Customer Reviews

Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anyone like myself who will likely never visit the Gaza region, home to millions of displaced Palestinians, Sacco's comic book, "Footnotes in Gaza", is an effective substitute. For close to four hundred pages, the award-winning journalist takes his readers through the recent war-torn history of life in a refugee camp at Rafah and its nearby village of Khan Younis. Sacco does an incredible job in capturing a sense of the pain, misery, betrayal, fear and hopelessness that has come to settle over this disputed territory involving the geopolitical interests of Israel and Egypt. To provide as complete and accurate a record as possible, Sacco treats the book as an opportunity to delve into to the recent experiences of Palestinians whose life has spanned a number of decades in Gaza. This comic reads as an oral history that focuses on people's haunted memories of one infamous event: the massacre at the Rafah camp in late 1956, when the Israelis were pulling back after agreeing to a truce with Egypt over the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. What makes this study so meaningful for me is that Sacco pieces together in vivid detail the daily struggles of the Palestinians as they coped with the heavy hand of the Israeli army. Sacco and his guides faced enormous difficulties in finding evidence from bona fide witnesses to confirm this long-suppressed act of genocide. I became more aware of Palestinian culture and politics from reading the many ongoing dialogues between members in this community and absorbing the power of the artwork accompanying it:
1. Sacco makes a very strong case for believing that the present turmoil in the Gaza Strip has some deep roots in the past;
2. The various oral histories and personal renditions of events confirmed that a massacre actually took place but was openly denied by the Israelis in their dealings with the United Nations;
3. Sacco proves once again that a picture done well is definitely worth a thousand words or more, He has a gift to translate words into pictures that tell a gripping story;
4. There is plenty of humor and wit reflected in the lives of this suffering people as well as the author himself;
5. The pictures contain a fair balance of landscape, architecture and people, which all form a collective part of the bigger picture: a seige in progress;
6. Gaza has turned into a virtual prison hole with little access to the sea for trading purposes, high unemployment, and no infrastructure to speak of;
7. The extended family is the life blood of this society;
8. The Israelis and Egyptians are finding it increasingly hard to contain the Palestinians because they have found the answer to their future: extensive breeding;
9. All the technical terminology and nameplaces used in the text are clearly defined and appropriately used;
10. Read the section titled "Feast" for an hilariously enjoyable encounter with life in the back streets of Rafah.