female Characters in Iranian Graphic Novels

by: Kate C. Hashemi , March 30, 2023

The Janus ability of the graphic novel to utilise its simple form to evoke an understanding of complex human rights issues was arguably popularised by Art Spiegelman’s Maus. This medium has since become a tool to effectively communicate political disaffection through its inherent reliance on metaphor and symbol in transforming complex material into visually simple cartoons. It is through the production of such images, and the immediacy that this creates, that the reader is able to digest the complex and provocative realities that such frames depict (Salmi 2013). The Iranian diaspora is no stranger to this medium, the most famous of such works being Marjane Satrapi’s visual memoir Persepolis. The visual dimension of Persepolis undoubtedly provides an immediate frame of reference to revolutionary Iran with the ability to cut through the official discourses of both the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and ‘western’ [1] media. Certainly, much of the literature produced within the Iranian diaspora has been centred on feelings of disenchantment with post-revolutionary Iran. Bound by the collective memory and myth-making, such works often position the 1979 revolution in Iran as a tumultuous rift in the Iranian psyche, and draw on nostalgic sentiments for a pre-revolutionary, monarchical Iran (Naghibi 2016: 155). Moreover, Iranian diasporic literatures produced within the post-9/11 epoch are forced to negotiate modern orientalist discourses of ‘Islamophobia’ and bad-Muslim/good-Muslim rhetoric while contending with human rights abuses within the IRI.

Muslim women, and women living within Islamic societies such as Iran, undoubtedly provide the most visual signifier of the ‘Muslim-other’ within western hegemonic discourse. This is due to the significance of the hijab, and other forms of female Islamic dress, within the western imagination. Since the Bush administration’s War on Terror, the hijab has come to signify notions of oppression and inequality whilst rousing anxieties of a physical and cultural threat. Because the graphic novel is in its essence a visual medium, female characters in Iranian graphic novels are compounded with pre-existing notions of their characterisation within the imagination of the western readership from the outset. Such pre-conceived notions are, of course, wholly dependent on whether they are drawn with or without their hair covered. As such, these texts are forced to negotiate western hegemonic perceptions of Middle Eastern women and girls as wholly oppressed, in opposition to the liberated and un-covered white European, while attempting to expose gender biases within Iran. This paper acknowledges both Iranian and western patriarchal systems and the reconciliation of female characters’ empowerment with the emotional labour of persistence. In doing so, this paper considers Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Embroideries, Parusha Bashi’s Nylon Road, Dara Naraghi and Brent Bowman’s Persia Blues series, and Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Khalil to determine the ways in which writers in the Iranian diaspora engage with issues of trauma, gender, and representation.

Representing Collective Trauma in Iran

The almost sole focus on the visual within graphic novels enhances its ability to convey meaning through the deployment of visual metaphor. Undoubtedly, one of the graphic novel’s central tools for meaning-making is its reliance on visual style. According to Thierry Groensteen, while a comic can have frames and no text, it cannot have text without frames (Grownsteen 2007: 69). The substance of the graphic novel is thus found within its panels (also termed frames) and its gutters, the empty space which surrounds such panels.  In Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner deems the comic strip to be a form of ‘sequential art.’ Here, it is provided that the narrative progresses through a sequence of images which ‘bridge the gaps in action’ (Eisner 1985: 40). Or in other words, the sequence of the panels drives the narrative through a linear, spatial progression. It is through the graphic novel’s utilisation of both visual and literary devices that it becomes a powerful tool to engage the reader. Moreover, it is the emphasis on the visual here that harnesses the expressive potential to greatly impact the reader’s senses (Srivastave 2016: 591). The visual dimension of the graphic novel thus has a profound potential when grappling with the representation of trauma and oppression. Here, it could be argued that the graphic novel holds a unique position in its ability to impact the reader and incite change. Rather than the visual aspect of the graphic novel merely providing a window through which to observe historical injustices and traumas, the graphic representations of these events provide a mediated witnessing for those who did not directly experience the events (Kal & Rhee 2022). This particular form of mediated representation thus provides a cultural format in which to build on the collective memory of shared and historical traumas.

