Category: graphic memoir

Photographs and Memory in Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”: Part II
In my previous post, I started writing about photographs and constructions of memory in Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do. Over the past year, I’ve been drawn to the ways that graphic memoirists use actual photographs within their work. Occasionally, they use actual copies of the photographs, but for the majority of the texts that I have looked at, creators reproduce the photographs, … Read More Photographs and Memory in Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”: Part II

+ graphic memoir, graphic novels, I Was Their American Dream, Malaka Gharib, memory, photographs, The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui
Photographs and Memories in Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”: Part I
In my last post, I looked at the role of photographs in Malaka Gharib’s I Was Their American Dream. Today, I want to continue that discussion by looking at the ways that Thi Bui depicts and deploys photographs in The Best We Could Do, a graphic memoir about her family’s escape from South Vietnam and immigration to the United States in 1970s. On the … Read More Photographs and Memories in Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”: Part I

+ comics, graphic memoir, graphic novels, I Was Their American Dream, Malaka Gharib, memory, photographs
Photographs and Memory in Malaka Gharib’s “I Was Their American Dream”
A few weeks ago, I read Malaka Gharib’s I Was Their American Dream. Gharib’s graphic memoir details coming of age as a first generation American immigrant, the daughter of a Filipino mother and Egyptian father. She explores the ways that she struggled with her identity, and the ways that she felt pulled, a lot of the time, in at least three directions in this … Read More Photographs and Memory in Malaka Gharib’s “I Was Their American Dream”

+ comics, graphic memoir, graphic novels, graphic travelogue, Guantánamo Voices, kane lynch, Mansoor Adayfi, omar el akkad, sarah mirk
Humanity and Beauty Amidst Brutality
As I read the selections in Sarah Mirk’s Guantánamo Voices, a lot of thoughts came to my mind. I knew about some of this, but I did not know about most the stuff that occurred and continues to occur at Guantánamo. I did not know a bout the bounty program that led to most of the individuals imprisonment far from their homes. I think … Read More Humanity and Beauty Amidst Brutality

+ comics, graphic memoir, graphic novels, graphic travelogue, Guantánamo Voices, islamophobia, Muslim, omar el akkad, sarah mirk
The Stoking of Fear
Every so often I’ll abruptly awake, out of dead sleep, because something startled me. Typically it’s a sound, in the dead of night, with the dim light of night streaming into the room, casting shadows all around. I’ll bolt up, heart racing, fearing to move lest whatever woke me pounces as I stumble around blindly in the dark. I think about someone breaking into … Read More The Stoking of Fear