Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels: Immigrants/Refugees

For as long as she can remember, it's been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn't always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation--following her mother's announcement that she's getting married--Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn't understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends in Seoul and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn't fit in with her new stepfamily, and worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to--her mother. Then one day Robin's mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined.

Determined to reunite with his family, Alpha sets off from his home in Cote d'Ivoire, bound for Paris, where his sister-in-law has a hair salon near the Gare du Nord train station. Alpha's wife and son left for France months ago, traveling without visas, and he has heard nothing from them since. With a visa, Alpha's journey would take a matter of hours. Without one, he is adrift for over a year, encountering human traffickers in the desert, refugee camps in Mali and Algeria, overcrowded boats carrying migrants between the Canary Islands and Europe's southern coast, and a cast of companions lost and found along the way. Throughout, Alpha stays the course, carrying his loved ones' photograph close to his heart as he makes his perilous trek across the continent.

In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and his family.

Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves.

Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi's childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming--both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland.

All Fitzgerald's students are among the record-breaking number of people who are seeking asylum in a worldwide crisis on a scale not seen since WWII, fleeing from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. They draw images of experienced violence and careful optimism: rafts and tanks, flowers and the Eiffel Tower. In her decade in Germany, Fitzgerald experiences the highs of the creatively hopeful, along with the deep depression of the disillusioned, all while waiting to stumble onto her own glory like the great Modernists before her.

What does it mean to be a "refugee"? It is easy forthose who live in relative freedom to ignore or even to villainize people who have been forced to flee their homes. After all, it can be hard to identify with others' experiences when you haven't been in their shoes. In Hakim's Odyssey, we see firsthand how war can make anyone a refugee. Hakim, a successful young Syrian who had his whole life ahead of him, tells his story: how war forced him to leave everything behind, including his family, his friends, his home, and his business. After the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hakim was arrested and tortured, his town was bombed, his business was seized by the army, and members of his family were arrested or disappeared. This first leg of his odyssey follows Hakim as he travels from Syria to Lebanon, Lebanon to Jordan, and Jordan to Turkey, where he struggles to earn a living and dreams of one day returning to his home.

What choices would you make to reunite your family? "You know, Hadi, we're going on a trip. A really big trip to find our way to Mama." In exile and far from his homeland, Hakim finds a bit of hope in the birth of his son. But between unstable jobs and selling what he can in the streets, it's hard to survive--and impossible for the family to stay together. Reluctantly separated from the woman he loves and alone with his child, Hakim will have to overcome incredible odds and seemingly impossible obstacles to reunite his family, which leads him to make the most difficult decision of his life. Captivating and deeply moving, this second book of the critically acclaimed Hakim's Odyssey follows the true story of a Syrian refugee as he tries to find his way in Turkey and then makes the perilous trek to what he hopes will be a more settled life in Europe.

After being rescued from the Mediterranean, Hakim and his son reach European soil, full of hope. But before they can get to France, they face a new series of challenges: overcrowded detention centers, run-ins with border police, and a persistent xenophobia that seems to follow them almost everywhere they go. Will Hakim's determination and the kindness of strangers be enough to carry him to the end of his journey and reunite his family? By turns heart-warming and heart-wrenching, this final installment in the Hakim's Odyssey trilogy follows Hakim and his son as they make their way from Macedonia to the south of France. Based on true events, it lays bare the tremendous effects that the policies of wealthy countries and the attitudes of their people have on the lives of the displaced and dispossessed.

This graphic novella recounts the true story of Zumrat Dawut, as originally published in the independent online news organization, Insider, through interviews conducted by Anthony Del Col and testimony given to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Zumrat Dawut is a mother of three in the Xinjiang autonomous region in China, who was arrested and sent to a detention facility for simply being a Muslim. There she endured brutal living conditions, torture, interrogations, anti-Muslim propaganda, and sterilization. But that was just the beginning of Zumrat's troubles, who with her husband would soon hatch a plan to escape to America.

The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib's triumphant graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised.