Bearing Witness to Trauma  

Originally published online as a webcomic in 2010, Zahra’s Paradise draws on this notion of witnessing in its utilisation of the graphic novel as a tool for resistance against the Iranian government (Amir & Khalil 2011). Zahra’s Paradise follows the story of the narrator Hassan and his mother in their search to find Hassan’s brother Mehdi who went missing during the 2009 Uprising in Iran. While based on a fictional account, the novel draws on real events surrounding the 2009 Green Movement in an attempt to convey a critique of the Iranian government’s violent response to the protests that took place. The immediacy of the novel, due to its availability online, heightened its political potential through its increased accessibility. With an emphasis on witnessing actual atrocities committed by the IRI, Zahra’s Paradise effects an immediate connection with its reader. The graphic novel itself was based on the voices of the protesters, which created a counter-discourse to both the metanarrative promoted by the IRI and that of the West. This is evident in the novel’s inclusion of images of real people who were killed by the state during the protest movement. Perhaps the most recognisable of these is the inclusion of Neda Agha Soltan amongst the photographs of bodies to be identified at the coroner’s office (Amir & Khalil 2011: 86). Neda herself became a prominent symbol of collective trauma and revolutionary action throughout the 2009 uprising. The inclusion of the image of her brutalised visage is a clear frame of reference for widespread state violence against the Iranian peoples. By evoking such sentiments, the novel is able to achieve what Charlotta Salmi determines ‘the political potential that is embedded within the graphic form’ (Salmi 2013). This political potential is also built into the very medium of the novel. The use of traditional panels and gutters in Zahra’s Paradise results in a spatialisation of time, in which the passage of time exists between each framed panel in the gutter. The concept of time thus relies on such gutters to pass; here, the reader is forced to fill in the gaps between each frame that is provided by the author. Reading a novel in such a way thus instils in the text the reliance on a collaboration of meaning-making between both writer and reader. The stylistic convention of guttering is utilised in Zahra’s Paradise to signal the passage of time, in addition to heightening the temporal dimension to the importance of both the narrator and the reader’s quest to find Hassan’s brother Mehdi. Moreover, while witnessing Hassan and his mother in their attempts to locate Mehdi, the reader is forced to acknowledge the off-panel trauma and human rights violations that are taking place in the gutters of the novel. This is further emphasised by the frequent references to real killings that took place at the hands of the state during this tumultuous period. Here, the reader is encouraged to come to terms with both the human rights abuses against the characters and the collective trauma of the nation proper, not only within this epoch, but whenever there is popular dissent against the government. Thus, the visual dimension of the graphic novel creates meaning in not just the drawn elements of the narrative, but also in the spaces that it leaves blank.

Amir and Khalil’s graphic novel provides a confluence of auto-biographical literature and testimony (Naghibi 2016: 156). Zahra’s Paradise, as a graphic testimony based on eyewitness accounts, thus claims a form of authenticity. This is further established though the use of excerpts from a real speech by Ayatollah Khamenei (Amir & Khalil 2011: 54-55). Here, the reader takes the place of the family members of the real victims of the protests—who would have been watching Khamenei’s speech in real life—waiting to see if he condemned the state violence. Within the novel, Khamenei is depicted as insincere and out of touch. Several panels focus on the character Khamenei’s aged hands, implying that the character, his worldview, and his position are old and outdated. Moreover, Khamenei’s false and overt display of devotion to the twelfth Imam is juxtaposed against the sincere and humble prayer of Hassan, in which he asks God for his brother to be returned. These side-by-side prayers draw a direct contrast of the true religion of the individual with the disingenuous faith of politicised Islam. In depicting the speech of Khamenei alongside images of real protesters who were killed during the Uprising, the novel’s narrative thus compels the reader to bear witness to actual human rights violations committed by the IRI. As defined by Ann Kaplan in Trauma Culture, the act of ‘witnessing’ elicits ‘an ethical response that will perhaps transform the way someone views the world, or thinks about justice’ (Kaplan 2005: 123). In creating a ‘double-witnessing,’ in which the reader is a witness to the narrator Hassan’s witnessing of human rights abuses in the text (Naghibi 2016: 163), Zahra’s Paradise attempts to engender a form of resistance against the Iranian authorities through the emotive appeal of witnessing. Moreover, the stylistic choices of Amir and Khalil within Zahra’s Paradise also demand an immediacy in the witnessing of events. Here, the iconography of visual media, with an emphasis on photographs and camera lenses, highlights the narratological structure of eyewitness testimony. Amir and Khalil play on this double entendre of visual media throughout the text. In remembering the brutal death of photographer Zahra Kazemi at the hands of the regime, Amir and Khalil comment on the power of visual culture to resist oppression. Here it is provided that ‘what she couldn’t expose on film, her body revealed in death’ (Amir & Khalil 2011: 45). This highlights the ability of visual culture, and thus the graphic novel itself, to surpass its author and gain political momentum to act as a tool of resistance. While Kazemi’s photographs were initially used to oppose the regime, in death, her body becomes the medium through which one may bear witness to human rights abuses that have taken place in Evin prison.

