After reading the first assigned book of the year in my ASTU class, Persepolis by Marjane Santrapi, I was left wondering what the author’s objective was in writing out her childhood into a memoir. In class Dr. Luger explained that Santrapi had stated that she set out to counter the negative western narrative of Iran and to share her own perspective on the revolution and war in Iran. Although that answered my question, it also raised some new ones like why did the author choose a narrative of her childhood to counter the such a common narrative. At first glance it seems naive to think a personal story could possibly counter years of mainstream media and propoganda. She could have easily written an op-ed or historical narrative voicing a more fact based account but instead she offers up her admittedly bias experience. I found the answer to this question in another memoir I read over the summer. Over the summer I picked up Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday after reading how his work had inspired Wes Anderson’s movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. His memoir, although very different than Persepolis, had a similar objective of countering a common narrative. For him it was the narrative of World War One and World War Two. Zweig like Santrapi was powerless at the time of his experiences and yet uses his own powerless voice to reconstruct a well told narrative.

Stefan Zweig was a Viennese succesionist author writing from the early nineteen hundreds until his death in nineteen forty two. As an academic he enjoyed close friendships with Freud and most of the Jewish bourgeois. He begins his memoir by describing the golden age of Vienna as a world with an intellectual spirit and apolitical demeanor. As his memoir follows his life it also follows western Europe’s descent into barbarism as war mongering and ignorance that lead to the downfall of the once utopian Vienna. Zweig goes from a well known intellectual elite to a stateless refugee with his works burned and banned by the Nazis. Zweig chooses to counter the many narratives put out by governments during the war by sharing his story of defeat. At first it may seem naive to try to counter narratives spun by propaganda ministries and totalitarian regimes by a mere personal story but quite the opposite holds true. Zweig knew by the end of his life that his once well heard voice had been silenced by the Nazi regime and he attempted to save his voice in hopes that one day it would have power. He seals his story in the transcript of his memoir before killing himself, stateless and penniless in Brazil.

Santrapi also uses her personal narrative to counter the mainstream media’s narrative on the history she lived, and her use of a personal story has a similar affect. Throughout Persepolis the reader follows Santrapi as a young girl who is powerless in both the revolution and the war. The scene where she flees and rally during the revolution and the ending scene where she is essentially forced to escape to Vienna to continue her education both exemplify how powerless she was at the time. Even within her own family her ideas are often dismissed and yet she uses this same story to take on years of propaganda from western nations. Santrapi takes her voice, that was once powerless, and uses her new standing as an adult living in Europe to give power back to her once overlooked voice.

The connection between these two memoirs explained why Santrapi chose her childhood story to combat such a powerful narrative. Both these authors had been made powerless, silenced by the conditions of their environment. By using the voices that were once silenced both authors effectively combat seemingly impenetrable negative narratives that once held them down. Santrapi may not have had a voice as a child and Zweig may have lost his voice in the chaos of war but in death and in new beginnings they both regained what they had lost. These memoirs represent a paradigm shift from being oppressed by a narrative to reclaiming and restoring that same narrative. Memoirs as a means to redefine a previous state of knowledge are particularly effective when those who were once silenced begin to be heard.