Author Satrapi's 'Persepolis'  Pierces

Censorship, She Tells SUNY Audience

By LIBBY CUDMORE • allotsego.com

ONEONTA

Seated comfortably between ferns and a slate-blue backdrop, Marjane Satrapi very quickly made herself at home chatting with Dr. Susan Bernardin. “English is not even my third language,” she said in a thick French accent by way of introduction.  “When I come to American for the first time, I learned English by watching a lot of movies, so I was saying the f-word a lot.  I will not say it again here.”

Satrapi, author of SUNY Oneonta’s 2014 Common Read “Persepolis”, was on hand this evening to give the Mills Distinguished Lectureship to a full Alumni Field House.  “When I was young, I thought I had to write like Dostoevsky, but I couldn’t, because he was a genius,” she said.  “If I was Dostoevsky, you would know it.”

“Persepolis” deals with Satrapi’s childhood during the Islamic Revolution, during which she rebelled by declaring herself a prophet, wearing high-top Nikes and buying illegal tapes of AC/DC and Kim Wilde. “I was a teenager, all teenagers have bad taste in music,” she joked with the crowd.

She read Batman comics when she was a kid, but it wasn’t until she met French comics artist David Beauchard, who mentored her and introduced her to comic writers like Art Speigelman, author of “Maus.”