An Annotated Bibliography of Vulnerability and Graphic Narratives

Naorem Washington Singh
Precarious Ecology
  1.     Squarzoni, Philippe. Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science. Harry N. Abrams, 2014.

The aptly titled graphic novel includes an extensive information regarding the issue (of climate change) featuring research, interviews with climate activists, infographic data highlighting the various factors and impacts across various places through multiple timelines, affirming the global experientiality. The meta-narrative that depicts Squazoni’s personal struggle to withdraw himself from cars, planes, and fuel reveals a shared problem of human’s dependency on factors that impact climate change. Although published before the 2015 Paris Accord, Squazoni’s concerns for the globe remain prevalent, making Climate Changed a fitting introductory read for Climate Change.

  1.     Hayes, Nick. The Rime of the Modern Mariner. Viking, 2012.

Nick Hayes’ modern-day retelling of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” stresses upon the ecological impacts of plastic waste. Sailing across the North Pacific, like Coleridge’s seaman, Hayes’ seaman kills an albatross which, he later finds, was tangled by a nylon gauze in its chest. Their ship consequently gets surrounded by “a scattered funeral pyre” of horrifying massive plastic waste. After he is rescued from getting stuck in a fishing net, he learns that the Earth is a living being, sleeping but “nowhere near its death” and sets it upon himself to tell this tale. His listener, the indifferent Blackberry-possessing divorcee, unlike Coleridge’s wedding guest, brushes it off like the rubbish from his lap and hurries off to his office filled with plastic items — “to a world detached of consequences.” 

  1.     Banerjee, Sarnath. All Quiet in Vikaspuri. Harper Collins India, 2016.

Sarnath Banerjee’s satirical graphic novel emphasizes the water crisis in Delhi, which he dubs as the “Water Wars of Delhi” (p. 13). To obtain water and bring an end to the war, Girish, an industrial plumber, undergoes a journey to find the underground river Saraswati. There he finds odd characters who have been confined beneath due to personal water-related incidents. On the surface, parodying movie posters, multiple full paged panels portray different paces of Delhi engaged in the war. While the war is disclosed as the creation of a vengeful man who intends to flood the city, the plot carefully reveals the socio-eco-political structures of the city that affect the availability of water.

  1.     Sen, Orijit. River of Stories. Kalpavriksh, 1994.

The first graphic novel of India, River of Stories, is a journalistic investigation of Narmada Bachao Andolan. Vishnu, a young journalist, researches the history, lives and realities of the subjugated Adivasis settling alongside the Rewa River to write “a story on the agitation against the dam” (p.39). This story explores the creationist tale of the Adivasis, the advent of urbanisation projects that vehemently destroyed their lives and the subjugation of native voices. The Rewa dam project that will submerge nearby villages, eradicate wildlife and vegetation, and displace thousands of people is intensified by a pull-out map of Rewa River and nearby settlement areas (p.54-56).

  1.     Backderf, Derf. Trashed. Harry N. Abrams, 2015.

Trashed narrates the daily lives of garbagemen in American society and identifies the different types of trash, who generates what kind of trash, the methods of disposal, and the ecological impacts. Although the EPA mandates regulations, the massive active landfills visualize the scale of waste problems and their possible ecological threats. The threat is greater with old landfills which Backderf calls “ecological timebombs” because of the explosive gas inside them (p. (157). It is challenging to bring a solution to this American waste problem as the American economy has been benefitting from it. Backderf acknowledges built-in obsolescence as a vital component of the system (p. 167) and that the private waste industry is “Big money,” accumulating 55 billion dollars a year (p.229). 

  1.     Neufeld, Josh. A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. Pantheon, 2009.

Recounting the different experientialities of several residents of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Neufeld examines the nature of natural disasters. The hurricane exposes an escalation of collective vulnerability. Additionally, the delayed government responses create a maddening crowd fighting for water (p.139) — a pause of coordinated actions as an overwhelming survival instinct kicks in. The worsening frenzy that makes them believe that “they were brought here to die” (p.151) stays with them long after the disaster, making many unsure to return to New Orleans, where they will be reminded of their precarity.

  1.     Allison, Rachel Hope. I’m Not a Plastic Bag. Archaia, 2012.

Delving into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I’m Not a Plastic Bag brings to attention the precarity of non-human lives caused by human actions of plastic pollution.  With eyes made of a tyre and an umbrella and a mouth expressing different words, the patch bears a face and hands to assume a life of its own and lure marine life.  Unlike a giant squid that escapes the patch, a sea-gull consumes a plastic bag with a red heart and dies on top of the plastic heap.  A terrifying full-paged panel, showing the remains of the dead bird with the plastic bag inside its body, epitomizes the issue and warns of the harmful effects of plastic pollution.