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels also function as a tool to allow the reader to witness collective trauma and oppression within the IRI. Satrapi’s works bear witness to trauma in both the personal and public/national histories (Naghibi 2016: 155). As noted by Kimberly Wedeven Segall, Satrapi’s works present a visual representation of the ways in which stories of trauma are woven into the social fabric of a family, while also functioning as depictions of collective loss (Wedeven Segall 2008: 38). Utilising a similar aesthetic format to Zahra’s Paradise, Persepolis draws on the conventional form of panels and gutters to convey meaning. Based on Satrapi’s childhood in Iran during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and her subsequent migration to Austria as a young adult, Persepolis directly employs the political in its evoking of collective histories. Through the stories told by the protagonist Marji’s relatives in Iran, the reader learns of the continuation of human rights abuses under the current regime. Throughout the novel, Satrapi utilises the repetition of images to emphasise the institutionalisation of violence in Iran. The use of repetitive and stylised violence forces the reader to acknowledge human rights violations committed by both the IRI and the regime of the Shah. In drawing parallels between both systems of governance, Satrapi highlights the cyclical pattern of violence in the Iranian collective memory. Throughout Persepolis, the protagonist functions as a witness-spectator, to both personal and national trauma. Here, the protagonist’s story arc effects a form of narrative closure for the reader. The emphasis on witnessing trauma within both the public and private spheres thus demonstrates the overt connection between the public trauma of the nation and the private trauma of the individual. Thus, the visual dimension of the graphic novel is an essential tool in both Persepolis and Zahra’s Paradise in engaging the reader to both witness and critique human rights abuses that take place in Iran.

Representing Iran

Straddling the binary of us/them, literature produced within the diaspora is bound by discourses of otherness. Within this framework of knowledge production, Iranian diasporic writers based within the West negotiate the oppositional discourses of cultural relativism and condemnation. However, in condemning the actions of the Islamic, Iranian state, these literatures pander to orientalist narratives surrounding the ‘Middle East.’ However, in ignoring issues concerning gender-based discrimination, and despotism within the IRI, writers could be seen to err on the side of cultural relativism and remain wilfully ignorant to human rights violations taking place on the ground. Therefore, a more nuanced approach is needed while tackling the issues of representing one’s homeland. As recognised by Gillian Whitlock, while the propagation of the image of ‘the oppressed Muslim woman’ in diasporic novels may provide a justification of the War on Terror paradigm, their testimony may also be used to highlight the existence of patriarchal oppression on a global scale (Whitlock 2007: 9).  Thus, while a text may sometimes position the author as what Whitlock deems a ‘soft weapon’ in perpetuating negative images of Iran as a Muslim country, such literature can also establish a humanisation of the Iranian people who are often vilified and stereotyped as the ‘bad-Muslim terrorist’ in western popular culture (Naghibi 2016: 105).

