Marjane Satrapi brought Iranian women like me out of hiding

  

"It is no exaggeration to say that Satrapi’s books brought me (and many women like me) out of hiding and taught us to stop apologising for ourselves: for our trauma, our loudness, our rage, grief, desire. “I’m stuck in the middle,” she told the Believer in 2006. “Everywhere I have to defend Iran. Because Iran is not understood at all, especially in the US.” Her books complicated the one-dimensional image of Iranians in western media. In a 2024 interview with the Guardian, she talks about the “hidden racism” of the west, “that views Iranians as people who are not culturally suited to human rights”. In film, Iran is “stuck in the dark ages”, with shots of “a hillside and a donkey”. “A tree … A woman … An apple … Fuck that, we live in cities, we have very complicated problems … [And] the government isn’t representative of us.”"

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Dina Nayeri: Marjane Satrapi brought Iranian women like me out of hiding | Books | The Guardian