Graphic Histories No. 5: Memoirs
This week, I read They Called us Enemy by George Takei and Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob—both memoirs, but completely different takes on both memoir-writing and the comic format. Takei’s story of living in Japanese internment camps during World War II uses a retro black-and-white style and relies heavily on narration. Jacob’s memoir uses collage to give depth and context to unexpressive copy-and-pasted illustrations of the characters. Jacob relies mostly on conversation bubbles to move the story forward. Both use intergenerational voices to show how memory and perspective influence our understanding of history.
In They Call Us Enemy, Takei describes his story as a composite of his own memories, memories his father has shared with him, and the history he later came to understand. The book’s initial sequences of leaving home for a long train ride to the Arkansas internment camp gives few details about what’s really going on. From his child’s perspective, a combination of ignorance and his parent’s efforts led him to believe his family was embarking on a great adventure. Even later in life, he remembers it that way. As he becomes less innocent, the reader learns more details about the larger historical picture. Other parts of the story are told from his father’s perspective. But the author narrates throughout, weaving in commentary about how he has processed learning about the historical context of his and his family’s experiences.
In Good Talk, Jacob uses conversations with her son, or between her younger self and her parents, to create a similar effect. Navigating her son’s innocent questions about what he sees on TV and in the world around him, she is forced to examine her own experience of modern events. She also digs into her own childhood, explores periods of her parents’ lives, and weaves them together with her more-recent perspective as the narrator.
In this collage spread (pp. 14 & 15), Jacob draws a parallel between her own inquisitiveness throughout her life—the faces on p. 14 are hers at different ages—and her son’s constant questions.
They Called Us Enemy illustrator Harmony Becker uses perspective and detail to immerse readers in each perspective. She represents memories that are fuzzy or that Takei doesn’t remember well with fewer details, or in lighter colors, than those based on historical images or clear memories. When the memory is Takei’s father’s, it’s represented with wide shots from straight on, or otherwise as if seen by an adult. When the memory is George’s, the perspective shifts closer to the ground, showing adults as huge and far fewer contextual details. The art style even shifts subtly to a more cartoonish view with round-faced Peanuts-esque characters.
Panels from p. 127 of They Called Us Enemy that demonstrate the absurdity of categorizing children as enemies of the state. Many panels from the internment camps show adults only up to their knees—the view a child might remember. Even in this image of everyone together, the children appear more cartoonish than the adults.
In Good Talk, evocative dialogue and background imagery imbue the expressionless characters with emotion. The same character image might be repeated in many panels, but its size and interaction with the background and dialogue bring it alive. For example, in the spread below, the background views create a sense of intimacy with the character even though the cutout image doesn’t change. The close-up view with a long inner dialogue evokes the familiar feeling of laying on a bed and ruminating. Other spreads include striking historical images of the New York City skyline before, during, and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks along with more day-to-day shots of New York City neighborhoods.
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, pp. 264 & 265.
As I prepare to create my own graphic history with memoir-ish elements (since I’m relying heavily on oral history), both authors provide strategies I can use in my own work:
Visual shifts in perspective: Graphics can seamlessly shift narrative perspective by shifting visual perspectives.
Collage using historical images: Doom Towns by Andrew Kirk shows historical images faithfully represented in illustration. Good Talk offers an alternative: Using the images themselves as a backdrop for character illustrations and dialogue.
Contextualizing oral histories: By telling personal stories as memoir (either of one’s own experience or one’s memory of someone else’s experience), the author provides context for potential factual errors or subjective interpretations of events alongside the accurate information.
This last point leaves me with the most to think about: What are the best roles of the author, and the narrator, for staying true to the stories as they're told while providing data, historical context, and other information that might leave the reader with a full and accurate understanding of the issue?