  1.     Colfer, Eoin and Andrew Donkin. Global: A Graphic Novel Adventure about Hope in the Face of Climate Change. Hodder Children’s Books, 2023.

Set in two different locales, the lives of Sami, a boy living in a fishing island at the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean, and Yuki, a girl from Northern Canada, inside the Arctic circle, are brought together through their struggles against a rapidly changing Earth. Sami risks his life against rising sea levels to search for a family knife beneath the ocean, while Yuki braves against melting sea ice to prove the presence of Grolar bears, a hybrid between Polar bear and grizzly bear, to stop people from killing the bear. Cross-breeding between the bears in the wild is a direct result of global warming. Sami, too, witnesses similar impacts on wildlife. He finds a dead shark tangled in plastic nettings and a turtle tangled with nets. A concluding section titled “What is Global Heating?” explains the factors and their ecological consequences Sami and Yuki face.

 

Disturbed Places
  1. Sajad, Malik. Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir. Harper Collins, 2015.

Sajad Malik’s graphic memoir captures the dangers of growing up in Kashmir where daily lives are repeatedly interrupted by racial divisions, false accusations, sudden raids, forceful inspections, death threats, and assassinations. The anthropomorphic characterization of Kashmiris as the Kashmiri stag, Hangul, signifies their endangered lives in a place where political systems have collapsed. Munnu’s frustrated voice of resistance against external forces that have made their lives non-essential and dispensable become visible with his newspaper cartoon strips, culminating in the making of the graphic memoir. Despite his efforts, Munnu affirms the internalization of violence in Kashmir. In the final chapter, the panels, almost entirely blacked out, depict a terrifyingly grim scene where two Kashmiris sexually abuse a female Kashmiri inside a rickshaw while the driver indifferently haggles Munnu for the fare (p.347-348).

  1.                 Dasgupta, Debasmita. Terminal 3: A Graphic Novel Set in Kashmir. Penguin Random House India, 2023.

 With panels resembling a scrapbook, memories of dreams, aspirations and resilience living in Kashmir are scraped together as Khwab Nazir, a jiu-jitsu martial artist, waits to board her plane to San Francisco at Terminal 3, New Delhi International Airport. Beyond the cultural and familial factors that hinder (female) aspirations, everyday lives are punctured by unprecedented intrusions. Swatches of black strokes cover the panels as Khwab’s memories are interrupted recalling a bomb blast that kills Yusuf, blinds Noor and injures her. Khwab’s subsequent indulgence in poetry and social media where she launches the campaign Azaad Khwab not only consoles her in her recovery but also signifies the spirit of resilience essential to survive in a land of unexpected outcomes. 

  1.                 Ahmed, Naseer and Saurabh Singh. Kashmir Pending. Phantomville, 2007.

Akin to Kamila Shamshie’s mapping of the history of the socio-politico-cultural turbulences of Pakistan in relation to its pop culture in her essay “Pop Idols”, Kashmir Pending depicts the lives of two individuals, Mushtaq and Ali, and the processes of oppression and ensuing radicalization of young, naive minds that launch the onset of insurgency to illustrate a somber history of a place stuck in a cycle of violence. The daunting presence of the national security forces who callously fire at the Kashmiris and the retaliating, radicalized insurgents, who under the idea of “Free Kashmir,” answer violence with further violence, drawn in dark panels stress the grim conditions of the disturbed place. 

  1.                 Hermans, Anaële and Delphine Hermans. Green Almonds: Letters from Palestine. Lion Forge Comics, 2018.

Delphine Hermans draws the corresponding letters between her sister, Anaële, who visited Palestine for 10 months in 2008, and herself in this graphic epistolary novel. Through Anaële’s letters, there draws a noticeable line of disparity between the two nations of Israel and Palestine. As she mingles with citizens of both nations, she hurdles through protests, metal detectors, guards with big guns, surveillance, restrictions, refugee camps and political prisoners that have been normalised and integrated into their mundane lives, causing her distress and disproval. The vulnerability of the place from an outsider’s lens is confirmed by Delphine’s increasing concern for her sister in the corresponding postcards. 

  1.     Sacco, Joe. Palestine. Fantagraphics, 2001.

A seminal work of graphic journalism, Palestine reports the lives of ordinary Palestinians and investigates the Israel-Palestine conflict as it is faced by the people, from Joe Sacco’s visit to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the early 1990s. Sacco’s reportage is intriguing. Similar to his coverage of the Bosnian war in Safe Area Gorazde, he inserts himself into the lives of the people as well as the panels. The voices of ordinary people constitute the focal point of his journalism. Not only does it enable him to describe the muted dangers of everyday life, but it also uncovers the habits, passions, customs, and practices of the people to humanize their dehumanized lives. Sacco’s personal and journalistic stance on Palestine identifies the imbalances between the two nations and punctuates the precarity of the Palestinians.

