Facts, fiction or Stereotype? What do you really know about Africa?

The graphic novel Aya of Yop City is a very compelling and interesting graphic novel to read. Written by Marguerite Abouet it is loosely based upon her own life. This story is based in the 1970’s and shows a very healthy African economy and stability for the country during that time. The main character is Aya and we get to see her life and the life of her friends and family growing up in Africa. It will shake up what you know to be true, what is fiction or what is just plain stereotypes.  I believe the purpose of the author of Aya, Marguerite Abouet, was too break stereotypes that the world had developed for the country of Africa, that it was a country of despair, where there was nothing but starving people, plagued with diseases and disastrous living conditions.  We all know we have had these visions in our minds, some by no fault of our own. We have all seen the commercials on T.V. with the starving African children, who look like walking skeletons with flies buzzing about them or we hear about the famine, droughts and just life in general for the African people being miserable. Though I have no doubt that these places in African are real and there is horrible suffering, after reading Aya, I now know that there are places of prosperity as well. It is not all bad, but in our minds eyes this is not the vision we in the western world have been given of this country.  Some elements of the book that prove that this book is aimed at the target audience of those outside of Africa are the highlighting of day to day occurrences and living of Aya and her family and friends in the book. We get to see that, unlike what we ourselves have been trained to know of Africa, Aya and her family are not much different from us. They work, they have businesses, they compete in beauty pageants and have family disputes and troubles and can have roller coaster rides in their love lives.  Which for me often looked more like an America drama or movie than anything.  I believe the author delivers to the audience just how “westernized” the city of Yop really is and I believe this painting of Africa breaks preconceived ideas that the reader may have had about Africa, going into the book. 

Authors and readers have responsibilities to each other when it comes to writing and reading any type of literature. Some responsibilities that authors, who write about their different cultures have toward their readers is to bring reality and truth about their culture to their audience and to break typical stereotypes that their audience has. To bring them revelation and new ideas. I think Marguerite Abouet does this well for her readers in Aya, I know I saw a different light. Now for their readers, they have some responsibility as well. A good responsibility that readers have is to read the authors book with an open mind. For a reader to be able to see a different view you must be willing to hear a different view. If the author is a good one, this should be easy for the reader to so. I felt Aya did just that.

After reading Aya you should be able to carry away with you a different outlook on the life of those who life in Africa and see that there are a lot of similarities between the people of Africa and other nation and also appreciate the differences as well. Every country has it’s good and bad. Africa is no different in this.  After reading this book you will recognize and see that You should be able to see the bad of the country and respond accordingly but also the good and respond to this as well.

The picture below, I believe, speaks a thousand words of who the audience of the book is and what it was aimed to do. When I see this picture, this was not the vision of Africa that I had in my mind before I read the book, not so today! What is your view?