In Persepolis, Satrapi negotiates these paradoxical issues of representation. Originally published in French, Persepolis was not translated into Farsi until 10 years later. Thus, Satrapi was writing with a western readership in mind. As recognised by Shadi Mazhari, Persepolis, while written in a western language, acts to challenge the fallacy of democracy within the West (Mazhari 2015: 228).  Here, Persepolis becomes a medium in which to provide a narrative of Iran that is distinct from the colonial gaze of western stereotyping of Iran and the Orient, in addition to combatting the IRI’s narratives about itself. Throughout the book, the majority of the Muslim authority figures are explicitly tied to the corrupt regime, and thus easily fall into the War on Terror narrative of ‘bad-Muslim terrorist.’ However, this notion of ‘Islamic tyranny’ is complicated by the fair and democratic nature of the nameless (and faceless) mullah figure. As with Zahra’s Paradise, in juxtaposing the political Islam of the IRI with an authentic Islam of the individual, Persepolis addresses the prevalent question in western political science of the compatibility of Islam with democracy. Within the text, the mullah is crucial to upholding the democratic and progressive space within Iran in his decision to allow the protagonist to complete her education (Satrapi 2008: 286). This could also perhaps be seen as a subtle reference to the fact that the literacy levels of women and girls increased significantly following the 1979 revolution (Rezai-Rashti 2012: 4). The democratic mullah figure thus denotes a critique of western perceptions of Islam as pertaining to an all-encompassing space of oppression. Moreover, the decision to completely shade the drawing of the mullah highlights the fact that he is nameless and is only referred to as a ‘true religious man’ (Satrapi 2008: 286). This further emphasises the character’s progressive and religious nature, and, in so doing, acts to disrupt western teleological narratives on Islam as being both repressive and regressive (Mazhari 2015: 296).

Persia Blues, a graphic novel series by Dara Naraghi and Brent Bowman, on the other hand, can be seen as pandering to orientalist depictions of Iran. Persia Blues utilises its visual style to present Iran as having two identities: the ‘backwards’ Islamic Republic of Iran and the rich, cultural space of pre-Islamic ancient Persia. Moreover, the name of the series itself suggests a longing for a time before the conception of the IRI, marking the current state as something less than from the start. Although Persia Blues makes use of the traditional layout of panels and gutters throughout the book series, there is a stark difference between the ways in which ‘ancient’ Persia and ‘modern’ Iran are depicted. While scenes that are set in the IRI are drawn in a simple style, with block shading and an emphasis on linework, the frames that depict the space of ‘Persia’ are highly stylised, with more detailed shading. This seems to represent a—not so subtle—view of the IRI as being more primitive than the country’s glorified past. This notion of Islamic governance as being a primitive and backward system is furthered by the positioning of the IRI as ‘there’ and Persia as ‘here’ throughout the series. Moreover, in volume one, the first frame that we see that depicts ‘modern’ Iran is positioned as occurring in the past (Naraghi & Bowman 2013: 13). This temporal distortion of the IRI is representative of the orientalist positioning of Islam and the Middle East as being diametrically opposed to western notions of progress and modernity. This paradigm of thought production is widespread among certain sections of the Iranian diaspora who view Islam (and subsequently the Islamic Republic) as an Arab-imposed dogma that has been forced upon the Aryan-Iranian peoples, who are both culturally and racially distinct from the Arab invaders. This form of racialised nationalism, which Reza Zia-Ebrahimi terms “dislocative nationalism”, is rooted in a belief that Iranians, along with Europeans, belong to the Aryan race, which is distinct from, and culturally and racially superior to, semitic Arabs (Zia-Ebrahimi 2016: 2). Here, pre-Islamic Iran is positioned as a golden age of uninterrupted Aryan-Iranian essence and glory, meaning that all of the country’s shortcomings can be blamed on an Arab-imposed Islam, which was forced upon the Iranian nation. The emergence of such narratives resulted in both a disruption of the empirical reality of Iran as having been a Muslim-majority country since the seventh century, and an ignorance of the ways in which different cultures and communities are influenced by one another. In drawing heavily on Zoroastrian iconography and glorifying ancient Persia, in opposition to the IRI, Persia Blues seems to co-opt such notions of dislocative nationalism.