  1.     Delisle, Guy. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. Drawn & Quarterly, 2004.

Reminiscent of the Soviet Intourist, which the American sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein exposed in his 1960 travel essay “Inside Intourist”, Delisle’s travel writing uncovers the exaggerated state-run propaganda, the deification of national leaders, dissemination of anti-US sentiments, the manifold rules and restrictions, as well as  the consequent harsh punishments that have created an inescapable maze of fascism to the North Korean citizens from an outsider’s perspective. Alarmed by the extent of manipulative influence, he wonders if the citizens “really believe the bullshit that’s being forced down their throats?” (p.74) but unlike them, Delisle, who keeps a copy of 1984, is contemptuous of the state propaganda machine and thinks of tortures that he “wouldn’t mind inflicting on her” as his guide explains all the forged American atrocities against North Korea (p.169).

  1.     ed. Ghosh, Viswajyoti. This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition (an Anthology of Graphic Narratives). Yoda Press, 2013.

This anthology of graphic narratives is a confluence of stories reassessing, reevaluating, and retelling the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into the two separate nations of India and Pakistan, and the bifurcation of Pakistan into Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1971. Utilizing various mediums of comics, collages, and photographs, the anthology explores different experientialities of the people that insert themselves into the historiography of partition. Orijit Sen’s interactive photographs titled “Making Faces” in the concluding segment enable readers to change physiognomic details, allowing them to swap and mix racial and ethnic features and restory their identities, and in doing so, restory the partition itself.

  1.     Gupta, Varud and Ayushi Rastogi. Chhotu: A Tale of Partition and Love. Penguin eBury Press, 2019.

             Using anthropomorphic characters to depict the symbolized traits of individuals and their amicable cohabitation before the partition of the Indian subcontinent, Chhotu portrays the events of partition that disrupt the peaceful commune of a fictionalized Chandni Chowk. Chhotu’s search for the disappearance of aloos leads him to discover the agents of disturbance, systematically creating fear and dispersing hatred amongst the individuals to steer up communal riots. With the newfound knowledge, Chhotu transitions from a student and occasional cook to an active seeker of  justice and follows an odyssey of corruption, lies, betrayal and murders which are played out like a Bollywood film that Chhotu frequently imagines himself in, depicting how the partition irrevocably alters lives.

  1.     Ghosh, Viswajyoti. Delhi Calm. HarperCollins, 2010.

Viswajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm retells the harrowing times of the 24-months Emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which the democratic rights of citizens were suspended. Vibhuti Prasad (VP) finds himself unemployed at the beginning of the Emergency and is joined by Parvez Alam and Vivek Kumar (Master) in Delhi. Together the three navigate the tumultuous years to uphold their democratic rights. A series of flashbacks reveal the trio’s political activism wherein every weekend their band, Naya Savera Band, travels by bus to different locations “singing protest, change and democracy” (p.-56). Interjecting biographies of (Mother) Moon, Baul who eventually becomes the Prophet, and the Prince provide essential political context. Ghosh’s deliberate dirtying of the panels and the masked individuals symbolize the pervasive unease and distrust throughout the country. The faded signboard on the final page listing a set of restrictions reminds of the ongoing censorship prevailing in the country. Ghosh’s graphic narrative remains a brilliant critique of Indian polity. 

  1. Schwartz, Simon. The Other Side of the Wall. Graphic Universe, 2015.

The muddling experiences of living in Germany during the period of the Cold War where different ideological divides were manifested through the construction of the Berlin Wall are expounded in Simon Schwartz’s graphic memoir. Growing up in West Germany where his family was branded as outsiders for having emigrated from East Germany, Simon narrates the difficulties his parents faced with their relocation. From the reconfiguration of their own families to the constant surveillance and harassment, during and after the collapse of the infamous wall, Swartz recognizes and relays the fear and turmoil that made up the zeitgeist of the time.

  1. Troung, Marcelino. Such a Lovely Little War. Saigon, 1961-1963. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016.

Marcelino Truong’s graphic memoir narrates the events of the American-Vietnam War from a child’s perspective as his family moves to Saigon when his father who works as the cultural attaché at the Vietnamese embassy in Washington is sent to Vietnam in 1961. Nonchalant to the chaos around them, Marcelino and his brother’s struggles are different. To them, their identity crises as Americanised Vietnamese with a French mother impose a bigger threat wherever they go. The contrasting panels that explore a detailed history of the war with propaganda posters, stamps, and international and national political developments, scenes of combat, and those of the brothers playing pretend soldiers fighting off the communists with their toy guns, balance the portrayal of the war from an innocent child’s perspective and a sincere depiction of the American-Vietnam war.

