A graphic novel of regret riddled with inescapable grief, capturing attention from the outset, with a stinging and...
The impact of the Rwandan genocide through the eyes of a Hutu teenager.
Deogratias is beset with flashbacks of the war and his role in inflicting carnage. We first meet him after the bloodshed, in a bar where he meets an old friend, a white French sergeant. As the story jumps back in time, readers learn about young Deogratias’ heavy drinking, which works to keep the memories of his horrific behavior at bay and enables him to convince himself that he isn’t a dog—inhumane. Yet, although every drop is meant to prevent his metaphorical, and even sometimes physical, transformation into a dog, we witness how Deogratias was compelled to join the Hutu militia and murder two Tutsi friends. Running throughout is the muted narrative of the pastoral work of the white European men of the church and the ways in which they help and complicate Rwandan lives. The lucid, sometimes-painful imagery—depicted in intense colors, with highly expressive faces—accompanying this story illustrates the ways in which the hierarchies besetting race and ethnicity, imposed by the sociopolitical climate, all come to bear on the decisions made by the characters. Readers can’t help but simultaneously empathize with and loathe Deogratias’ decisions as his PTSD shuttles one back and forth between his reveries of past and present.
A graphic novel of regret riddled with inescapable grief, capturing attention from the outset, with a stinging and near-to-cathartic ending. (foreword) (Graphic novel. 14-18)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-18964-6
Page Count: 96
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2019
Reads more often like a lecture than a graphic novel.
This illustrated peace polemic and lesson in international relations is often educational but only occasionally engaging.
The unusual collaboration teams Roberson, formerly a peace-studies major at Berkeley, with artist Piskor and writer Pekar, who established his reputation through graphic memoir (and whose American Splendor series inspired the well-received film). More recently, Pekar has been telling stories other than his (Ego and Hubris, 2006, etc.), and here he recounts a student research trip taken by Roberson to discover how Macedonia was able to avoid the civil war and ethnic cleansing that had beset so much of what was formerly Yugoslavia. The challenge is to convey the complexities of the situation in graphic form, which amounts to large stretches of Roberson engaging in debate or explanatory dialogue. In the first part, a boyfriend seems there only to serve as a sounding board, allowing Roberson to expound on the history of the Balkans and the peacekeeping efforts in Macedonia. After Roberson decides to go on a quixotic mission to Macedonia for thesis research, the boyfriend drops out of the picture, without explanation. Her travel adventures make for livelier reading, as she becomes frustrated with men hitting on her and a hotel clerk trying to cheat her, while absorbing as much of the culture as she can, forging strong friendships and learning how Macedonia has been able to avoid the fate of its neighbors. The narrative doesn’t whitewash the situation. The Macedonians aren’t necessarily more noble than anyone else, and the ethnic tensions with Albanians threaten the same sort of strife as has torn neighboring Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet the Macedonians have remained committed to war prevention, rather than using the threat of war as a means of sustaining peace. Though there’s a lot of personality in Piskor’s illustrations, a picture plainly isn’t worth a thousand words in this text-heavy work (that ends with an all-text epilogue, presumably written by Roberson).
Reads more often like a lecture than a graphic novel.Pub Date: June 26, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-345-49899-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Life in all its bittersweet richness, depicted by a master who learned from the more personally revelatory work by younger...
Posthumous collection commemorates the pioneering cartoonist who gave his name to the comic industry’s top annual awards, the Eisners.
<\b>Revered by both his comic-strip peers and the legions of graphic novelists he inspired, Eisner (Will Eisner’s New York: Life in the Big City, 2006, etc.) never felt as comfortable with personal revelation in his narratives as many of the younger memoirists who followed his lead. Thus, the subtitle is only partially accurate. Only “The Dreamer” and “The Day I Became a Professional” make direct reference to Eisner’s prodigious career, and editor Denis Kitchen had to annotate the former to provide the real names of the pseudonymous characters. The longest piece, “To the Heart of the Storm,” is perhaps the most ambitious and overtly autobiographical, detailing the reminiscences of a young soldier on a troop train about the anti-Semitism he and his family have encountered. Yet the flashbacks aren’t presented in chronological order, and neither are these stories, though they’re the closest thing to a graphic autobiography ever published under Eisner’s name. They’re presented in the order he created them, with the first story, “A Sunset in Sunshine City,” providing an allegory of the artist’s twilight years in its tale of the reluctant retirement and relocation of a shopkeeper who has spent all his life in New York. The remaining selection, “The Name of the Game,” features a thinly fictionalized biography of Eisner’s wife’s family. This volume draws far more on personal experience than was usual in such earlier works as The Spirit, but it’s telling that the title is Life, in Pictures rather than “my life.”
Life in all its bittersweet richness, depicted by a master who learned from the more personally revelatory work by younger generations who were profoundly influenced by him.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-393-06107-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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