Marjane Satrapi's engrossing, poignant, and sometimes hilarious "graphic memoir" Persepolis (2003) is further proof that the graphic novel itself has come a long way since the days of Superman, Batman, Hellboy, and those other superheroes we idolize in our popular culture. However, I believe young adults will find Satrapi's memoir of growing up during the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the bloody Iraq-Iran War that followed, no less appealing than the flashy comics they normally read during their spare time, and for a few very good reasons.

Satrapi was born into a highly intellectual, politically conscious family during the rule of the Shah. While other Iranian children were reading the usual fairy tales before the Shah's fall, her family convinced her to read cartoons and other materials on Marxist-Leninism, something she picked up on right away. But when the Islamic Revolution started, she and her family's dreams of a more liberal Iran began to fall apart. Under the mullahs and other religious fundamentalists, she began to rebel against an even more oppressive regime than that of the Shah's. She was segregated from men in school. She, again, had to put on her hijab wherever she went. And, when secular Iraqi President Saddam Hussein started his military campaign against theocratic Iran, everyone in the country had no choice but to mourn the dead at least twice a day.

One of the most interesting aspects of life Satrapi discovered under the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini was that upper-class Iranian teens like her still congregated at a Western-style burger joint named Kansas to get away from it all, despite the risk of becoming political prisoners, and even the innate possibility of death, in the process. To channel her anger and frustration with the theocratic regime's repressive policies, she decided to express her love for all things American pop culture. She wore Nike shoes, denim outfits, a Michael Jackson button, and even picked up on the punk rock scene, despite the fact that she and her family risked severe physical and emotional intimidation in the process as well.

With her concerned family fearing for her own life, Satrapi was sent to Vienna at the age of 14 to get the liberal education they thought she really needed. But this was not without its pitfalls, too. Like every other teenager in contemporary society, she felt extremely uneasy about her place in the world and, as a result, decided to start dealing drugs with her nonconformist peers. Even worse, no matter what types of people she lived with in Vienna, she eventually found herself homeless and in complete emotional distress.

Forced to return to her homeland after her high school graduation, Satrapi, once again, got back to her cultural and customary basics. Ironically, her otherwise loving parents had enough faith in her to allow her to make the wrong decisions when she came back, especially when she married a narcissistic artist she really did not love so much to begin with. All in all, she continued to ponder her place in the world, wondering if she ever had a real home in her native Iran in the first place.

Although young adults are less likely to be interested in what they would consider "ancient history" than in the usual graphic novel fare, Satrapi's "Persepolis" is still a remarkably universal account of a young woman who goes through a lot of the usual angst teens go through on a regular basis. She deals drugs with her Western friends and acquaintances, suffers from chronic depression, thinks about killing herself, and feels an overall sense of isolation and bewilderment from the rest of the world.

Perhaps even more beneficial for young adult readers is the ways in which "Persepolis" shatters many of the negative stereotypes we associate with Middle Easterners in a post-9/11 world. Satrapi and her parents retained their liberal ideology, even in the face of tremendous religious and political upheavals in their native country. Satrapi herself liked what young adult Westerners were reading, watching, and listening to at the time. The list goes on and on.

One of the most fascinating elements of Persepolis' appeal to young adult readers is that Satrapi's deceptively simple black-and-white illustrations suggest something more than just a colorful, fast-paced adventure for teenagers to sink their teeth into. Important metaphors and nuances abound, so even if the youngest of young adults have trouble understanding what the word "abstract" represents altogether, the stark yet easy-to-comprehend impressionistic illustrations will literally more than make up for their substandard social and moral intelligence quotients altogether.