blog 4

After I have read a couple of feminist autobiographies in graphic memoir, I am impressed deeply by the pros and cons of this genre to tell stories.

First, one of the unique benefits of graphic memoir which impresses me most is that it could capture readers’ interest more easily than entirely textual autobiographies. For instance, in the book Persepolis, when the author talks about the repulsion from the girls about their veils in the beginning of the story, she uses an amusing picture full of the girls playing with the veils, such as “Execution in the name of freedom””Ooh! I’m the monster of darkness””Giddyap” (Satrapi 3). This picture could reflect the girls’ revolt against the oppression from their society and religion more vividly than just one or two textual sentence to describe that. So the readers’ attention could be easily drawn to this point and understand what kind of oppression the girls suffering from the religion better.

Second, there is also an obvious disadvantage of the graphic memoir for it is easy to lead the readers to misunderstand the writer’s true idea. From the book Persepolis, as the author describes, “At school, they lined us up twice a day to mourn the war dead. They put on funeral marches, and we had to beat our breasts” (Satrapi 95) with a big picture about the children beating their breasts, I find the demeanor of the children’s faces are so obscure that I failed to distinguish the real emotion they have about this activity. Until later in the book the heroine’s mother spoke out that “So they can hit themselves twice a day” (Satrapi 98), I understand that the children felt unhappy and angry with this activity instead of the mourn for the war dead and this is another kind of oppression of girls from the school and religion. It is known that the graphic memoir is not as specific as direct words, so there is quite a large challenge to make the readers understand the author’s real meaning correctly.

However, this genre is quite important for feminist autobiography because the graphic memoir could raise the stronger emotional support from the readers than entire text. At the end of the book Persepolis, when the heroine is leaving, it is said “I turned around to see them one last time. It would have been better to just go” (Satrapi 153). And the picture is her mother fainted in her father’s arms, with their sad demeanor. The words and picture get united perfectly and impressed the readers deeply. It raises the readers’ same emotion as the writer and the readers’ own experience could be recalled by seeing that. So the readers could understand the author’s thoughts and experience deeper, according to their same emotions drawn by the pictures.