The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Catherine Appleton
MA Digital Design (Griffith University) BA Hons. (University of Reading)
Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Office of Education Research Faculty of Education Queensland University of Technology
2019 Keywords
Graphic novel, graphic memoir, child migration, Kindertransport, memory, representation, trauma, Jewish persecution
Abstract
Forced migration has resurfaced as one of the major challenges of modern society. A historic event that has relevance today is the Kindertransport – an organised rescue effort that evacuated 10,000 children, predominantly Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. This historic rescue effort has only recently been documented in scholarly research studies and in a number of autobiographical memoirs, televised documentaries and films. The aim of this study is to retell the Kindertransport rescue effort and the traumatic repercussions through the life of one kind (child) survivor, Ella Eberštark. This personal historic narrative takes the form of a graphic novel (The Wounds of
Separation) and an exegesis of the research and methodology that informed the creative process.
The creative component of the thesis is a graphic novel, a format that is increasingly appealing to young adult and adult readers. As the narrative is based on personal remembrances it is more specifically a graphic memoir. The
Wounds of Separation represents the historical facts of this forced migration rescue operation in an image and text narrative. Interviews, family letters and extant documented information provide the source material for this refugee story. I bring these primary and secondary sources together and synthesise this research material into key issues that inform both the creative work and the exegesis.
The exegesis reports on a dual methodology, which comprises both practice-led and life writing approaches. The research questions that inform this study are:
(i) In what ways do memory, history and identity intertwine and shape the way in which trauma is experienced and remembered?
(ii) In writing for a YA audience, how can the multimodal features of the graphic memoir be stylistically constructed to assist readers to connect to unfamiliar experience in order to engender empathy?
In exploring these questions I also draw on three graphic novels that deal with related issues of trauma, identity, and personal struggles – Stitches: A Memoir
(Small, 2009), Becoming Unbecoming (Una, 2015), Persepolis (Satrapi, 2007). I discuss how these texts provided helpful information regarding the use of representational and multimodal features for my creative work.
As a contribution to ‘postmemorial’ literature, The Wounds of Separation shows the long term effects of psychic suffering inflicted on children when separated from their parents in desperate circumstances. In my study I look at the ways such traumas are remembered by combining personal memory (as a second generation witness), historical fact, and the consequential effect on identities and family. In so doing I contribute literature and research material about a forced migration event and a migrant experience that have contemporary relevance.
4 Statement of Original Authorship
The work reported in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet the requirement for an award of degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signature QUT Verified Signature
Date February 2019 Acknowledgements
I started creating The Wounds of Separation a number of years ago. I recently found small seeds of ideas in forgotten envelopes as I packed up my house to move. It wasn’t until one Passover meal, after I struggled once again to read my grandmother’s Seder poem, that my friend Jo Lampert helped me plant the PhD idea in my head. She introduced me to Kerry Mallan and this journey began. My book and conceptual understandings grew from the creative and academic nurturing of so many people within a very supportive QUT community.
My supervisory team has been a joy to work with. Kerry Mallan’s contribution was immense, her encouragement and belief in my work carried me along a very smooth path, always providing swift feedback and careful editing. Craig Bolland understood my creative challenges, with great insight he guided me in the directions I wanted to go.
I enjoyed the wonderful interviews with my aunts, Alice Masters and Josephine
Knight, which involved taking them back to difficult memories. My father,
Thomas Appleton transported me to wartime Britain and his words about my mother were so beautiful I transcribed them into my story. Vera Sklaar, Anne
Masters, Michael Knight and Helen Appleton shared stories as second-generation survivors, supporting my experience and the research. Joelle Sklaar began the quest to understand our family history. At a young age she had the courage to travel back to Trstená and start the research - she inspired me to continue.
vi I am so grateful to QUT for giving me the opportunity that allowed me to finally pursue and realise my passion. Thanks to Jo Carr for her careful copyediting and proofreading services, according to the guidelines laid out in the university- endorsed national ‘Guidelines for editing research theses’. Also I gratefully acknowledge permission from Cathy Sly to use a reproduction of Figure 1.3 in this thesis (Sly, C. [2014] 'Empowering 21st century readers: Integrating graphic novels into primary classrooms' in K. Mallan [ed.] Picture Books and
Beyond, Newtown, PETAA, p. 129.).
