Skip to main content

Culture in Graphic Novels -

By ShockeronShockSt

Alright so everyone has heard of Cote d’Ivoire, right? Just kidding, I definitely hadn’t until I read the amazing graphic novel, Aya: Life in Yop City. This book, written by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clement Oubrerie, follows the lives of the inhabitants of a small town in Africa. It mainly follows the lives of Aya, Adjoua, and Bintu, three young adult females as they traverse life, boys, family, and parties. The girls get into all kinds of situations and have to deal with real-life drama around them. Like in one part of the book, Aya’s dad reveals that he has an entire second family, including another woman and two small children. Or when Adjoua gets pregnant and says the baby belongs to Moussa, the heir to his father’s lucrative company and large fortune, but in reality, the baby belongs to a simple playboy in town. So really, you should look into reading this book it’s got something for everyone. Yes, even you.

This book is very clearly intended to be read by people from outside of Cote d’Ivorie. The authors wanted to draw attention to what was going on in the city. There is a foreword that describes the culture of the town written in the book that gives a little bit of background as to why the people that are depicted in the story are the way are. Additionally, there is an entire section at the back of the book to help readers decipher the slang terms that are used in the Ivorian culture, learn a little more about the background of Ivorian culture, and even learn how to dress and cook like they do. These ancillary elements really add to the fact that this book is written for the non-Ivorian citizens to understand a little about their culture.

Writers have this responsibility to readers to help them understand what is being said. It’s not enough to just say something and let it be done with. If I had picked up this book and the forward was not there, nor the glossary, I would have been so lost! I probably would have put the book down in frustration, but because that information was provided, I was able to open my eyes to a world that I didn’t even know existed, and that’s our job as readers. We have to keep an open mind when reading about a culture that may not be familiar to us. It’s our job to take each piece of information as just that, NEW information. Everything may not always black and white in literature, but it is something that we can learn from and that we can use to keep our minds from slamming shut when someone offers a different way of living through their writing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Two Faces of Anarchy in V for Vendetta

By Anonymous
As someone who has only seen the movie version of V for Vendetta once many years ago and have never read the graphic novel, I wasn’t exactly sure how similar or different the movie version would be to the graphic novel. I was in for a surprise when I discovered just how vastly different, they are from each other. With that being said, they do have some similarities when strictly looking at the motives of the characters. Let’s dive into those motives and how the author and illustrator of V for Vendetta achieved getting these motives across to their readers. In Scott McCloud’s chapter of Understanding Comics “ Blood in the Gutter ” we are presented with different panel – to – panel transitions, and an introduction to the term “gutter” as being the white space between the panels which is where the audience of reader “takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (McCloud, 66). After finishing reading V for Vendetta , several themes or ideas that were most prevalent...
Post a Comment
Read more

Junji Ito and the Art of the Uncanny

By Anonymous
As discussed in Chapter 2 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics , the Japanese style of comic book art holds several notable quirks. While early manga artists tended to favor simplistic, yet distinct styles that paved the way for a number of internationally renowned characters, contemporary manga artists have since favored a hybrid style that juxtaposes the cutesy, rounded characters of yesteryear with the realistic and richly shaded settings that have since become popular. Building on this, McCloud describes a phenomenon in which Japanese comic artists have used realism to objectify--that is, to emphasize the "otherness" of certain characters, objects, or places--elements of their work and further separate these elements from the reader. I have chosen the work of one of my favorite comic artists, Japanese horror icon Junji Ito, to further illustrate McCloud's point. Though McCloud describes this phenomenon in the context of Japanese comic book art, he is usi...
1 comment
Read more

Back to Week Tow makeup!

By Anonymous
So, I missed my week 2 blog post so this is one of my makeup work assignments: In this blog I am to pick a picture from a graphic novel that I have read that I liked, One that exemplifies McCloud's teaching. I like Batman so to no surprise this is one that I picked! This is an encounter between Batman and the Joker. I think it highlights what we learn and have learned from McCloud because of it's use of colors, space in between the frames, shadowing, darkness and light, different symbol representation, like the rain and giving the reader the ability to create in their own minds wants happening in between the frames. 
Post a Comment
Read more