  1. Truong, Marcelino. Saigon Calling. London 1963-75. Arsenal Pulp Press,2017.

Saigon Calling picks up from the events of Truong Marcelino’s graphic memoir Such a Lovely Little War which concludes with his family relocating to London to escape the American-Vietnam War. As his father struggles to settle in the new city and his mother worsens her bipolar outbursts, a grown-up Marcelino realises that the war is more than just a lovely little war.  He is caught between the hippie culture that demonstrably rejects the war and his Vietnamese origin that irrefutably binds him with Vietnam (where his aging grandparents live), as the war continues to  threaten his identity.  

  1. Truong, Marcelino. 40 Men and 12 Rifles. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023.

In 40 Men and 12 Rifles, Marcelino Truong deviates from his usual accounts of the American-Vietnam War through his honest, poignant graphic memoirs, but still retains the art style, to narrate the events of the Indo-China wars leading to the Vietnam War. The graphic novel chronicles the life of a Northern Vietnamese, Minh, a young painter from Hanoi, who is trained by the Chinese and is indoctrinated with Communist propaganda of patriotismand sacrifice along with combat training. It identifies the escalating vulnerability of the Vietnamese and frames the background of the American-Vietnam War, the setting of his graphic memoirs, serving as a loose prequel to his duology.  

  1. Stassen, J.P. Deogratias, A Tale of Rwanda. First Second Books, 2006.

J.P. Stassen’s A Tale of Rwanda presents a gripping and terrifying account of the Rwanda Genocide of 1994 where around 800,000 Rwandans lost their lives in the brutal ethnic cleansing. The eponymous Deogratias, meaning “Thanks be to God” in Latin, a young Hutu boy, is dehumanized. Furthermore, the exacerbated fate of women is portrayed by a dreary depiction of their defiled bodies at the hands of Hutu men and boys. Deogratias, both by its plot and its meaning, questions faith and humanity that have been subdued by intolerance and indifference amidst the carnage.  

  1. Bazambanza, Rupert. Tugire Ubumwe — Let’s Unite! Teaching Lessons from the Rwanda Genocide. UNICTR, 2012.

In collaboration with the Outreach Programme on the Rwanda Genocide and the United Nations, Rupert Bazambanza, the author of the graphic novel Smile Through the Tears: The Story of the Rwandan Genocide, devises lessons and guidelines to heal, reconcile, recover, and rebuild from the lingering trauma of the Rwanda genocide of 1994. It constructs the history of Rwanda and colonizing Westerners who set the grounds for ethnic division, the distrust and fear inherent to the individuals after the war, and their collective vulnerability. Bazambanza identifies these to establish the foundations of recovery built on unity and  to eradicate ethnic divisions, nurturing a compelling sense of hope among the Rwandans. 

  1. Dix, Benjamin and Lindsay Pollock. Vanni: A Family’s Struggle through the Sri Lankan Conflict. Penguin, 2019.

Tracing the lives of the Ramachandrans, from the moment the 2004 tsunami destroyed their home to their resettlement in London, Vanni depicts the precarity of Tamils in Sri Lanka. As the civil war between the government and the LTTE tears apart their lives, the family wanders alongside gun shells and bombs. Children getting recruited by the LTTE, UN forces leaving the Tamils to fend for themselves, the throng of people in dilapidated shelters, dishevelled bodies helplessly running for survival, the gruesome torture in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps, and the piles of dead bodies intensely record the plight of innocent Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka.

  1.  Spiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers. Pantheon, 2004.

Drawing the witness accounts from Lower Manhattan during the 9/11 events as comic strips in the German newspaper Die Zeit, Art Spiegelman depicts the wild political whirlwind in the country. He depicts a world where the personal and world history collided, where the immigrant has transformed himself to the rooted cosmopolitan, and where news is hijacked to further agendas. The comic strips illustrate the precarity of the metropolis being under the threat of  “waiting for other shoe to drop” after the travesty (p.1). With allusions and parodies of his previous works and famous figures, Spiegelman fuses the recollection of personal memoirs from muddled memories that continue to linger on the lower streets of Manhattan. 

 

Identities and Lives at Risk
  1. Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis: Volumes 1 and 2. Pantheon, 2007.

