Satrapi's black-and-white graphic memoir of growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution manages to be politically devastating and genuinely funny, often in the same panel. She was ten when the revolution hit. The simple drawing style makes the violence land harder, not softer. It was banned in Iran, challenged in American schools, and translated into dozens of languages because the story turns out to be everyone's story about losing a country.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.