Fatherland

Working through the graphic novel sets I have in the library for SS/ELA classes. Unfortunately I'm comparing this to some of the other graphic memoirs of family conflict/identity and it's not as favorable. Her art is technically fantastic and really striking, but that precision gives it a layer of remove and coldness that is also true in the story. This book seemed to want to be three things at once and none of them were fully realized: an exploration of her own relationship to her parents/childhood, an exploration of her father's history and what radicalized and ultimately killed him, AND an explanation of former Yugoslovian (Serbian/Croation specifically) history and conflict through the lens of her family. The sections are disjointed and lose momentum (but gain lots of text) when she takes you outside of her family history to explain the country history. The ending in particular is confusing, it's metaphorical and surreal and I think I understand it but even I'm not entirely sure, so that's going to leave students frustrated. I think there's a place for this in SS classrooms as students are studying world conflicts but be prepared to have some discussion time built in to handle potential student confusion.

Very quick read. Kind of a strange approach to telling the story, but definitely interesting, communicative, informative. Surprisingly sympathetic (without of course condoning some terrible acts). The art is well-crafted and a also relatively unusual style in the medium – you see a lot of faux-amateur indie comics; a few photorealistic; plenty that mimic the mainstream. You don't see a ton with this sort of Wall Street Journal portrait crosshatching/stippling style. Or, at least, I don't.

I did find it interesting how the author anglicized not just names and nicknames (somewhat reasonable, though I realized I kind of expect at least some foreign words thrown into conversation between foreigners in media) but also the conversational style. I had to remind myself that these conversations were (presumably, though never explicitly stated) taking place in Serbo-Croatian. Even a few place names got anglicized: Niš became “Nish,” for example. But Dejan wasn't “Deyan.” This won't be a thing for most people, but as someone who spends a lot of time around Serbs (girlfriend and family), I actually found it kind of distracting.