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir recounts her coming-of-age story before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution of Iran.  The complexities of living in a fundamentalist nation where individual identities subverting the imposed Islamic principles are met with sanctions, punishments, and execution compose the background. Marjane, who believed herself to be the Last Prophet, experiences confusing, conflicting identities throughout her early life.  At times, the fundamentalists’ ideology is not entirely absent from her rebellious self. As tensions escalate and restrictions rise, she leaves for Austria. Her adolescence in Vienna is followed by a sense of unbelonging despite the lack of limitations and undergoes a series of shifting identities before she eventually returns to Iran. Her sense of unbelonging persists, albeit her attempts to fit in, and so, after getting separated from her husband of 3 years, Marjane leaves the country for good. Persepolis is as much a graphic bildungsroman as a graphic historical novel of Iran that clarifies the identities of ordinary Iranians and Iran beyond the perceived notion of an extremist nation. 

  1.                 Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. Mariner Books, 2007.

Alison Bechdel, the writer of the revolutionary comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, recounts her early childhood in Beech Creek and her father’s sudden death that puzzles her adult life.  Fun Home, a play on the words of both her family’s funeral home and the nature of her dysfunctional family, construes the facade of her apparently organized family. The memoir draws parallels between Alison’s proliferation of her lesbian identity from her college days and her father’s (closeted)homosexuality and his affairs with military mates, high school students, and babysitters. It highlightsthe varied vulnerabilities of repressed identities. Alison’s incorporation of many literary allusions and references intricately ties together the fictional lives her father obsessively perused and the discovery of her father’s troubled identity. 

  1.                 Yang, Gene Leun. American Born Chinese. First Second, 2006.

Three accounts frame the narrative of unwanted identities and the struggles of fitting in, in the novel. The lived obstacles of the characters intertwine to depict the vulnerable liminal space that Chinese Americans inhabit in the United States. 

  1.                 Tan, Shaun. The Arrival. Hodder Children’s Books, 2014.

The Arrival traces the melancholic journey of migrants in a foreign land. Boarding a steamship, an unnamed man leaves his family and moves to a different country to find better opportunities. Accompanied by his strange pet, the two traverse the corners of the foreign land to find a job where he observes many destitute people in similar conditions. Collages, unconventional architectural sketches, and strange animals combinedly portray the absurd experiences of living in an unfamiliar land. The absence of words in this woodcut novel emphasizes the barriers to communication and the silent suffering of migrants.  

  1.                 Colfer, Eion and Andrew Donkin. Illegal: A Graphic Novel Telling One Boy’s Epic Journey to Europe. Hodder Children’s Books, 2017.

Illegal depicts the challenging and perilous journey many Africans risk to seek refuge in European countries. Ebo, a 12-year-old boy, leaves his dilapidated dwelling in search of his brother, Kwame, who has gone to Agadez with intentions to reach Europe and find their sister. After reuniting with Kwame in Agadez, along with Razak, the three overcome extreme weather conditionsto cross the vast Sahara Desert and reach Tripoli where they sail through turbulent waves. Eventually, only Ebo survives the commotion of the rescue attempt. The lifeless bodies of Kwame and Razak, beneath the ocean (p-118), distressingly remind the precarity of the refugees.

  1.                 Bui, Thi. The Best We Could Do. Harry N Abrams, 2017.

Thi Bui’s graphic memoir presents the struggles of immigration, escaping the war-torn Vietnam, and motherhood. Through her conversations with her parents, she redefines ‘home’ and their lives before her. As the memories of Vietnam follow them, the idea of home and belonging are complicated;the map of Vietnam carved out from her torso signifies this perplexing connection (p-36). The photographs her parents show her act as points of transmission where she relives their past adversities (which the eminent scholar, Marianne Hirsch defines as post-memory), wherein the trauma of the first generation is passed down to the second generation. Thi Bui’s use of washed-out water-colored panels characterizes their faded, hazy lives. 

  1.                 Natarajan, Srividya and S. Anand. Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability. Navayana, 2011.

Drawn in the stunning Gond art, Bhimayana draws the life of Bhim Rao Ambedkar and addresses the plight of Dalits in the Indian social context. Extending the conversations of three friends who discuss the relevance of the reservation system in India, the text moves around three instances of discrimination in Ambedkar’s life. In 1901, 10-year-old Ambedkar was denied access to water for fear that he would contaminate it. In 1917, having returned from Columbia, the denial of his presence everywhere he went in Baroda reminded him of the experiences of untouchability. While traveling with his colleagues in 1934, he shared an unpleasant experience with them that affirmed the stratification of people sanctioned by the caste system. Interjecting reports of various discriminations towards Dalits in the 21st century give an alarming reminder of the prevalence of casteism.

  1.                 Natarajan, Srividya and Aparajita Ninan. A Gardener in the Wasteland: Jotiba Phule’s Fight for Liberty. Navayana, 2011.

