"Embroideries" Marjane Satrapi

“To speak behind others' backs is the ventilator of the heart.” 

― Marjane Satrapi, Embroideries

I was introduced to "Persepolis" by the animated film.  I must have seen it on some movie channel we used to have.  I was mesmerized.

Knowing that it was made into a film from a memoir written as a comic book was interesting for me.  It was my introduction to the genre of graphic novel, although it was biographical instead of fictional.  There should be a way to say this:  graphic memoir?  biographic book?

In 2010, I read "Stitches" and loved the emotion conveyed by the art of David Small.  Then "Fun Home"the next comic book/memoir for me.  Great stuff, but while Bechdel's drawing was more detailed and intricate, the book relied more on the dialog and description to convey the mood.  What sets Satrapi's artwork apart from either of those or the graphic novels I've read is the simplicity of the black-and-white drawings.  They are perfect for conveying the depth of emotion and meaning as a sharp contrast to the images.

The drawings I loved continue in "Embroideries."  Rather than the decades-long saga of the two volumes of "Persepolis," this book is set in a single evening as women sit drinking coffee after eating dinner and cleaning up.  The women range in age from Marjane as a young woman to her grandmother.  They talk about those things women usually talk about...men, relationships, sex and identity.

I think back to the time of my marriage.  My husband's family would get together for some event, maybe Thanksgiving.  There would be a big meal, and then the men would go off to the pool table in the basement to drink beer and talk about the women, I'm supposing, while the women would stay upstairs cleaning the kitchen and putting away the leftovers.  The conversation would turn to those topics that women discuss when the men aren't around.  That was no different than this scene in "Embroideries."

Of the nine women in this book, there is a housewife and mother who has never seen a penis, the woman who took actions to keep her husband interested, Marjane's three-times married grandmother, women who relish the independence that a divorce offers, and others for which marriage was not what it was meant to be.  There are stories about other women and their luck or mishaps with marriage, always told with wry humor.  Above all is the advice of how to be a virgin on your wedding night whether you are or not.

This quick read, I read it twice through in less than two hours, is something I hope to return to again.  I see myself picking it up for a smile and to remember the time I spent with Satrapi's family.  Am looking forward to "Chicken with Plums."