How It All Goes Down
It's 1980 in Iran, and Marjane Satrapi isn't rocking out to Michael Jackson or watching Dallas; she's being forced to wear a veil at her school, which is now segregated. The boys and girls are separated.
This marks the beginning of years of political and religious turmoil in Iran. Marjane's mother and father often attend political protests and support revolutionaries when they can, including many of Marjane's relatives, like Uncle Anoosh. Uncle Anoosh had fled to the U.S.S.R., because the Iranian regime believed him to be a spy. Uncle Anoosh teaches Marjane much about the world. He also gives her a swan carved out of bread, which is a lot nicer than a swan made from origami paper (because you can probably eat it). Marji grows very close to Uncle Anoosh, and she takes it very hard when he is executed.
Because of her mother, father, Grandma, and uncle, Marjane's passions lie in social activism. At a young age, she wants to fix social inequalities and make the world into a place where old people don't have to suffer. That's kind of hard to do when there are bombs falling on Tehran and killing Marjane's friends and family members.
Eventually, Marjane's parents decide that Iran is not the place for the daughter they've raised. Marjane is a girl who is headstrong, independent, and outspoken. Her behavior gets her expelled from school, and mom and pop are afraid that a worse punishment will befall her as the regime gets stricter. They ship Marjane to Vienna, where she ends up in a boarding house run by nuns.
It's no Viennese Sister Act, though. Marjane gets along with the nuns about as well as she gets along with authority in Iran. Over the next few years, she finds herself in a variety of living situations: with her sexually liberated friend, Julie, in an apartment with eight queer folks (no, she's not on Vienna's version of Project Runway), and renting a room from a horse-faced woman with a foul attitude and an incontinent dog… just to name a few.
Marjane misses her family, who she left back in Iran and are her only support system. She gets depressed, and becomes homeless. Living on the streets makes her so sick she coughs up blood. She survives, and moves back home to Iran.
Giving up her freedoms is hard, but living with her family is what she needs. Her mom and dad treat her as an equal, and her grandmother gives her the reality check she needs: Marjane has to always be true to herself in order to be happy.
Back in Iran, she continues doing what social activism she can (like designing a new uniform with a shorter veil), gets married, parties, and then gets divorced. All these things are steps on her way to finding her identity.
After a couple of years, Marjane realizes (again) that Iran is not for her, and she moves back to Europe, letting us know that she only got to see her beloved Grandma once more before she died. Freedom has a price...