This meta-graphic novel delves into the lives of Jotiba and Savitri Phule, and their efforts to educate and eradicate the social injustices prevailing in the name of religious principles. Taking Jotiba’s Gulamgiri, and tracing similarities with the works of Thomas Paine and Sojourner Truth, it establishes connections between the caste subjugation of Shudras and Atishudras in India and the racial oppression in the United States. Thus, it juxtaposes the Indian Brahmins with the American White supremacists.  Jotiba’s study of Hindu scriptures deconstructs myths and the fallacy of the Varna system, pointing out social systems that Brahmins manipulate to discredit voices of dissent and prolong their exploitive dominance.

  1.                 Eipe, Rajiv and Pratheek Thomas. Hush. Manta Ray Comics, 2010.

Hush breaks away from the tradition of depicting school shootings. Unlike the child shooter who is often a dissatisfied victim of peer bullying, the unnamed girl has a targeted aim. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that she is a victim of child sexual abuse  in the hands of the Vice-Principal, who is also her mother’s partner. The absence of texts mirrors and brings attention to the hushed subject of child abuse, which leaves deep scars upon the victims. The girl’s suicide at the end, followed by the blacked-out panel, asserts that victims carry their trauma unheard and unaddressed to their death.

  1.             (eds.) Larissa Bertonasco, Ludmilla Bartscht, Priya Kuriyan. Drawing the Line. Zubaan, 2015.

This graphic anthology brings together 14 stories, creating a polyphonic voice emphasizing women’s narrative agency. Each writer identifies with the precarity of female identity existing at various levels in India. From Harini Karan’s critique of colorism in “That’s Not Fair,” Soumya Menon’s dissection of the dual standards set upon different genders in “An Ideal Girl,” to Ita Mehhrotra’s “The Poet, Sharmila” where she celebrates Irom Sharmila’s protest and her poetic prowess, and the empowered deification to reclaim safety in dangerous spaces in Samidha Gunjal’s “Someday,”the artists address various issues to set essential instructions of empowerment. 

  1.             Delisle, Guy. Hostage. Drawn and Quarterly, 2017.

Guy Delisle illustrates the biography of Christophe André in Hostage.  In 1997, André was kidnapped while working for an NGO in the Caucasus. Put in a small room with only a radiator and the only human interaction limited to a single person, the plot movingly presents the dread of being captured. In his solitary confinement, André ruminates the differences between being a hostage and a prisoner. Imprisonment has a fixed duration and provides a glimmer of hope, but he can’t afford similar wishes as a hostage and thus contemplates ways to escape. The blue panels signify the inherent melancholia and the onslaught of paranoia trapped in the claustrophobic space. 

  1. Appupen and Laurent Daudet. Dream Machine: AI and the Real World. Context, 2024.

Dream Machine is not to be mistaken for a polemic response against the rise of Artificial Intelligence. In this meditated study of the technological developments of AI, concerns for humanity lie with the humans behind the machines. The fictional story of Hugo’s developing deal with the tech titan, REALE, reveals the ways AI could be misused by authoritarian regimes. Through Hugo’s discussions, a history detailing the mechanics of machine learning is generated. The associated exorbitant expense makes it impractical for anybody but corporations to run these machines. With the tendency of corporations to disregard human conditions, it is easy to create precarious outcomes for humanity with AI. The novel urges to devise necessary ethical guidelines for the development and application of AI. 

 

War and Vulnerability
  1.  Spiegelman, Art. The Complete MAUS. Pantheon Books, 1997.  

Perhaps the most significant graphic narrative to-date, MAUS  presents an extraordinary yet dreary portrayal of the Holocaust during the Second World War. Interviewing his father, Vladek, Art gradually depicts the onslaught of violence his Polish Jew parents who could not escape the SS armies faced.  Put in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Vladek recollects his struggle to survive and reunite with his wife, Anja. What unravels from their conversation beyond their strained relationship is how as a second-generation survivor, Art also acquires the trauma by vicariously living through borrowed memories. There are no embellishments to refine Vladek’s character. He is truthfully portrayed as a stereotypical Jew, who disregards others’ experiences of the Holocaust, including that of his second wife, Mala’s. The anthropomorphic depiction of Jews as mice, Germans as Cats, the Poles as pigs, and the Americans as dogs, lays the groundwork for subsequent atrocity graphic narratives like Munnu and Chhotu . MAUS not only catapulted the medium of graphic novels into serious academic inquiry but also established the pertinence of graphic novels as a viable medium for witnessing trauma and vulnerability. 

  1.                 Kubert, Joe. Yossel: April 19, 1943 : A Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ibooks : Distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Following the patterns of the Marvel superhero What-if comics, where alternate realities of canonical events are examined, Joe Kubert reimagines a different life he would have had, had his family not moved to the United States before the Second World War. Assuming the life of a young boy, Yossel, he rewrites his own history. In 1939, Yossel’s family was moved to Warsaw under the false promise of protection only to realize that they were victims of the Final Solution. Removed from his parents, the young boy’s sketches of superheroes and animals amused the Nazi soldiers and kept him from the gallows of the concentration camps. Through Kubert’s effective pencil sketches, Yossel glides through the devastation of the Holocaust, the absolute disregard for human lives, and the spirit of resistance among the Jews.

