But as an Artist, I Have One Duty: To Ask Questions: Marjane Satrapi, 1969-2026

It cannot have been easy to raise a young girl in post-revolutionary Iran. Especially if you were the sort of parents who wanted your daughter to be a strong, independent woman; Iran was not a good place for strong, independent women. It still isn’t. But I would not have wanted to stifle my daughter, either, and it would have been hard knowing that it was for her own safety. Even though it would have been. At least they had the resources to send her to Europe.

Marjane Abrihimi was born in Iran in 1969 to upper-middle class liberal parents. She said she was descended from Naser al-Din Shah Qajar but also that it wasn’t a huge deal and that a lot of people were. The “liberal” part was a bigger issue starting in 1979 with the overthrow of the Shah. Her parents had had their problems with the regime, but it only got worse from there. Friends were beaten, arrested, and even murdered; her beloved Uncle Anoosh was arrested and sentenced to death. He was only allowed to have one visitor before he was killed, and he chose Marjane, his beloved niece.

Eventually, her parents sent her to Europe for secondary school, where she initially lived with family friends and ended up homeless for three months. She returned to Tehran, where she successfully completed a Master’s in visual communication at the Islamic Abad University. When she moved to Strasbourg to study at Haute école des arts du Rhin, her parents encouraged her to stay, telling her that Iran was no longer the place for her.

Satrapi would take her history and what was happening in Iran and create art. She is, of course, best known for her autobiographical comic book—she disliked the term “graphic novel” and embraced comics books as an art—Persepolis, which among other things details her adolescence as a rebellious, pop-loving teenager in post-revolutionary Iran. She would direct the animated feature made from it, becoming the first woman nominated for the Best Animated Feature category. (She lost to Brad Bird for Ratatouille.) Frankly I think she was more deserving of a Best Documentary Feature nomination that year than Michael Moore.

The announcement of her death says that she died of sadness following the death of her husband, Mattias Ripa, last year. There are many ways to take that, and we may learn more later. What we can say for sure is that many people are experiencing sadness over the loss of her, not to mention potential future books and movies. I can’t imagine Satrapi would have been happy with what’s currently going on with Iran, either. Not that anyone in either side of the conflict is terribly known for listening to the opinions of women.