Persepolis

Persepolis is a very good graphic novel that was made into a French movie in 2007. I never read the graphic novel, but I believe that the movie was very good and it was hard for me to stop watching it, so I ended up renting it from Netflix so that I could see how it ended. I had never thought about graphic novels before, because I tend to associate them with comic books and kid stuff. Not that I do not like comics. Garfield has always been my favorite and I still watch cartoons on television and I like to watch children's animated movies. I just did not realize that there were graphic novels with such serious subjects and that were not about super heroes or other science fiction topics that most more adult comics tend to be about.

Persepolis tells a story of a girl and her struggles and difficulties in life as she grows up into a young woman. Every girl goes through similar circumstances in life as they grow into adulthood. Life is not easy, but for some "not easy" is a definite understatement. This movie gave me a better understanding of what it might be like to grow up in a place like Iran. I know that my understanding of what someone like her might have gone through during pre- and post-revolutionary Iran is minimal, but it helped. When I was first watching this movie, I thought it happened a long time ago, I was very surprised that it took place just in the 1970s and 1980s. I felt bad to think of what she had to go through growing up and made me realize how very fortunate I was to have grown up in the United States of America and all the freedoms that go along with it.