  1.                 Crosci, Pascal. Auschwitz. Harry N.Abrams, 2004.

Pascal Crosci’s holocaust graphic novel follows the lives of a couple, Kazik and Cessia, confined tothe concentration camps of Auschwitz. Barbed wires, emaciated bodies in striped uniforms, countless skeletal remains, and gloomy clouds piece together the tragic lives of the Jews. The captive Jews ordered to clean the gas chambers, where they could end up any day, is no different than forcing them to dig their own graves, thus testifiying the Nazis’ ghastly inhumane practices.  Despite the Nazi’s attempt to burn all the evidence of their war crimes, Kazik stating that by surviving they will become witnesses (p.-61), reinserts the significance of human testimonies in witnessing and examining history and trauma.  

  1.                 Tardi, Jacques. It Was the War of the Trenches. Fantagraphics, 2010.

Jacques Tardi dismantles the romanticized image of war where young men take up arms, travel to unfamiliar lands, and sacrifice for their countries. Instead, by narrating the tragic lives of different soldiers who lost their lives in the First World War, Tardi draws attention to their collective precarity.  Vignettes consisting of a brief background of the soldiers fending off rivals at the trenches and their ultimate unceremonious, ugly deaths, evoke the visual narrative in Ernst Fredrich’s 1924 book War Against War. What is unmissable in Tardi’s panels are the machines of destruction that are equally destroyed like the dead soldiers. Besides magnifying the ruins, the wreck of these machines and carcasses all over the battlefield reminds readers of the futility of war. 

  1.                 Tardi, Jacques and Jean-Pierre Verney. Goddamn This War! Fantagraphics, 2013.

Working together with the historian Jean-Pierre Verney, Jacque Tardi revisits the events of the First World War. Tardi constructs a similar visual narrative of ruins like  It Was the War of the Trenches, but unlike his previous novel, Goddamn This War! is divided into sections of each year of the war and the plot is narrated by a single unnamed French soldier who recounts the progression of war. The brightly colored three-paneled pages gradually fade into a monochromatic palette as the war advances to signify the escalating vulnerability of the soldiers. Complimenting Tardi’s narrative, in the remaining section of the book, Verney presents a chronological account of the events of the war wrapped around photographs. 

  1.                  Gendry-Kim, Keum Suk. Grass. Drawn & Quarterly, 2019.

Grass locates the fate of the comfort women — young girls and women captured and exploited into sexual slavery by the Japanese soldiers stationed elsewhere— before and during the Second World War. The aged survivor, Lee Ok-sun shares the distressing incidents fromher past life. A girl who wished to go to school, she was sold off to a household in Busan. There, she was kidnapped and sent to the Japanese-occupied China as a comfort woman. Her recollection of the comfort stations is very similar to the harrowing living conditions of Nazi concentration camps. Their dirtied faces, tattered dresses, and emaciated bodies constitute a visual grammar of helplessness. Even after they have been liberated, they are branded as “whores,” makingtheir reintegration into society  a slow and painful process.  Keum Suk boldly addresses the historically overlooked trauma of comfort women and brings forward this oft-ignored facet of of Japanese war crimes. 

  1.                 Nakazawa, Keiji. I Saw It. Educomics, 1982.

Witnessing the 1945 Hiroshima Bomb on ground zero, Keiji Nakazawa depicts the horrifying scenes of the atomic blast in this graphic memoir. As the country primes itself for war, the civilian population is left to fend for themselves- scavenging and managing poor rations. The horrifying spectacle of the aftermath of the atomic blast is captured in panels illustrating in terrifying details individuals with glass shards all over their bodies, the charred remains of the dead, and the aimlessly slouching mass of skin-torn civilians. After the death of his mother, Keiji promises to spread awareness through his work on the dangers of nuclear warheads and the militarization of modern countries. Keiji later expanded I Saw It into the ten-volume manga Barefoot Gen. 

Dys-appeared bodies and Maladies
  1. Small, David. Stitches. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.

David Small’s graphic memoir retells his life as a sickly young boy whose exposure to his radiologist father’s x-ray machines and radiation therapies made him a cancer patient. Growing up in Detroit, David did not have a cordial relationship with the adults in his life. This disconnect is manifested in the menacing, ghoulish physiognomic structures of his father, mother, and grandmother. Despite noticing a growth at his neck at the age of eleven, his family waited years before it was surgically removed. The procedure left him mute for years and his parents kept the diagnosis of cancer from him. Dissatisfied, David left his home at the age of sixteen and through his unwavering passion for art, regained his voice and the life he never had.  Filled with many textless pages, Stitches addresses the repressed dialogues of illness and ailing.

