Sally here with Egyptian comics, cartoonists on immigration, and a Happy Thanksgiving.
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The Atlantic has a great article about Egypt’s cartoonists – sort of a scene report of the Cairo Comix Festival, which took place in September, and an on-the-ground report of the comics scene as a whole in Egypt, where telling the truth is difficult and increasingly dangerous.
“Despite a small readership—or perhaps thanks in part to their relative invisibility—comics in Egypt are blossoming in the shadows. “There is no distribution in Egypt. There are no graphic novel publishers. There is no real way to make a living publishing comics here,” says Sara El Masry, co-owner of an organization called MAZG that runs cartooning workshops throughout the country. But as other means of expression have been shut down, the cartoonist festival has grown, according to its organizer. With few eyes on them, these graphic storytellers are depicting the truth as they see it.“
The article profiles a number of comics makers from the country, including Mai Koraiem whose work is pictured above.
“Other cartoonists at the festival approached their subjects with bare fists, particularly when it comes to gender politics in Egypt. In Traveler’s Diary, Mai Koraiem uses a rough, expressive inkwash technique to detail the history of women’s rights in Egypt and the Middle East. Through a journalistic narrative, Koraiem tells the story of the ascendance of a violent misogynist culture, and the unraveling of liberal feminist values she argues first found purchase in Cairo in the 1960s. In a small ongoing thread at the bottom of the page, Koraiem links the personal and political by including a comic strip narrating her own experiences with street harassment and sexual assault.“
Read the rest of the article HERE.
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Columbus Alive features the new exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, which looks back at how the topic of immigration has been covered by cartoonists over the last 150 years.
“The resulting exhibit, “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: U.S. Immigration in Cartoons and Comics,” reveals that while the particulars of immigration may not have remained constant, the push-and-pull of public opinion as reflected in comics — and shaped by cartoonists — is something that hasn’t changed as the United States has considered the philosophical, political and practical implications of immigration.
“There is a very rich history of cartoonists commenting on what’s going on in the world in terms of immigration to the United States, reflecting what people are thinking and saying, but also, we think, impacting how people are thinking about it,” Curator and Assistant Professor Jenny Robb said. “So we wanted to take a look back at the past 150 years and see how cartoonists dealt with it in their work. And not just editorial cartoonists, but in comic strips and comic books and, more recently, graphic novels.”“
The image above is the exhibition’s featured comic.
“Robb and Gardner chose Joseph Keppler’s 1893 artwork “Looking Backward” as the exhibition’s featured image because of its timeless message, Robb said. The cartoon depicts “people who have immigrant pasts and have benefited from the opportunities in the U.S. in 1893, [and who] are now trying to stop new immigrants from coming over, forgetting their own past,” Robb said. “You could run that today; it would just be a different group of people.” “
Read the whole article HERE. The exhibit is up through April 15th 2018.
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On The Nib Rawand Issa details why Being Illegal is Unbearable – for Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
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Here in the USA we are celebrating Thanksgiving today – an often controversial holiday, as many cartoonists take note of.
Lauren Weinstein‘s weekly Normal Person for Village Voice details the types of politically tense turkeys that grace many tables – HERE.
Lauren’s also got a Thanksgiving comic in Seattle’s The Stranger:
Here’s Roz Chast for The New Yorker of course:
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Suzy and Cecil – 11-23-2017 – by Sally Ingraham
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