Jane Dorner, Shelley Trueman and Erina Reddan read my graphic novel and provided insights into storytelling. My friends and family were there in the ups and downs but most of all Gerald Miles was always supportive and never doubted me.
vii Contents
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CONTENTS | VIII
FIGURES | XI
INTRODUCTION: A HISTORY REIMAGINED | 1
The Moment in History 5 The Historic Event 6 Why this History? 8 The Historic Response 11 The Children’s Trauma 13 The More Recent Response 14
Understanding Trauma 18 Trauma Defined 19
Narrative and History 20 The Graphic Novel 23 Graphic Features to Engage Readers 25
Significance and Potential Contribution 27
The Research Questions 31
Structure of the Graphic Memoir 31
Structure of the Exegetical Component 32
CHAPTER 1: REPRESENTATION AND MULTIMODALITY IN THE GRAPHIC MEMOIR | 36
Representing Historic Truths 39
Life Writing Representation 47 Faction and Fiction 49 Relational Autobiography and the Graphic Memoir 51
Graphic novel representation 54 Representation of Change: Time and Space 60 Interactivity 61
viii Non-linear Reading 63 Representation of Change: Identity 65 Pictorial Embodiment 66 Representation of History and Memory 66 Variety of Narrative Voices 67 Representation of Emotion and Trauma 70 Connecting to the Characters 70 Graphic Expressions of Emotion 73 Trauma 76 Representation for the Young Adult Audience 77
Concluding comments 79
CHAPTER 2: CREATIVE AND ANALYTICAL PROCESSES | 83
Practice-led Methodology 84 Reflexivity 87
Life Writing Methodology 91
Leading to the Research Outcome 94
Methods 95 Primary Sources 96 Key Sample Texts 96 Interviews with Family Members 97 Family Ephemera 99 Developing the Creative Work 101 Creative Inspiration and Storyboarding 101 Journal Entries 105 Approach to Analysis of Key Sample Texts 108 Analysis of the Family Interviews 109
Ethical Considerations 110
Limitations of my Study 113
Concluding Comments 115
CHAPTER 3: EMOTIONAL JOURNEYS IN GRAPHIC STORYTELLING: APPROACHES AND POSSIBILITIES | 119
Narrative Synopses 121 Stitches: A Memoir 121 Becoming Unbecoming 122 Persepolis 123 The Wounds of Separation 124
Representing Trauma and its Impact 125
Who Tells the Story and How 127 Stitches: A Memoir 127 The Wounds of Separation 138
Making Connections 150 Building the Vision of Trauma Through the Generations 150 Stitches: A Memoir 150
ix The Wounds of Separation 154 Thematic Braiding to Show Personal Struggle 159 Becoming Unbecoming 159 The Wounds of Separation 162
Reconstructing History 171 Limiting and Presenting the Facts 172 Persepolis 172 The Black and White of Picture Language and Placement 178 Persepolis 178 Limiting and Presenting the Facts 182 The Wounds of Separation 182 Containing Time in the Movement Through Space 196 The Wounds of Separation 196 Concluding Comments 205
CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION | 206
BIBILIOGRAPHY | 215
APPENDIX A | 231 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Interview – Josephine Knight (sister) and Alice Masters (sister) 231 Why the Interview 231 Interview – Tom Appleton (ex-husband) 234 Why the Interview 234 Interview - Helen Stern (daughter), Vera Sklaar (niece) Michael Knight (nephew) and Anne Masters (niece) 235
APPENDIX B | 237 Interview information sheet – Ethical Clearance issues 237
x Figures
Figure 0.1: Graphic novel page anatomy (TWoS, pp. 12-13). 24
Figure 1.1: The conceptual framework of representational issues. 42
Figure 1.2: Two points where the reader creates meaning in the graphic novel (Appleton, 2000). 62
Figure 1.3: Graphic novel page layouts showing possible panel arrangements and pathways of reading (Sly, 2014, p. 129). 64
Figure 1.4: The cross-discursive reading pathway involving comparison within the panel, between the panels and across the network of panels (Appleton, 2000). 65
Figure 1.5: Narrating-I locating the action and narrated-I acting within a scene. (TWoS, p. 9). 69
Figure 1.6: Expressive typography functions like the image to show an emotion. (TWoS, p. 40). 74
