Showing the Unsayable: Trauma and Juxtaposition in Persepolis and A Child's Life and Other Stories

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 Child’s 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.Comparative Literature & Cultural StudiesMastersUniversity of New Mexico. Dept. of Foreign Languages and LiteraturesCheek, PamelaBrau, LorieWorden, Danie