I took notes at this session and transferred them onto my blog. So I guess that means it is retroactively live blogged.
Valerie Reimiers on Satrapi
Read Persepolis
read Embroideries
memoir in graphic format is problematic
“nonfiction graphic novels”
various placements in bookstores
Is it literary/literature?
hybrid (like the Borderland works)
unnecessary to place it outside of literature, even though it is memoir
literature = gives pleasure in multiple readings
Satrapi writes of political climate change
coed education abolished
sent to Europe for safety
accomplishes continuity through the narrator
simplicity of carefully constructed black and white poetry
Shows us several examples.
Reimers also has a handout, called “Displacements and Continuities.”
There is a short direction at the top: “Write two or three sentences about an important displacement or continuity in your own life.”
Then, about halfway down the page, it says:
“Decide how you would display your sentences in comic strip panels. Even if you cannot draw well, choose and sketch out which information you would represent in each box (panel) of your mini graphic memoir. What kinds of graphics would you want to use (black and white, color, stick figures, bold or delicate drawings)? Will you use banners at the top or bottom of panels or the balloons indicating speech (usually indicated by the tip of the balloon pointing to the speaker’s mouth) or thought (usually represented by little bubbles leading to the balloon)? Will you use sound representation besides speech (think of superhero comics)? As with poetry, there are many decisions to make about order, arrangement on the page, discovery of the right word, how to carry emotion and thought with concise expression.”
I wrote:
make a picture of NY grocery store
cans for grocery, white blogs equal people, door locked, OPEN
This is for a paper I am working on. Satrapi’s art could work for this.
On the “Displacements and Continuities” handout, I actually drew in the art. (I would want folks to be able to use cutouts from a magazine, since some people can’t even draw stick figures.)
The first panel has a man behind a cash register, at a large desk/check out box, with grocery cans to the side. The bookshelf-like containers of cans are at angles and take up one third of the panel. There is a blank space between the shelves and the cashier’s desk.
The next panel is a white blob (looks like a ghost) with a package in hand and another blob locking the door, big lock and big key. The blob with a package has a question mark over it.
The third panel shows glass windows and a door with a big Closed sign. The view is from outside the door.
The fourth panel shows two stick figures (or real figures, if I could draw) who are walking down the sidewalk towards the door. The view is from inside the door.
This presentation made me decide that I should read graphic novels. I now have 15 in my bookshelf.