Figure 2.1: The practice-led methodology. 86
Figure 2.2: One of my grandmother’s letters written to her children in Britain (approximately 1940). 100
Figure 2.3: The top photograph is included in the graphic novel. The photograph below was traced into one of the panels, removing one person in the image who was not discussed in the narrative. 101
Figure 2.4: Example draft prologue pages with reflexive comments. 104
Figure 2.5: Further sketches to develop on from the reflexive comments. 105
Figure 2.6: An example journal entry to show conceptual thinking and creative idea development. 106
Figure 4.1: The difficulty of identifying the focalising character (TwoS, p. 6). 141
Figure 4.2: Establishing the relational characters (TWoS, pp. 2-3). 142
Figure 4.3: The metaleptic narrator observes the story world (TWoS, p. 9). 147
Figure 4.4: The mixing of temporal locations and generations (TWoS, p. 13). 156
xi Figure 4.5: Connecting the generations (TWoS, pp. 116-117). 157
Figure 4.6: The severed connection between three generations (p. TWoS 124). 158
Figure 4.7: The shadows in the window symbolise the faint influence between generations (TWoS, p. 124). 159
Figure 4.8: Yarn is used as a metaphor and thematic braiding device (TWoS, p. 87). 164
Figure 4.9: The symbolic meaning of the yarn changes in the story (TWoS , pp. 133-134). 164
Figure 4.10: Emotional journeys and repressed emotions (TWoS, p. 167 and TWoS, p. 184). 165
Figure 4.11: The suitcase signifies different emotional feelings (TWoS, pp. 9-10). 165
Figure 4.12: Emotional baggage (TWoS, pp. 11-12). 167
Figure 4.13: A place to hide emotional struggles (TWoS, p. 131 and TWoS, p. 152). 168
Figure 4.14: Emotions unravel (TWoS, p. 186 and TWoS, p. 189). 168
Figure 4.15: Traumatic and repressed emotions left behind (TWoS, pp. 206-207). 168
Figure 4.16: Dealing with an “inheritance” (TWoS, p. 211). 169
Figure 4.17: The travel feature of the story and connecting the past to the present (TWoS, p. 16). 170
Figure 4.18: The train is used in the circular structure of the narrative (TWoS , pp.112-113). 170
Figure 4.19: A character to explain a complicated history (TWoS, p. 33). 184
Figure 4.20: The struggle to understand a complicated political situation (TWoS , pp. 34-35). 184
Figure 4.21: Fictional devices frame the story but the factual content retains historical accuracy (TWoS, pp. 81-82). 185
Figure 4.22: Letters are graphically moulded into the images (TWoS, p. 141 and TWoS, p. 143). 187
Figure 4.23: An embodied connection to the letters (TWoS, p. 152). 188
xii Figure 4.24: A mediated form of historical evidence (TWoS, p. 152). 189
Figure 4.25: The photograph highlights a true connection to the past (TWoS, pp. 93-94). 191
Figure 4.26: Mixing representational forms to show disrupted relationships (TWoS, p. 116). 191
Figure 4.27: Digital manipulation raises questions about evidential truth (TWoS, p. 175). 193
Figure 4.28: A symbolic representation to communicate struggle (TWoS, pp. 120-121). 195
Figure 4.29: A figurative interpreter of factual research (TWoS, pp. 26-27). 196
Figure 4.30: A rhythmic pause is created using a zoomed image (TWoS, p. 24). 200
Figure 4.31: The different panel compositions vary the rhythm of the story (TWoS, p. 171 and TWoS, p. 89). 200
Figure 4.32: The repetition of the same panel framing emphasises a key moment (TWoS, pp. 74-75). 201
Figure 4.33: A static composition is repeated over four panels to locate time (TWoS, p. 95). 202
Figure 4.34: Time is located using alternating imagery (TWoS, pp. 194-195). 203
Figure 4.35: Summary pages show a visual complexity in the arrangement of elements (TWoS, pp. 156-157). 204
Figure 4.36: A different comparative reading strategy for the summary page (TWoS, pp. 160-161). 204
xiii
INTRODUCTION
A History Reimagined
This study arrives at a pertinent time in terms of world history since we are in the middle of the largest refugee crisis since World War Two (WWII) (UNHCR,
