Embroideries
by Marjane Satrapi
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Book Summary Information
Author: Marjane SatrapiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-04-18
ISBN: 0375714677
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Embroideries
Book Review: Women Work It and the Work of Women
Summary: 5 Stars
I think that if you are a serious fan of the comic book genre, you should at least read Marjane Satrapi's Embroideries. It is 144 pages of an late afternoon of gossip about women and their relationships. The set up is simple. There is no complex plot with heroes or otherwise. The art is consistent, stylized black ink work. Everything sounds pretty mundane so far, right? But what is intriguing is the voice of the characters and the aspect they dwell on.
Straight up the book is all about sex: who has it, who doesn't, who it has ruined, who celebrates it, etc. If you want to be totally cynical, you could say it is just a chick flick, but I assure you there is little Romanticism here, and that the image of the doe-eyed girl in love is typically ridiculed (perhaps softly, but consistently) by the characters.
The novelty of the comic comes from who wrote the story. Satrapi is an Iranian immigrant to France, and came on to the comic scene with her autobiographical coming of age story and related experiences with the series Persepolis. While that obviously makes her a minority in the world, she is also one of the few female francophone comic book illustrators who tells her own stories rather than work with a male author. This is group of women is so small in the French tradition that I almost could not do an independent on the French phenomenon of bande dessinée. Instead of continuing the male-created cultural impressions of women and their sexuality, which some female comic book artists do, I would argue she expresses a female independence from a tradition different from Western feminism (which the continued development of Western feminism is not very strong today even in most of America's mainstream feminine writing, let alone in French writing).
I went ahead and looked at the reviews on Amazon for the English edition, and while it has 4 out of 5 stars, there are many people who do not like the book, mainly because it was not Persepolis (which would be why it is a completely different book...go figure). There are some critics of the book who argue that the discussion is shallow in that it only talks about sex; in that the women characters are manipulative and deceitful (that complaint made me smile because well behaved women never make history); in that discussing Muslim women's sex lives is so cliché. You can decide on whether any of these criticism are valid, but I encourage you to view Satrapi's quick read as a poem. If all you focus on is the rhyming couplets than you discern none of the power of the overall image. I think one can read between the lines of Embroideries and see an example of how different cultures' perspectives on sex is perhaps their most defining traits*. But, hey, maybe I am wrong about the entire thing.
I don't know if you exclusively read comics with the superhero trope, but if you are looking to branch out into the more international and broader subjects expressed in the genre, you should think about getting your hands on Embroideries.
Summary of Embroideries
From the best?selling author of Persepolis comes this gloriously entertaining and enlightening look into the sex lives of Iranian women. Embroideries gathers together Marjane?s tough?talking grandmother, stoic mother, glamorous and eccentric aunt and their friends and neighbors for an afternoon of tea drinking and talking. Naturally, the subject turns to love, sex and the vagaries of men.As the afternoon progresses, these vibrant women share their secrets, their regrets and their often outrageous stories about, among other things, how to fake one?s virginity, how to escape an arranged marriage, how to enjoy the miracles of plastic surgery and how to delight in being a mistress. By turns revealing and hilarious, these are stories about the lengths to which some women will go to find a man, keep a man or, most important, keep up appearances.
Full of surprises, this introduction to the private lives of some fascinating women, whose life stories and lovers will strike us as at once deeply familiar and profoundly different from our own, is sure to bring smiles of recognition to the faces of women everywhere?and to teach us all a thing or two.
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