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Getting Better with Abouet's Aya: Life in Yop City

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No such thing as a graceful comeback for me, so I’m just gonna say what I can.

Aya: Life in Yop City is a beautiful, colorful graphic novel written by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clément Oubrerie, and, according to the back cover, is “loosely based upon Marguerite Abouet’s youth in Yop City”. Aya is a series of French-language comics about Aya and her friends’ and family’s lives. Aya is pretty great, I think. She wants to go to university and become a doctor so she can help people - even though she already helps everyone she knows so much! - and she spends a lot of her time studying instead of going to the maquis (“an inexpensive open-air restaurant with music and room to dance”).

“Yop City” is the nickname residents give to Yopougon, a suburb of Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire. If you don’t know anything about Côte d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), or think this may not interest you because it’s, like, far away or something, don’t worry! Abouet provides lots of background information to deliver a realistic portrait of her community.

A glossary is provided for local Côte d'Ivoire vocabulary - because although the official language is French, there’s regional language as well! Abouet also includes background historical information at the end of the graphic novel in a section called Ivorian Bonus, which even features recipes! Explanatory footnotes throughout the graphic novel for other things outside readers may be unfamiliar with are scattered throughout the book.

The collection begins with Aya’s narration about a new change to the country: “1978 was the year that Ivory Coast, my beautiful country, got to see its first television ad campaign.”

But the biggest sign that this is a book you can - and should - read and enjoy as an outsider is probably the preface, which both challenges non-African readers and encourages them to see people of Africa differently than the media portrays them. 



(Sorry, I can't scan right now. And there’s another page to it, but I can only provide one)

Thinking about how Aya might challenge Western perception requires me having to acknowledge what that current perception even is.

But the truth is I have no idea what “the average American” thinks about Africa right now, because I spend the majority of my time keeping up with other places and people, have become so critical of journalism - and photojournalism especially - because of the way things are framed within them, leading me to not want to discuss how it actually harms people even when it tries to help them - and honestly? These kinds of questions are tiring me out.

We live in a time where we can talk to people around the world - yes, even in places where our friends have to use TOR and more secure networks to contact us. Here in the U.S. we have a lot more freedom into accessing what is available elsewhere. We can bypass restrictions because people are constantly fighting to make that possible. I mean, we also have, like, a really hard time trying to keep media unbiased, but I don’t believe anything is unbiased.

So your responsibility is understanding where those biases come from. You have to counter them when you can. You can have internalized biases without realizing it.

In extreme versions of this, you might really believe in an Africa that doesn’t exist. Maybe you have a white savior complex about that, where you have good intentions, but don’t recognize the removal of people’s agency inherent in it. Plenty of African literature and media can show you that agency.

Aya provides readers with that realistic portrait. People have hopes and dreams and care about things like love all over, even if they do it differently than you do.

I don’t think it’s Abouet’s responsibility to teach anyone outside of Yopougon that people in Yopougon are just doing their thing and living their lives, though. She has provided us with so many tools already to understand her city and culture better.

She has met us more than halfway.

Exposing yourself to other people’s work and culture - and getting a personalized image of them that’s closer to the real thing than whatever you have in your head beforehand - is essential to de-centering your worldview from yourself. And I think that's an essential thing to do if you want to be a better person.

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