Nylon Road, a ‘graphic memoir of coming of age in Iran’ by Parsua Bashi, takes such nationalistic and racialised narratives to task. While in Switzerland, the protagonist of the novel meets another Iranian woman who is studying abroad. During the conversation, the unnamed student conducts a three-page diatribe on the glory of the Persian empire, before it was invaded by ‘camel [riding]’ Arabs (Bashi 2009: 54). The character’s pride in the achievements of Iranian people throughout history is grossly marred by her overt racial discourse, claiming that Aryan-Persian progress was interrupted by ‘those lizard-eating desert Arabs’ (Bashi 2009: 53). Undoubtedly such racialised language lends itself to the vindication of violence. Indeed, the Pahlavi state itself drew upon this particular conception of racialised nationalism to at once ally itself with Europe, and to provide a justification for human rights abuses against the country’s ethnic minorities (Zia-Ebrahimi 2016: 164). The protagonist’s critique of this line of thought serves as a counternarrative to dislocative nationalist discourse. Here, the protagonist’s sentiments that ‘Islam [has] merged with the Iranian culture’ over the not-insignificant period of 1,400 years (Bashi 2009: 57), echoes Zia-Ebrahimi’s sentiments that what is now modern-day Iran existed within a multicultural Islamic space that brought about ‘complex cultural practices that cannot be clearly defined as Arab or Iranian or even Turkish’ (Zia-Ebrahimi 2016: 100). Moreover, in highlighting the ways in which the Iranian authorities utilise Islamic law as a political tool to justify human rights violations (Bashi 2009: 58), Bashi’s novel, like Persepolis, makes a distinction between personal belief and the co-option of religion by the state. Certainly then, while the focus on the visual in the graphic novel allows the reader more immediacy in engaging with and understanding different countries and cultures that could be otherwise foreign to them, the author’s stylistic choices can potentially influence a certain perception of that place—as is the case with Persia Blues.

Daughters, Mothers & Wives

Set across the binary of East/West the graphic novels of Satrapi, Bashi, and Naragi and Bowman can be deemed to be border novels. In addition to providing an insight into the differences between each society and culture, the novels also provide a negotiation of both western and eastern paradigms of knowledge production. This is because, having been written after the authors have emigrated from Iran, these texts employ a visual negotiation of a particular set of cultural codes. Here, the cultural codes of the writers’ homeland have been deconstructed and reassembled with the cultural codes and perceptions of the writers’ new societies (Bailey Jones 2015: 49). Moreover, while the characters themselves are faced with varying degrees of culture shock following their migration, each of the novels demonstrate a disillusionment with the West and a return to Iran, whether it is the modern-day state or an illusory escape to ancient Persia. Certainly, the novels’ unique positions as border texts are paramount to providing an insight into the prevalence of patriarchy across different cultures and the ways in which each society positions the other as being oppressive to women. What is of particular interest here is the fact that the novels that provide a more explicit and unrelenting criticism of neoliberal patriarchal consumerism (Nylon Road) failed to gain traction in Britain and North America; whereas those that are more subtle in their criticism and feature a final return to the West (i.e., Persepolis) have been celebrated in anglophone spaces.

Representing Female Characters

As Iranian women bear the burden of being marked visual signifiers of ‘Middle Eastern’ and Islamic culture within the western imagination, the representation of female characters within Iranian graphic novels has become indivisible from conceptions of Islam and its influence on patriarchal systems in the region. Indeed, Persia Blues seems to speak to the burden of representation for Middle Eastern women in its positioning of the main character Minoo as a ‘brave daughter of Persia’ (Naraghi & Bowman 2013: 105). Here, the individualism of Minoo is stripped bare as the reader is forced to view the character as part of the historical and cultural trajectory of Iran. Thus, when approaching instances of gender-based discrimination in the region, writers are compelled to contend with orientalist discourses that both generalise and homogenise such experiences to suit a particular agenda. Despite this, Persia Blues frames the situation in Iran as a gendered struggle from which the protagonist must emigrate in order to escape from ‘working for a firm run by men in a country run by men’ (Naraghi & Bowman 2013: 61). However, rather than finding salvation in the West, Minoo escapes to ancient Persia which is ruled by the Sassanian Queen Purandokht. It is here that Minoo is liberated from the patriarchal mindset of women being ‘delicate flowers’ (Naraghi & Bowman 2015: 52), and transforms into a warrior, fighting with a sword on horseback. Although Persia Blues does exhibit some generalisations of the IRI that indulge western hegemonic narratives on the country, what is of significance here is that the protagonist does not need to be ‘saved’ by the white feminism of the West. Instead, Minoo empowers herself through Persian, rather than western, cultural codes.

