Words on Iran

Library of Cons #31 in memory of Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi, let's read poetry and literature from the Iranian diaspora.

Learning of the passing of Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, made me pause. Before I started writing about scams, I was a student of literature.

Persepolis, first published in 2000, is the coming-of-age story of a young girl who is as pesky and spunky as perhaps any young girl in the world, growing up in Iran around the time of the Islamic Revolution. The graphic novel shows what it was like to grow up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. As it is depicted in the book, Marjane left Iran in 1983 as a teenager when her parents sent her to Vienna, Austria, for her safety and to pursue an education. The film adaptation of Persepolis in 2008 was nominated for best animated feature at the Academy Awards. Marjane passed away at age 56 on Thursday, June 4. Rest in peace, Marjane. Thank you for your words.

Martyr! is the 2024 debut novel by the Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar. The story follows Cyrus Shams, a queer Iranian American struggling with grief, addiction, and questions about martyrdom, meaning, identity, and family. Each chapter opens with Cyrus’s poems, as the character is himself writing a novel. Set in New York City, Cyrus meets an artist at the Brooklyn Museum who might have some of the answers he’s looking for.

Sister Tongue by Farnaz Fatemi is a collection of poems that explore negative spaces in geography, in relationships, in translations between Farsi and English, and in between the poet’s upbringing in California and her family in Iran. Farnaz is a founding member of the Hive Poetry Collective and was a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I keep returning to the poems in Sister Tongue over and over, especially “Untranslated,” “Borders,” “Tea,” and “The Only Mistranslation.”

Taken together, these books trace a progression from revolutionary Iran (Persepolis), to contemporary Iranian-American identity (Martyr!), and finally to Persian and diaspora poetry centered on language, memory, and belonging (Sister Tongue).

If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together, and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same. ― Marjane Satrapi

For words defined

Introducing the Anti-Scam Glossary, a defined list of 100+ terms related to anti-scam. Navigate over to my website to view the Anti-Scam Glossary and download a copy. The password is the name of the conference that I went to last week.

View from the Perch next to MSG. Knicks in 4.

Let’s go, Knicks & Stay safe!

Julia Lipscomb