Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir

MALIK SAJAD

When India was divided into India and Pakistan, most of Kashmir went to India even though its population is mostly Muslim whereas India is mostly Hindu. Kashmir was occupied by the Indian army and became a hotspot for trouble between India and Pakistan. The Kashmiri want independence, their own country. Munnu grew up in this intense environment, never knowing when the government would raid the house, arrest his father or older brother and steal something valuable. His father was an artist who worked in wood block prints. As a child Munnu would help his father with his art. The illustrations in this graphic memoir look like wood block prints. The Kashmir are portrayed ashangul deer (the Kashmir stag) which are now endangered, since their habitat is being destroyed by the Indian  army. Other people are portrayed as humans. At the age of 15, Munnu starts a career as a political cartoonist.  Later a westerner introduces Sajad to the works of Joe Saacco, who has written many political graphic non-fiction books, and encourages Sajad to write one about Kashmir.

I enjoy reading graphic non-fiction books about hotspots around the world. They can give a good overview of the situation. This one on Kashmir is well done.

BECOMING UNBECOMING

UNA

Una uses her own experiences with sexual assault and the background of the Yorkshire Ripper, in the 70’s to examine rape culture where women are made to feel guilty for being a victim. Through image and text Becoming, Unbecoming explores what it means to grow up in a culture where male violence goes unpunished and unquestioned. Una explores her experience, wonders if anything has really changed and challenges a global culture that demands that the victims of violence pay its cost. The police tried to justify the Ripper’s horrific crimes by publicly questioning why the women were out of their homes in the first place. Rather than following up on explicit physical descriptions and leads provided by one of the Ripper’s surviving victims, police instead chose to focus on gathering evidence that the murdered women were prostitutes or otherwise had “loose morals.”

This is a book all men and women should read.

SUCH A LOVELY LITTLE WAR: Saigon 1961-63

MARCELINO TRUONG

Both a memoir and a history, War is an informative window to what we call the Vietnam War; in Vietnam it is called the American War. Truong’s father was a Vietnamese diplomat in Washington, his mother a French woman with bipolar disease.During his early childhood in Washington, DC, the Truongs enjoyed a peaceful life in “a quiet middle-class suburb, something Norman Rockwell might imagine.” Truong describes this period as nothing short of idyllic: jazz on the car stereo, picnics by the water, white Christmases. When the father was called home, he became interpreter to Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. His mother had not wanted to leave the US and was unsettled in her new home. In Saigon, the children live a sheltered existence, punctuated by the war. When the Americans escalate the conflict by sending more weapons and troops, the Truong boys become increasingly more enthralled by the grandiose machines of destruction. They are disturbed more by their mother’s emotional outbursts and irrationalities than the war in the background. We also have the unique perspective of his father who had extraordinary access to the inner workings of power thanks to his role as President Ngô Dinh Diêm’s interpreter.

YUGE!: 10 Years of Doonesbury on Trump

G B TRUDEAU

I am so sick of Trump! I can’t stand seeing his ugly mug, hearing his voice or reading about him. But when I read of this compilation of Gary Trudeau’s Trump cartoons, I knew I had to check it out. And it is worth the time. Trudeau’s cutting sense of humour is a perfect foil for the Donald. It starts in the fall of 1987, can you imagine, when Trump was first starting to talk about running for President. One of the funniest pages comes at the end with Donald asking kids, “Hey Kids, tired of getting killed on insults in the cafeteria? Then start fighting back with my quality TRUMP Brand Insults. Choose from over 500 TREMENDOUS insults I’ve tweeted since last June including…” Then there are two pages of insults. Most presidential.

It all ends of course with the election that is ongoing this fall. Hopefully come Nov. 8 we will be laughing not crying.

WALKING WITH OUR SISTERS

Travelling Art Display (it is not a book but it tells serious and significant story)

Walking With Our Sisters is a commemorative installation that features nearly 2,000 pairs of handmade moccasin tops, or “vamps”, to honour indigenous women, along with children and two-spirited people, who have been murdered or have disappeared in Canada. The vamps are made with love and longing by the women’s families.

The vision for the vamps is they’re unfinished, Vamps usually get sewn into moccasins. But they’re to symbolize lives that have been cut short. They are all beautiful works of art. The sadness is the realization is that each pair of vamps represents a murdered or missing first nations woman.They are not forgotten.  They are sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins, aunties, grandmothers, friends and wives.  They have been cared for, they have been loved, and they are missing. There is a special circle of small vamps for children who were taken from their families to residential schools who never returned.

Experiencing the exhibit is a ritualized process. Volunteers guide you so you get the most out of the experience. Women are loaned wrap-around skirts. People can smudge if so inclined. Women and men can smudge with sage. Sweetgrass is men’s medicine; only men can light the sweetgrass and used it to smudge. The smudging process cleanses and purifies. Next we were introduced to an elder, then given tobacco to carry in our left hands – closer to the heart – as we walked the exhibit. As we viewed the Residencial School Circle the elder came and told us her story of being taken from her family and sent to residential school. It was an incredibly moving experience.
Everyone should see this exhibit.