Perhaps one of the most difficult topics to convey without providing fodder for the United States’ War on Terror narrative is that of the enforcement of Islamic dress codes in Iran. Persepolis both reinforces and complicates western hegemonic discourses that position Islam as an oppressive force restricting the rights of women by shrouding them in dark cloth. Undoubtedly, Satrapi does draw upon the familiar imagery within the West of the chadoori woman enforcing the strict dress code of the Islamic Republic onto innocent young girls (Satrapi 2008: 3). That said, in both Persepolis and Persia Blues, the ways in which the hijab is introduced to younger characters following the Revolution does complicate western perceptions of veiling. In both novels, hijab is treated as a game and a prop to play with. This acts to demystify the veil and remind the reader of the physical cloth, rather than the heavy ideological concepts that this item connotes. Undoubtedly, Bashi’s Nylon Road goes further in its demystification of the hijab by comparing the enforced dress codes of the IRI to the sexualisation of women in neoliberal consumerist culture. In presenting side-by-side panels of a woman being dressed by the floating hands of three ‘cults and political groups’ that shun individualism—western neoliberal consumerism, political Islam, and communism—Bashi highlights the pervasiveness of patriarchy across the globe (Bashi 2009: 110). Additionally, throughout Nylon Road, the protagonist is at her most vocal and opinionated when drawn wearing hijab. This directly counters western narratives of the oppressed and silent hijabi.

The view of Muslim women in the western imagination as homogenous, oppressed, and voiceless is also countered in Persepolis. Here, Satrapi presents diverse characters from different socio-economic positions in Iran. Moreover, by including strong and intelligent veiled Muslim women in her novel, Satrapi challenges white-feminist discourses surrounding hijab. This nuance is continued in Satrapi’s novel Embroideries, a semi-autobiographical novel exploring the intimate relationships and gossip between female members of the protagonist’s family. Exploring the complex dynamics of gender relations in Iranian society, Embroideries itself acts as a form of resistance against state-sponsored gendered oppression, while delegitimising western accusations against ‘the Muslim woman.’ The ability of Embroideries to convey an immediacy through its negation of traditional stylistic conventions is apparent when compared to the rigid use of panels and gutters to convey meaning in Persepolis. Unlike her previous work, Embroideries forgoes the traditional use of panels and gutters. The unrestricted stylistic elements—including the negation of panels, a rigid framing of the text, and even page numbers—enables a free-flowing criticism of Islamic hypermasculinity in Iran through an immediacy of cross-generational female gossip. Continuing the unconventional stylistic elements of her novel, Satrapi also occasionally avoids the use of speech bubbles and text boxes, allowing the words spoken to appear unconstrained, and in so doing enabling the female characters to resist the rigid gender dynamics promoted by both the Iranian state and western imaginings of what it is to be a woman in Iran. The pages of the novel are thus able to evoke what Nima Naghibi terms ‘the joy of unrestrained speech,’ evoking a true freedom of expression as the characters’ words ‘spill out onto the page’ (Naghibi 2016: 111). Furthermore, adding to this sense of “breaking the boundaries” of normative graphic novel conventions, the text that appears within the novel is presented in the style of handwriting. In its informality, and thus immediacy, Embroideries therefore acts to visually break down the borders between the book itself and its readership. The destruction of borders between novel and reader transforms into a defiance of cultural borders between both east and west in effecting an understanding of, and humanisation of, the other. Therefore, the ways in which female characters are represented in Iranian graphic novels are paramount to either upholding or delegitimising western hegemonic conceptions of ‘the Middle Eastern woman.

