‘Woman, Life, Freedom’: Marjane Satrapi shows freedom is incomplete without women’s liberation

In September 2022, a routine event took place in the streets of Tehran. A young woman, found in violation of the established moral code by the morality police, was detained. But no one had anticipated what it would become: three days later, as news of her death due to the police-inflicted wounds broke, protestors swelled up in the streets in stunning numbers, calling for an end to the violently oppressive regime that had spent decades exercising draconian, authoritarian rule in the garb of religious orthodoxy.

In Woman, Life, Freedom, Marjane Satrapi brings together writers, artists, activists, and scholars to situate the events of that September in the broader context of Iranian politics, and give readers a peek into the many facets of life in the months, days, and hours in which a revolution takes its first breaths. How does the anger and frustration of a people find a voice?

Stories of revolution

Mahsa Jina Amini was twenty-two years old, visiting her relatives in Tehran with her family. Having taken off her headscarf while walking in the city, she was caught by the state-sanctioned morality police and taken to their offices in a van. Though officials later claimed that Amini had preexisting health complications, the truth was clear to anyone who had...

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