  1.                 Walrath, Dana. Aliceheimer’s: Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass. Penn State University Press, 2016.

Dana Walrath’s graphic memoir recounts the story of her mother, Alice’s Alzheimer’s ailment. The memoir is structured around episodes from her mother’s struggle and accompanying sketches of her mother embodied by texts from Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland.As Alice’s condition worsens, she delusively sees her deceased husband, misconnects, and misremembers timelines and even questions the identities of her daughter and herself.  Words such as “Alice is disappearing, soon there will be no Alice,” replacing Alice’s head in Walrath’s sketches reaffirm her cognizance and acceptance of her mother’s disappearing head — cognitive and mnemonic faculties. The care she provides to reconnect with her ailing mother reveals the dynamics of caring for a patient who cannot remember the careperson. 

  1.                 Czerwiec, MK. Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371., Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017.

Taking Turns recollects MK Czerwiec’s experiences working as a nurse in the special Care unit 371 for HIV/AIDS patients at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago in the 1990s. Her simplistic drawings weave the testimonies of patients, carepersons, doctors and nurses, and write a terrific history of the epidemic that plagued the 1980s and 1990s. The accounts of developing treatments, the art therapy that the Unit provided and how the people in the Unit prepare themselves for the death of the patients, along with Czerwiec’s illustration of the biological aspects of the disease deliver  guides to navigate through the uncureable disease.

  1. Chast, Roz. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?. Bloomsbury,2014.

The subject of death disturbs the aged parents of The New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chaz who lost their firstborn. In this graphic memoir, Chaz narrates the final phases of her 90-year-old parents’ lives. Her parents’ stubborn resolute to remain at their Brooklyn apartment, their waning, diseased bodies, her mother’s distrust in hospitals and institutional care, her father’s progressing dementia, and their subsequent deaths detail the deterioration of the physiological bodies suppressing the agencies of the ageing selves. Roz’s memoir discloses the discourse of ageing that is inseparable from death.

  1.                 B., David. Epileptic. Pantheon, 2006.

Originally published in six volumes, Epileptic elucidates the author’s early life growing up with his brother who suffers from epilepsy. Due to the lack of viable treatments at the time, the family insists on alternate medicine and treatments. The onset of his brother’s epileptic seizures affects their sibling dynamics. Realizing that he has “a terrifying power over his brother” (p.-38), he finds refuge in the fantastical shapes and figures of the sketches that increasingly consume his life. The depiction of the family’s response to the illness draws attention to the significance of progress to the carepersons and the collective phenomenon of suffering as opposed to an individual experience.   

  1.                 Leavitt, Sarah. Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me. Skyhorse, 2012.

Tangles captures the family turmoil when Sarah Leavitt’s lively mother, Midge, gets diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease at the age of 55. Divided into three parts, the graphic memoir chronicles Midge’s life and death, and details the familial response. Midge’s dementia is portrayed by both the plot and structure of the novel. The tightly packed panels of Part 1 gradually thin out as Midge’s AD advances. By Part 3, pages occupy few panels and are interjected by almost blanked-out pages, signifying Midge’s disappearing memories and her diminishing presence that acts as a reminder of loss to the family. 

  1. Dunlap-Shohl, Peter. My Degeneration: A Journey through Parkinson’s. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.

Peter Dunlap-Shohl shares his confounding journey of dealing with Parkinson’s disease. From the moment he is diagnosed with the disease, he experiences a frantic change in his life, reimagining and experiencing the physiological change in his motor skills that disrupts his mental stability. Before he undergoes surgery, his maddening imagination assumes a conversation with an embodiment of Parkinson’s Disease, defining the difficulties of coping with the critical illness. Through his enduring struggles and infographics of the disease, like the “English-Parkinson’s, Parkinson’s-English Dictionary” he reads (p.-18), the novel is undeniably a Parkinson’s Disease: 101, giving necessary information for the unaccustomed and the perplexed. 

  1.                 eds. Boileau, K., & Johnson, R. COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology. Graphic Mundi, 2021.

Covid Chronicles is a compendium of voices reflecting upon the collective human struggle amidst the challenging days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 64 narratives reveal individual experiences with the disease, processes of recovery, and experiencing death.  It acknowledges the failure of governmental policies and political structures and the re-defined normalities of social distancing, the role of essential workers, and locates the pandemic among disasters, past and present. The graphic anthology is a declaration of the shared vulnerability across the globe.