Trauma & Narratives of Persistence

The manifestation of trauma in the Iranian graphic novel is also bound by notions of race and gender. This is particularly the case for the graphic border novels that deal with a confrontation of seemingly oppositional cultures. Both Persepolis and Nylon Road depict a traumatic response to the culture shock that their characters face after relocating to Europe. In part two of Persepolis, the protagonist Marji exchanges the collective trauma of the Iranian nation for a personal trauma in her place of relocation. As noted by Hamid Naficy, entering into the diaspora ‘usually begins with trauma, rupture, and coercion’ (Naficy 2001: 14). Certainly, members of the Iranian diaspora within the West are forced to contend with a racialisation of their identity, where hostilities among host societies instil a sense of ‘ethnic consciousness and distinctiveness.’ Compounded by feelings of isolation and a rupture in her worldview, Marji thenceforth has to negotiate the pervasive racial bigotry and sexism found in Austrian society. Here, the stylised repetition of panels and motifs that were prevalent earlier in the book are deserted, symbolising a transition from the institutionalisation of violence in Iran to individual acts of violence and aggression in Austria (Bailey Jones 2015: 125). At this juncture, Marji experiences a loss of her sense of self. Comparing her own personal trauma to the events unfolding in Iran, Marji marks her own situation as trivial and forces herself to endure. However, compounded by the guilt of escaping Iran and her removal from the collective suffering of her people, Marji’s isolation culminates in literal homelessness and an eventual return to her homeland.

It is here that Persepolis portrays a disillusionment with the West, a fact that the character’s acquaintances in Iran struggle to comprehend. After returning to Iran, Marji’s self-imposed vow of silence concerning her years spent in Europe only act to heighten her feelings of isolation. Despite the racialised oppression depicted in Austria, Satrapi does not depict the protagonist’s return to Iran as unproblematic. Instead, the racialised bigotry of the West is replaced with the institutionalised oppression of Iran. Indeed, it is at this moment that the stylised repetition of panels and motifs returns to the text. However, after being removed from the collective during a time of shared suffering from war, Marji struggles to find a sense of belonging, stating: ‘I was nothing. I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity.’ (Satrapi 2008: 274). It is at this point that the emotional labour of persistence takes its toll on Marji, culminating in the character’s attempted suicide.

Nylon Road also grapples with issues of identity politics, trauma, and the racialisation of the Iranian woman in the West. Here, the protagonist is positioned somewhere between Iranian and western conceptions of gender and identity. Throughout the novel, the main character is confronted with younger versions of herself, as she deals with her changing ideologies. This fracturing of the protagonist’s self into her alter-egos provides a manifestation of extreme dislocation from the individual entering into a ‘radically different social and cultural environment’ (El Rafaie 2012: 84). Nylon Road at once highlights the superficial contrasts between Iranian and European culture whilst emphasising patriarchal modes of oppression that are prevalent throughout both cultures. Certainly, while Iranian women are typically portrayed as veiled and oppressed in western imaginings, Bashi, in turn, often depicts Swiss women as barely covered, with exaggerated breasts and heavily sexualised features (Bashi 2009: 40). Bashi’s decision to draw European women in what van Zoonen would term ‘porno-chic,’ —i.e. immodest dress—underscores the pervasiveness of the male gaze and systems of gendered oppression within the West (van Zoonen 2006). Moreover, Bashi’s novel is unique in its explicit assertions that the real problems facing the Iranian population are ‘not alcohol or scarves,’ but the oil economy and human rights abuses that take place at the hands of the authorities (Bashi 2009: 61). This accentuates the difference between Islam as a religion, and even as a system of governance, and a particular system in which this religion has been manipulated and utilised as a political tool for oppression. This directly counters western discourses that draw upon the visual signifiers of Islamic dress codes to position Islam and Islamic forms of governance as being inherently evil.