2014). Forced migration and the traumatic scars on the victims have resurfaced as one of the major challenges of this decade. With the mass movement of people across the globe, the experience of fleeing from war to safe but unfamiliar countries is a worldwide problem. Desperate measures are taken when personal safety is jeopardised and the state can no longer provide protection. This can be due to environmental changes because of development, natural disaster, or conflict. The focus of this study is conflict and includes: armed conflict, civil war, widespread violence, national, racial, religious, political and/or social persecution (Refugee Studies Centre, 2010). One such example of forced migration caused by persecution is known as the ‘Kindertransport’1, which involved evacuating Jewish children from Europe before WWII (1938-1940). The recent death of Sir Nicholas Winton has brought to public attention the part he played in this Czechoslovakian Kindertransport organised rescue effort. It is an inspiring story of a young 29-year-old English stockbroker who was motivated to save many children, earning him the sobriquet of the “British Schindler”
(Emanuel and Gissing, 2001). The ordeal of separation from family, home and country resulted in children suffering trauma which had lasting effects on their
1 ‘Kinder’ being the German word for children, therefore Kindertransport was the children’s transport
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 1 lives. Currently, millions of people have become refugees, so it is timely for a thesis such as this to contribute to the burgeoning field of life writing about trauma and separation. The research that underpins this study considers the cultural and theoretical contexts that inform the narrative plight of an up-rooted child who was part of the Kindertransport. In so doing, the creative work speaks to the desperate circumstances that cause people to leave loved ones and start a life in a new country.
The Kindertransport was a moment in history that resulted in the children having psychic and/or physical traumatic responses to the episode both at the time and throughout the decades after the war. For many Kindertransportees, memories were repressed; but others managed to deal with past ghosts by integrating their experiences into their life narrative. As part of the recovery process from the ordeal of war, trauma therapies were developed to help war- torn victims. From these an understanding emerged that acknowledged how a separation of child and parent creates trauma that then leads to an individual experiencing symptoms of trauma.
I argue that the details of the Kindertransport refugee story need to be retold in a way that is accessible to current and future generations before this story is lost.
The events surrounding the evacuation have become the memories and stories of those children who are now in their 80s and 90s, people reaching the end of their lives. Retelling this history comes at a critical point before we lose these direct witnesses of this past. Fischer alerts us to the need for commemoration work “as the survivors and their memories of the event fade[ ] away” (2015, p.
2 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
13). Through this thesis and its creative component I hope to bridge the gap in knowledge about this historical event between the Kinder survivors and future generations.
This historic event has only recently been documented in scholarly research studies (as discussed later in this chapter) and in a range of autobiographical memoirs, televised documentaries and films. The aim of this study is to retell the
Kindertransport rescue effort and its traumatic repercussions on the life of one kind (child) survivor, Ella Eberštark, as a personal historic narrative entitled The
Wounds of Separation. As my story is based on personal remembrances and those of surviving relatives, it is best termed a ‘graphic memoir’, a subgenre of the graphic novel. (This classification is explained more fully in Chapter 1.) Like graphic novels, graphic memoirs have the potential to represent trauma capturing elements of the history, memory and identity that my story describes.