On a planet Earth bursting with integrated extraterrestrial life, pregnant doctor Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka is fleeing Nigeria under mysterious conditions. Her fiancé doesn't know she's left, and she's smuggling an illegal, sentient plant into NYC. There, she'll be thrown into a vibrant immigrant community of humans and aliens, fighting for social justice and facing her past and her unexpected future.

Images are just as much in motion as people. In a globalized world they can move faster and more freely than humans. When artist Armin Linke was invited more than seven years ago to participate in a photographic project on the island of Lampedusa, he left his camera at home because he thought that there would already be plenty of photos available there. Instead, he took with him on the trip a team from the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design so that they could talk with local image makers about their photographs. Four years later, he approached Spector Books about the possibility of turning the photos and interview material he had collected into a book. The publishing house studied the pictures and suggested adopting the form of a photo-graphic novel, in which drawings comment on the photographs, thus creating an external perspective on the images. In the course of their research, the Migrant Image Research Group spoke with other image makers: with the Italian photo agency Contrasto in Rome, with representatives of the European Border Agency Frontex in Warsaw, and with a picture editor from the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al-Ahram weekly in Cairo. All image makers have a particular agenda and use their photographs for specific purposes--to inform, to foment fear, to arouse compassion, or to monitor borders. Our book ... addresses all these aspects and also tells of the search for empathic images and the incidental shots with which refugees record their daily lives on mobile phones

Having just moved to Seattle from Taiwan, twelve-year-old Cici enters a cooking competition to win the chance to see her grandmother again, but she only knows how to cook Taiwanese food.

This non-fiction comics anthology presents stories of survival and healing told by Latin American migrant farmworkers in Vermont, and drawn by New England cartoonists as part of the El Viaje Más Caro Project--a health care outreach effort of the Open Door Clinic and UVM Extension Bridges to Health aimed at addressing the overlooked mental health needs of these vulnerable immigrants. Originally distributed to farm workers as individual Spanish language comic books, this collected edition brings the lives and voices-as well as the challenges and hardships-of these workers to an English-language audience, granting insight into the experiences and lives of the people vital to producing the food we eat. Featuring a foreword by Julia Alvarez (Afterlife), introduction by Stephen R. Bissette (Swamp Thing) and preface by project founder, nurse Julia Doucet, these inspiring stories grapple with issues encountered by migrant workers everywhere-isolation, separation, depression, substance abuse-even as they celebrate resilience, family, community, and the ability of each storyteller to direct their own healing narrative. The Most Costly Journey is a gripping work that draws together non-fiction cartooning, graphic medicine and ethnography, channeling the skills of health care practitioners, artists and ethnographers into helping alleviate the pain of others.

In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family, and while she soon carves out a place for herself among a group of fellow outsiders, she continues to struggle for a sense of belonging. Finding that she misses her home more than she can stand, Marjane returns to Iran after graduation. Her difficult homecoming forces her to confront the changes both she and her country have undergone in her absence and her shame at what she perceives as her failure in Austria. Marjane allows her past to weigh heavily on her until she finds some like-minded friends, falls in love, and begins studying art at a university. However, the repression and state-sanctioned chauvinism eventually lead her to question whether she can have a future in Iran. As funny and poignant as its predecessor, Persepolis 2 is another clear-eyed and searing condemnation of the human cost of fundamentalism. In its depiction of the struggles of growing up--here compounded by Marjane's status as an outsider both abroad and at home--it is raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.

Adapted from the landmark essay Enforcing Order, this striking graphic novel offers an accessible inside look at policing and how it leads to discrimination and violence. What we know about the forces of law and order often comes from dramatic episodes that make the headlines, or from sensationalized versions for film and television. These gripping accounts can obscure a crucial aspect of police work: the tedium of everyday patrols and paperwork, under a constant pressure to meet numbers. Around the time of the 2005 French riots, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent fifteen months observing up close the daily life of an anti-crime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. His unprecedented study, which sparked intense discussion about policing in the largely working-class, immigrant suburbs, remains acutely relevant in light of all-too-common incidents of police brutality against minorities. This new, powerfully illustrated adaptation clearly presents the insights of Fassin's investigation, and draws connections to the challenges we face today

