Showing 1 - 3 of 3 annotations contributed by Natter, Michael

Alpha: Abidjan to Paris

Bessora,

Last Updated: Jun-04-2018
Annotated by:
Natter, Michael

Primary Category: Literature / Literature

Genre: Graphic Memoir

Summary:

Alpha is part graphic novel, part heartbreaking memoir of cabinetmaker Alpha Coulibaly. It chronicles the story of a man on a journey to find his family and a better life, but his story could easily apply to the tens of thousands others who are seeking refuge. This is the painful tale of the refugee journey.

Alpha is from Cote d’Ivoire, Africa. The book is written in first person, in a manner as if the reader and Alpha are sitting together at a coffeeshop, as a family member or dear friend would recant their trials and tribulations to a trusted confidant. The text is blunt, matter of fact, but also painfully deep and poetic.

We learn about Alpha’s desire to reconnect with his family, whom he believes made it to Paris and to his sister-in-laws salon. He explains the futile process of attempting to go through the government sanctioned means of gaining access to other countries, which proves to be impossible. The only remaining option is to attempt to steal away by paying smugglers to help him cross border after border. This means long trips in overcrowded vans, treks by foot, and even precarious watercrafts. The journey is harrowing, and soul crushing. Death is looming around every bend, whether by illness, dehydration during these long, crowded desert drives, or by the hand of crooked armed border guards. Days turn to weeks, weeks to months, and eventually years. Many perish in their journey, but Alpha remains steadfast in his commitment to find his child and wife despite the unfavorable odds. He endures death of fellow refugees, friends, and children. He is forced to live in slums in each new country he enters and work laborious odd jobs to pay off smuggler after shady smuggler at each never ending leg of his journey. This is a tale of the many who are treated like unwanted pieces of trash, balled up and thrown into slums, labeled as “illegal immigrants,” and all so they can have the chance of a better life for them, and for their families.

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Stitches

Small, David

Last Updated: Dec-28-2017
Annotated by:
Natter, Michael

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Graphic Memoir

Summary:

Stitches is a beautifully crafted graphic novel by award winning writer and illustrator David Small. The memoir chronicles Smalls’ life with chronic illness, focusing on his experience as a child and adolescent with cancer in the setting of an abusive upbringing. We learn through the eyes of a child what being a patient is like, and how, despite all odds Small was able to use art as a way to make a normal life for himself. 

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Taking Turns, Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371

Czerwiec, MK

Last Updated: Nov-13-2017
Annotated by:
Natter, Michael

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Graphic Novel

Summary:

Taking Turns, Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, is a graphic novel written and illustrated by nurse and artist, MK Czerwiec. In it, she details what it was like to be a nurse during the AIDs epidemic in Chicago in the 1990s. The book, however, is much more than a story about AIDS care during that time. Czerweic tackles patient/provider relationships, boundaries, hospital struggles, the role of art in medicine and healing, but most profoundly: death and dying. 

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