Marjane Satrapi captured profound human emotions – and paved the way for an entire generation Marjane Satrapi

HeyOn the morning of June 4, when I heard the news of Marjane Satrapi’s death, I was distraught. I simply cannot believe it. Although I had only met her in person a few times—even though I lived in Paris for sixteen years and contributed to her book Women, Life, and Liberty—I felt a deep connection to her work and legacy.

Our collaboration on this book occurred mostly through email correspondence, but I always held her in the highest regard. I admired her intelligence, her sense of humor, and above all, her amazing talent for visual storytelling.

What I achieved with seemingly simple drawings was actually very difficult. The black and white spaces in its pages, the economy of its lines, and the apparent simplicity of its compositions – all of this helped to convey deep human feelings with a clarity that only a few artists have achieved. As a cartoonist, I know how difficult it is to achieve this level of expressive precision while making it look effortless.

Marjane opened the door not only for me, but for many Iranian comic book artists, such as Parsova Bashi, Mansoura Kamari, Majid Bita, Shaghaigh Moazami, and others. More broadly, it has opened the way for artists from smaller, less visible countries in the comics world – artists who have personal stories to tell but whose voices are often overlooked. With Persepolis, it gave Western publishers the confidence to invest in our work. Many of us owe a portion of our careers to the space you created.

Once I absorbed the news of her death, my thoughts turned to Chicken with Peach, my favorite of her books. I remembered the novel’s hero, Nasir Ali Khan, whose favorite musical instrument broke, so he decided to stay in bed until death came to him. In his final days, he refused his favorite dish, chicken with peaches. Looking back now, the character seems almost like an extension of the author’s sensitive soul, perhaps even an unconscious obsession.

I find myself thinking about Marjane, about her final days, about what machine might be broken inside her. And every time I do this, my eyes fill with tears.