Showing the Unsayable: Trauma and Juxtaposition in Persepolis and A Child's Life and Other Stories
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis focuses on two comic books by women that interweave personal trauma with the trauma of historical events: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which explores coming of age against the background of memory of the Iranian Revolution, and A Childs Life and Other Stories by Phoebe Gloeckner, which explores parent-child incest and coming of age in the wake of the American sexual revolution. It argues that Satrapi and Gloeckner, two women comic artists, push the limits of the comics medium and of memoir by using juxtaposition — of alternative illustration styles, of what is seen and what is not seen, of different tellings of a protagonist's story — to subvert cultural and sexual roles traditionally imposed on women.
abstract: This thesis focuses on two comic books by women that interweave personal trauma with the trauma of historical events: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which explores coming of age against the background of memory of the Iranian Revolution, and A Childs Life and Other Stories by Phoebe Gloeckner, which explores parent-child incest and coming of age in the wake of the American sexual revolution. It argues that Satrapi and Gloeckner, two women comic artists, push the limits of the comics medium and of memoir by using juxtaposition — of alternative illustration styles, of what is seen and what is not seen, of different tellings of a protagonist's story — to subvert cultural and sexual roles traditionally imposed on women.
author: Poharec, Lauranne
language: English
keywords: persepolis, A child's life and other stories, autobiographical, autobiography, comics, gloeckner, satrapi, juxtaposition, trauma, women, history, war, incest, rape, intertext
date published: 2014-09-12T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:26:07Z
provider: University of New Mexico
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of New Mexico

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1928/24507