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Life in Color

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Look at how far we’ve gotten! We’ve gone over a multitude of enlightening graphic novels, and today we will be Aya: Life in Yop City by Marguerite Abouet to the list. Aya is set in Côte d'Ivoire which is located in western Africa in the year 1978. This is the first graphic novel I read that is located in Africa, and honestly, I loved every second of it. Having taken French for six years, I was aware of Côte d'Ivoire's existence, but all I really knew about it was that they spoke French. I know a lot of us don't really get to read much about this country which truly is sad, but the good thing is we can change that! Aya is one of the many graphic novels set in Africa that we can read, and it wasn’t until I read it that I got to really see what life in Ivory Coast is like.

The first thing that we see as soon as we open the graphic novel is a map of Africa pointing to where Ivory Coast is at. That right away tells us that Aya was written for people outside of Côte d'Ivoire. The map allows us to locate ourselves in the country where the story will be taking place in, and it also functions as a way of setting the stage. We are prepared to what is to come. It is so important, that without it, it would have taken us longer to understand what we are reading about since the country is so different from ours. That is why authors provide everything that the reader needs to not only get the full experience, but also to understand what the new topic is about.



Clement Oubrerie 

Then, as we continue to read, we come across the beautiful, colorful depictions of Côte d'Ivoire by Clement Oubrerie. If it wasn’t for the colors, we as readers would not have been able to visualize a country and culture that is new to a lot of us. Not only does the panel above use color to create the atmosphere, but it is also used to convey and emphasize the patterns that are a major part of the culture that are used all throughout the graphic novel. With the use of color, we are to visualize life in Yop City. The buildings are colorful and even the sky is a specific tone that allows us to feel the temperature of the area. The culture would not have been able to be fully depicted without the use of color. It is something that we need to become aware of the physical form of such objects like McCloud puts it, especially since we are reading about a county that is so different from ours. 

Just as it is important for the writer to help us understand new topics by using different strategies, it is also important that we as readers are open to the different approaches that they can take and to the different topics as well (in this case country) that we will be reading about.

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