Refugee comics: Personal stories that shift the narrative
Emma Parker, a PhD candidate a Leeds discusses the function of graphic stories sharing the real-life accounts of refugees and migrants. She writes, ‘By documenting real journeys, representing traumatic memories and even translating complex research into sequential images, refugee comics have become a powerful tool for illuminating the individual lives overshadowed by a global crisis’.
Her discussion includes the following examples:
Michael Sloan and Jake Halpern’s Welcome to the New World, a comic strip that documents the lives of a Syrian refugee family who have recently arrived in the U.S.
Kate Evans’s Threads from the Refugee Crisis, a combination of eyewitness reportage and personal storytelling from ‘The Jungle’ in Calais, France.
Oliver Kugler’s Escaping Wars and Waves, his account of interviews with refugees he encountered in his work for Médecins Sans Frontières.
Karrie Fransman’s Over Under Sideways Down, the true account of a teenage refugee which is available online.
The work of PositiveNegative, a not for profit organisation (charity) that ‘[combines] ethnographic research with illustration and photography, adapting personal testimonies into art, advocacy and education materials’ in partnerships with NGOs and universities.
And Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, which centres on the experience of arrival and resettlement.
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This is the full URL of Parker’s article:https://theconversation.com/refugee-comics-personal-stories-of-forced-migration-illustrated-in-a-powerful-new-way-106832