FATHERLAND

NINA BUNJEVAC

As the title suggests Fatherland is more of a history of the Serbs and Croats, and of the author’s family than a memoir. The beautiful artwork in this graphic history is done in a photorealistic style that adds credence to her writing. She uses her writing to come to terms with her father’s shadowy, violent past, the national schisms that shaped him, and the scars that both fatherhood and fatherland leave on her family, and they are many. When she was just 2 years old, her mother, Sally, fled her father, taking Nina and her sister from their adopted home of Ontario, Canada, back to their grandparents in the former Yugoslavia. Sally Bunjevac was driven in part by Peter Bunjevac’s emotional abuse and alcoholism, but there was more: She’d become aware that he was involved in a Serbian nationalist terrorist group, one that was manufacturing bombs. Every night Sally barricaded the windows with tall furniture, afraid someone would throw a bomb in and blow them up in their beds.

Fatherland is a quick read. Recommended for anyone interested in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

 

 

FUN HOME: A Family tragicomic

ALISON BECHDEL

Bechdel writes some of the most thoughtful graphic novels and graphic memoirs of our time. Fun Home is her dealing with her father’s closeted  homosexuality and her less than great childhood. The hopelessness of this desire is deepened by the fact that Bruce Bechdel was hit by a truck and killed shortly after his daughter wrote her parents a letter that announced, “I am a lesbian.” Robert Bechdel was a funeral director (hence fun house) and high school english teacher. Alison believes his death was a suicide, brought on in part by her own confession. She draws herself beside his coffin thinking: “I’d kill myself too if I had to live here,” in small town Pennsylvania. Her father was obsessive about the house so the family lived in a virtual museum created around them and by them but with out their permission. When Alison’s room was wall papered in flowers she thought to herself how she hated flowers.

Bechel’s writing is unusual for a graphic novel. “But how could he admire Joyce’s lengthy, libidinal ‘yes’ so fervently and end up saying ‘no’ to his own life? I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.”

“The sudden approximation of my dull, provincial life to a New Yorker cartoon was exhilarating.”

“Then there were those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?”

It is a great quick read.

CHE: A Graphic Biography

SPAIN RODREGUEZ

Everyone is familiar with the iconic photo of Che (Esterno Guevara). It is on t-shirts, posters, movie marquees and the list goes on. It is known all over the world. But while most people recognize his picture they don’t understand his background and why he is famous. Most don’t really understand what his picture represents because it means different concepts to different people. Rodreques graphic bio is a great way to fill in those blanks.

Che wasn’t Cuban thought it was in Cuba that he was a revolutionary leader and later a government leader in health and education. He was born in August, 1928 in the Argentine city of Rosario to an educated and middle class family. In medical school he took special interest in leprosy and allergies, the later because he was asthmatic. When he was dumped by a woman from a wealthy family he took a much celebrated motorcycle trip through much of South America where he learned much about racial and class inequality. He published a book 

Che is an easy read and good history. Well worth the time to catch up on some of the history of South America and the U S involvement.

JERUSALEM: Chronicles from the Holy City

GUY DELISLE

Jerusalem is a graphic memoir of Delisle’s living in Jerusalem with his wife who works with Médecins Sans Frontières. His two previous memoirs were also excellent: Shenzen, Pyongyang and Burma Chronicles. Delisle illustrates the mundane and the fascinating aspects of the places he chronicles with an incredible eye for detail. He begins with the flight to Israel, a jovial old Russian man on the plane to the city calms Delisle’s cranky child by hoisting her in the air. Delisle is surprised to see concentration-camp serial numbers tattooed along his forearm: “We’ve seen so many horrific images from that time in history,” Delisle remarks, “that my imagination just takes off. But I’m treated to a whole other picture tonight, as this old Russian plays with my daughter thousands of feet in the air.”

Jerusalem provides both an excellent introduction to the conflict in the Middle East and a fascinating close-up of what it’s like to live in the most sacred city in the world. The city of Hebron,is an example of the deeply rooted strife in Palestine. Delisle guides us through the Old City section of the West Bank community, where Israeli settlers live on one side of the street, and Palestinians on the other, between which famously documented hanging nets prevent them from throwing stones and refuse down onto passersby of the opposite religion.

Delisle is astounded at the desensitization of Jerusalemites to repression. Men go for jogs with assault rifles strapped to their backs, and whether or not one can visit certain neighbourhoods depends on a number of factors, including your ability to cite the proper religious prayers, your dress, the day of the week and which soldiers are on duty.

Jerusalem is a must read.