One of the most striking ways in which the protagonist in Nylon Road must force herself to persevere in the face of gendered oppression is when dealing with her divorce and subsequent custody battle. Undoubtedly, losing custody of her child is presented as one of the most traumatic events in the novel. Here, the protagonist is faced with a younger version of herself who is crippled with guilt over losing the right to raise her own child. Despite praying to her God for salvation, it is the present-day protagonist that encourages her younger self to persist in the face of patriarchal oppression stating: ‘You must survive first! What good is a weak mum? Be strong! A strong mother, even if far away, is more meaningful to her in the future!’ (Bashi 2009: 67). Moreover, in addition to critiquing misogynistic religious law in Iran, Bashi denotes the ways in which European women suffer from unfair divorce settlements. This line of thought is furthered in Bashi’s decision not to give the ex-husband a name in the novel, speaking to the pervasiveness of patriarchy in both east and west. An exploration of motherhood and trauma is also presented in Zahra’s Paradise. While the protagonist’s mother, Zahra, has a subdued, mournful role throughout the novel, after finding out that her son has been killed, she becomes empowered to rage against the regime. In contrast to the rest of the novel which utilises the traditional format of panels and gutters, Zahra’s speech at the end of the book spills out across the pages. Here, the persistence of the character is transformed into active resistance as she encourages her son to burn through the tyranny of the regime (Amir & Khalil 2011: 218). In this space, Zahra is transformed from being the mother of Mehdi and Hassan to Fatemeh Zahra, the mother of the martyred Imam Hussein in Islamic doctrine. Within the Shia collective memory, the martyrdom of Hussein provides a central symbol of both oppression and revolution against tyranny. Importantly, it is the mythology of the martyrdom of Hussein that offered a framework of resistance for the masses during the 1979 revolution (Esposito 1990: 24). Here, the individual trauma of Zahra is projected onto the trauma of the nation, transforming into a revolutionary call to action. Moreover, the decision to have the protagonist refer to his mother as simply ‘mother,’ with no possessive pronoun, highlights the fact that this story belongs to the Iranian people, not just him. In further enabling the reader to connect with the family at the centre of the novel, by claiming the mother as their own, the strategic choice of language also forces the reader to witness the collective trauma of the nation. Both Zahra’s Paradise and Nylon Road thus utilise trauma and motherhood to express disenchantment with the Iranian government. While Nylon Road utilises personal trauma to critique the misogynistic legal system, Zahra’s Paradise turns individual trauma into collective trauma in order to provoke political resistance.

Conclusion

The Iranian graphic novel is uniquely positioned to address issues of trauma, gender, and representation. Through their reliance on symbols and visual metaphors to generate meaning, graphic novels are able to evoke an immediacy with the reader that cuts through the hegemonic discourses of both the IRI and the West. Certainly, Muslim women, and women living in Muslim societies such as Iran, bear the burden of representation of ‘the Muslim other’ in the western imagination due to the significance of the hijab in these paradigms of knowledge production. Therefore, the representation of women in Iranian graphic novels are bound by preconceived notions of what it is to be a woman in such societies. Here, writers are forced to contend with narratives of Iranian women and girls as being silent, oppressed, and devoid of agency. The Iranian graphic novel deals with this in different ways. While novels such as Persia Blues and Zahra’s Paradise attempt to show the strength of Iranian women in the face of tyranny and oppression, they can also be seen to provide a tangible form of reference for orientalist discourses on Iran. Undoubtedly, the works of Satrapi and Bashi deliver more nuance. The framing of female characters as mothers, daughters, and (ex-)wives in these novels highlights the pervasiveness of patriarchal systems of oppression throughout both Iranian and western culture. Here, the characters are forced to at persist in the face of human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran, misogyny and sexism across the boundary of East/West, and the racialisation of Iranian woman- and girlhood within the West. It is through such persistence that the female characters in the novels are either empowered (as is the case with Persia Blues and Zahra’s Paradise) or either physically or emotionally fractured by the emotional labour of persistence (as with Persepolis and Nylon Road).

Notes

[1] This paper acknowledges the Eurocentrism of words such as ‘the West,’ ‘the East,’ ‘Orient,’ and ‘Occident.’ From this point forwards, a scepticism around these terms can be assumed, without the use of quotation marks.