Anaële Hermans

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down."

What I've learned from Robert Frost, World War Z, and Green Almonds: walls are good when fending off zombies; not so much in other circumstances, when the human tendency to dehumanize everyone and everything that isn't our own tribe is made all the easier when we don't even have to look at them anymore.… (mehr)

A Belgian woman travels to Bethlehem in 2008 for a sort of Christian pilgrimage with the intent of staying for several months amongst the Palestinians to do some vague volunteer educational work of some kind. She loves the people and the place, painting them most sympathetically -- even having a romantic interest in one -- and contrasting their desire for freedom and safety with the Israeli walls, checkpoints, soldiers and settlers. The story unfolds in letters and postcards exchanged with her sister back in Belgium.

It's been a decade since her trip, and it is sad to realize how little the situation has changed in the interim.

Regardless, the story is a dull, limited in its scope, and smacks of white privilege and some of the negative aspects of voluntourism. The art is too primitive and childlike for my taste and is drawn by the sister who didn't actually visit Palestine, so I assume she is working from photo reference or pure imagination.

Meh.… (mehr)

I think this may be the first epistolary graphic novel I've ever run across. It was a really neat way to tell the story - letters between two sisters, one in Belgium and one volunteering in Palestine. The book shows the lives of ordinary people in Gaza and it's absolutely heartbreaking. The dichotomy between the lives of Anaële's Palestinian friends vs her Israeli friends is stark.

Delphine's illustrations are simple but effective in managing to convey both her sister's outsider status, and the harsh reality of the wall and security checkpoints.

A really effective and evocative graphic novel.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)