Still alive documents the conditions, experiences and deprivations of Australia's system of mandatory and indefinite detention for asylum seekers and refugees. Drawing from Safdar Ahmed's experiences as a volunteer in Sydney's Villawood detention centre, it contains the testimony of refugees and workers in a system that is often decried by human rights organisations for its cruelty. This is a work of observation and collaboration, collating Ahmed's experiences as an art workshop facilitator with the testimony and artwork of refugees who are held in immigration detention. Still Alive eschews stereotypical representations of the refugee as either a threat to Australia's system of 'border protection', or as a victim who lacks initiative and agency. What emerges is a deeply impacting account of the refugee journey and the profound consequences of indefinite incarceration that asylum seekers experience upon reaching Australia.

The Strange follows an unnamed, undocumented immigrant who tries to forge a new life in a Western country where he doesn't speak the language. Jérôme Ruillier's story is deftly told through myriad viewpoints, as each narrator recounts a situation in which they crossed paths with the newly-arrived foreigner. Many of the people he meets are suspicious of his unfamiliar background, or of the unusual language they do not understand. By employing this third-person narrative structure, Ruillier masterfully portrays the complex plight of immigrants and the vulnerability of being undocumented.

This book tells the true stories of five brave teens fleeing their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guinea, on their own, traveling through unknown and unfriendly places, and ultimately crossing into the US to find refuge and seek asylum. Based on extensive interviews with teen refugees, lawyers, caseworkers, and activists, Tracy White shines a light on five individual kids from among the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who enter the US each year. In stark black and white illustrations, she helps us understand why some young people would literally risk their lives to seek safety in the US. Each one of them has been backed into a corner where emigration to the US seems like their only hope.

Undocumented is the story of immigrant workers who have come to the United States without papers. Every day, these men and women join the work force and contribute positively to society. The story is told via the ancient Mixtec codex--accordion fold--format. Juan grew up in Mexico working in the fields to help provide for his family. Struggling for money, Juan crosses over into the United States and becomes an undocumented worker, living in a poor neighborhood, working hard to survive. Though he is able to get a job as a busboy at a restaurant, he is severely undercompensated--he receives less than half of the minimum wage! Risking his boss reporting him to the authorities for not having proper resident papers, Juan risks everything and stands up for himself and the rest of the community.

Syria, 2011: Teenage boys graffiti "Down with the regime" on a wall. This small act is just one of the many sparks that ignite a revolution to overthrow the tyrannical rule of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But Assad and his supporters are ruthless: imprisonment, torture, and devastating massacres tear the country apart. Refugees begin to flee Syria in staggering numbers. The unexpected flood of victims overwhelms neighboring countries. Desperate refugees escape to Europe. Chaos reigns. Resentment heightens as disruption and the cost of aid grow. By 2017, the war rages on an many nations want to close their borders and turn their backs on the victims. The refugees are the unwanted. Don Brown, the award-winning creator of The Great American Dust Bowl and Drowned City, depicts moments of both heartbreaking horror and hope in the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. Shining a light on the stories of the survivors, The Unwanted is both a testament to the courage and resilience of the refugees and a call to action, serving as a timely reminder that this is not just a Syrian criss, but a human crisis.

As a second-generation Pakistani immigrant living in East London, Sabba Khan paints a vivid snapshot of contemporary British Asian life and investigates the complex shifts experienced by different generations within immigrant communities, creating an uplifting and universal story that crosses borders and decades. Race, gender, and class are explored in a compelling personal narrative creating a strong feminist message of self-reflection and empowerment which is illuminated in stunning artwork.

Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there : never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar's nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future...but it would also mean leaving his brother, his only family member remaining, every day. Heartbreak, hope, and gentle humor exist together in this graphic novel about a childhood spent waiting, and a young man who is able to create a sense of family and home in the most difficult of settings. It's an intimate, important, unforgettable look at the day-to-day life of a refugee, as told to New York Times bestselling author/artist Victoria Jamieson by Omar Mohamed, the Somali man who lived the story and went on to help so many other refugees.