We all know the disaster stories Western media pushes about Africa, right? Well, I found a version of that country almost never seen in the West through the graphic novel Aya: Love in Yop City. This series by Marguerite Abouet is set during the 1970s in Yopougon-Koute, or Yop City for short, in Côte d'Ivoire on the west coast of Africa. No sensational visuals of famine here. What you see is a society that is becoming modern to the point of having a rising middle class. The story’s definitely engaging, but the richness comes from how the warm colors and characters connect expressively with writing in panels. Readers can really immerse themselves in a narrative with emotional depth in Abouet’s Yop City.
Right off the bat, it’s pretty clear that Aya is meant for those of us unfamiliar with Côte d'Ivoire (let’s face it, that’s most of us). The elements at the end of the book titled “Ivorian Bonus” are a hint. There’s a glossary for words like koutoukou (a kind of palm wine) and dêh! (an exclamation), stressing their novelty feel for the non-African reader (Abouet). As outsiders, we are spoon-fed cultural and biographical background information. These recipes, guides to Ivorian lingo, street sketches, and afterword from Abouet all make it clear a history and social setting is being translated for a different reading public. Being exposed to a different language and customs like this, I felt curious enough to read more. But I was connecting to the book more as a visitor in a foreign country than as one of the characters.
I might feel like a stranger to Abouet‘s world, but the structure of her pages uses comic text bubbles that are universally recognizable to everyone. Since Aya has been translated from the French, it uses conventional visual and narrative techniques to appeal to a mixed readership. The combination of words and images becomes even more important for a narrative that has been shifted into another language. Text and pictures work together here to give us a deeper meaning. We can understand ideas and emotional hints that either one alone just can’t provide (McCloud 155).
And then there’s the colors. Using these in panels really gives us an emotional jolt. They add detail to the comic that makes us itch to take another look. We want to get right in there and see it from the lens of the artist. We want to understand what the thoughts are behind the images being drawn. Color gives us more of a physical sense of these characters, of sight and touch, than art drawn in black and white (McCloud 189). Seeing these brightly colored clothes and patterns in Aya reminds non-Western readers we are seeing an unfamiliar culture.
Take a look at the variety of colors of clothing in this panel showing the Treichville, Ivory Coast, marketplace on page 159. These greens, yellows, and reds, and bold patterns actually influence how we see the personality of this country. Using color in this way gives us more of a visual identity for the characters of Côte d’Ivoire.
Abouet, Marguerite, and Oubrerie Clément. Aya: Love in Yop City. Drawn & Quarterly, 2013, p. 159.
Reading Abouet’s work reminded me of something important. Like how writers can identify and do something about negative portrayals of their cultures and countries. A graphic novel like Aya helps change the stereotype of postcolonial Africa still being swallowed without question in Europe and North America. I mean, there are so many cultures to learn about on this massive continent. Writers from other geographies can educate Western media who are so obsessed with exploiting these countries. It’s time to give up blindly accepting images of swollen bellied children and swarms of people dying of AIDS.
My attitude really changed from this book. It invited me into a small world that represented a completely different way of life than I had been led to believe. Hey, I get it now. I’m responsible for not buying into the depressing effects of dominant media imagery. As a reader, it’s my job to question these automatic assumptions about unfamiliar cultures like Africa. Novels like Aya can offer me a multicultural education. I just have to be open to stories about new places and people. Open to following the lives of these characters from Côte d’Ivoire.
Right off the bat, it’s pretty clear that Aya is meant for those of us unfamiliar with Côte d'Ivoire (let’s face it, that’s most of us). The elements at the end of the book titled “Ivorian Bonus” are a hint. There’s a glossary for words like koutoukou (a kind of palm wine) and dêh! (an exclamation), stressing their novelty feel for the non-African reader (Abouet). As outsiders, we are spoon-fed cultural and biographical background information. These recipes, guides to Ivorian lingo, street sketches, and afterword from Abouet all make it clear a history and social setting is being translated for a different reading public. Being exposed to a different language and customs like this, I felt curious enough to read more. But I was connecting to the book more as a visitor in a foreign country than as one of the characters.
I might feel like a stranger to Abouet‘s world, but the structure of her pages uses comic text bubbles that are universally recognizable to everyone. Since Aya has been translated from the French, it uses conventional visual and narrative techniques to appeal to a mixed readership. The combination of words and images becomes even more important for a narrative that has been shifted into another language. Text and pictures work together here to give us a deeper meaning. We can understand ideas and emotional hints that either one alone just can’t provide (McCloud 155).
And then there’s the colors. Using these in panels really gives us an emotional jolt. They add detail to the comic that makes us itch to take another look. We want to get right in there and see it from the lens of the artist. We want to understand what the thoughts are behind the images being drawn. Color gives us more of a physical sense of these characters, of sight and touch, than art drawn in black and white (McCloud 189). Seeing these brightly colored clothes and patterns in Aya reminds non-Western readers we are seeing an unfamiliar culture.
My attitude really changed from this book. It invited me into a small world that represented a completely different way of life than I had been led to believe. Hey, I get it now. I’m responsible for not buying into the depressing effects of dominant media imagery. As a reader, it’s my job to question these automatic assumptions about unfamiliar cultures like Africa. Novels like Aya can offer me a multicultural education. I just have to be open to stories about new places and people. Open to following the lives of these characters from Côte d’Ivoire.
Works Cited
Abouet, Marguerite, and Oubrerie Clément. Aya: Love in Yop City. Drawn & Quarterly, 2013.
McCloud, Scott. The Invisible Art Understanding Comics. HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
McCloud, Scott. The Invisible Art Understanding Comics. HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
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