For dear Marjane Satrapi

Dear Marjane Satrapi,

Hello!My name is Wendy Lin. I am a student from East Los Angeles College. I have read your book Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood for my English class. I am so glad that my professor has assigned this book for us as a required text since Persepolis is an awesome book which has taught me lots of things. I knew more about Iran history and culture after I read this book. My emotion changes along with Marji’s emotion. When I read the part that Marji was upset because her uncle’s death, I was upset too; when I read the part that Marji was happy because she got the presents which her parents bought her back from Turkey, I was happy too. I always have questions like “if I was Marji,I…”. In addition, as Persepolis is a graphic novel, I can infer many different things from the pictures along the text. It just like the people says, “A picture could tell a thousand words.” I think you have done a really great job on this book.
When I read this book, I found so many similarities between Marji and me such as we both love my family; we both wished we could be an adult in our early age; we both tried to behave like our parents, etc. I missed that period of time very much. I was so pure like Marji. I am so surprised that you could tell your childhood story in this way. I wish I am smart enough to write a graphic novel about my life. I think that would be cool.
As I grew up in China which is a communism country, I have heard many similar stories as Marji’s. For example, in the chapter of “The Wine”, the two guardians’ faith has actually nothing to do with ideology. All they needed were just a few bills and they will forget the whole thing. That is what my grandfather used to tell me all the time too. My grandfather always told me how unfair it was in China when he was young. Money could solve most of the problems and it always benefits to the rich people. So when I read your book, it reminds me a lot about what my grandfather used to tell me. I think I am going to tell my grandfather about your book. I might even try to translate your book to Chinese for my grandfather to read it. On the other hand, I grow up in a peaceful time period, so I have not experienced anything about wars or revolutions. As a result, I gain new understandings of how a person who lives in the war feels.
While I read your book, there are so many questions that pop up my head and I would like to ask you some of them. Why do you have such an idea to write a graphic novel to share your life experience to the other people? What was the biggest difficulty that you had when you wrote/draw this graphic novel? Which chapters of this book do you like best? Why? I apologize first if this is too much for you. However, I would love to know the answers of these questions.
Thank you very much for reading my letter. I appreciate all the hard work that you have done for this book. It is an awesome book and it worth to read more than one time.

Sincerely,
Wendy Lin
Dec-17-2009