Life in Transition: French comics

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Hi,
This post is about a new comic that I discovered at the Alliance francaise library.
I am so much in awe of people who create comics. The illustrations, the story and the
humour in a good comic is a total DELIGHT. AYA, written by Marguerite Abouet and drawn by
Clément Oubrerie, is one such pleasing discovery. Ok and its in french.

AYA, is based on a teenager's life on the Ivory coast, in 1970s Africa. All the characters
are black, and that was a first for me. Its a window into a culture, that was, quite
unknown to me. I found myself as much interested in the the colourful illustrations of
African houses, streets, landscape, clothes, as the story itself.
Theres just so much to look at and admire. For ex: In a lot of places, the sky is greenish
or reddish. All in all, the visuals, made me wanna be there, in hot, beautiful Africa.

Add to this, all the comedy that you find on every page. Its entertaining ; you find people
doing things like sneaking to parties at night, stealing boyfriends, making a pass at a
close friend's daughter and having sex under the open sky. The protagonist is a
level-headed pretty teenage girl, called Aya. She is the narrator, who observes all the
silly antics of the people around her, young and old.

Why am I blogging about this? Because, i loved AYA. I have grown up reading Tinkle,
Archies, and the usual American fare, and this is a big change for me. I am thrilled to get free access to all these exotic comics at the Alliance library :) One thing is for sure, if i ever have a story to tell, I will tell it through pictures.