- What difference does it make to your reading that this book is a memoir, a rendering of Marjane Satrapi’s own life, rather than a fictional story about life in Iran?
- American writer William Zinsser has written that “humor is the writer’s armor against the hard emotions.” Is this the way that Satrapi seems to be using humor when she says that “every situation offered an opportunity for laughs” (97) and again that laughter is “the only way to bear the unbearable” (266)? What instances of humor stand out to you? Why?
- How are the personal stories of individual citizens related to the history of their nation?