The target audience of this graphic memoir is young adults2, an audience who generally would have had little contact with or knowledge of this historic event, except through family history or other cultural artefacts. The graphic novel format is becoming increasingly appealing for young adult readers, and in an educational context it provides a useful resource3. As an accessible narrative for the targeted readership, The Wounds of Separation describes a familiar
2 Pearce, Muller and Hawkes (2013) explain that the young adult category is defined by publishers, booksellers and libraries and includes 12-18 year olds though thought to include ages up to 30 year olds. 3 For example: Park discusses how historical graphic novels help “humanize history” (2016, p. 41) for the young adult, and Sabeti identifies a number of reasons why young adults chose to read graphic novels including, “"their multimodal, participatory, agentic, generative and self-determined nature, they also share their attunement with the participants’ sense of identity and purpose in engaging in a literacy practice.” (2013, p. 842)
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 3 experience to those who have suffered forced migration and provides a window into this world for those who have not.
As noted above, the thesis comprises a creative work - a graphic memoir (The
Wounds of Separation) - and an exegesis (critical commentary). The creative work represents the historical facts of this forced migration rescue operation in an image and text narrative. Interviews, letters from the people directly involved in the event, and extant documented information provide the source material for this refugee story. I bring these primary and secondary sources together and synthesise this research material into key issues that inform both the creative work and the exegesis. The exegesis provides background information about this historic event, examines the concepts that underpin this study, reports on a dual methodology, which comprises of a practice-led and life writing research investigation, and undertakes a critical analysis of the key texts that inform the creative work. The discussion focuses on the understandings developed in relation to the relevant questions that guide the study.
This chapter serves to set the scene, to identify and define terms, and to explain the approach of retelling history in the form of a graphic narrative.
4 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
The Moment in History
History is about acknowledging the past. It is also about developing an understanding of what came before, providing a vision for the future (Alonso,
1988; Allan, 2013). This premise infers that we learn from our mistakes, but one of the major players in this moment of history, Sir Nicholas Winton, was sceptical that we do. In his address to the Forum in Prague on ‘Freedom and
Responsibility’ (2007), he wondered why so much time is spent reflecting on the past without giving the present and the future the focus that he considered is needed. We could ask therefore: What is it about historical investigation that helps define the present and the future? I argue that while historical facts form the scaffolding that is imperative for understanding the past, it is our response to these facts that provides the important lessons gained from history. My interest is in human reactions to particular historical happenings. Reframing our past involves compiling the details of an event as well as developing a clear understanding about how we responded to difficult challenges and how we treated each other in the process. It is the combination of the event as it happened and the understandings of that moment, acknowledging that interpretation is very much situated in time (when interpretation occurs) and in the viewpoint of the person investigating it (Kokkola, 2003). As Kleinman and
Moshenska note, “the Kindertransport was not just an historical event but became the very core of their lives” (2004, p. 1). Therefore historical moments can have lasting impacts and go on to shape the trajectory of an individual’s life.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 5
The Historic Event
After the Kristellnacht4 in Germany on 9 November 1938 and the outburst of violence and terror directed at the Jews, persecution had reached such a level that the British Government finally felt compelled to make a humanitarian response (Burešová, 2012). After much debate in Parliament, Britain decided it would take in refugee children out of Germany and temporarily provide them with foster homes (Grenville, 2012). Such an action was not a new phenomenon in dealing with a humanitarian crisis. Evacuating children out of danger had happened before. As Timms (2012) explains, over 20,000 Basque children had been evacuated during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), and subsequent evacuations occurred after the war. During 1960-62, over 14,000 Cuban children were accommodated in the United States after the overthrow of Battista’s regime in Cuba.
The Kindertransport involved moving and relocating 10,000 Jewish children out of the threat of war and persecution into Great Britain between December 1938 and September 1939 (Geyer, 2005; Gopfert, 2004). The children travelled using a simple travel document and had a British guarantor who would pay £50 (worth approximately £3,000 today) to alleviate any burden on the British state
(Emanuel & Gissing, 2001). There were a number of voluntary organisations that pulled resources together to organise the children’s departure from Europe, such as the Society of Friends (Quakers) and the Jewish Refugee Committee. These groups came under the umbrella of the Refugee Children’s Movement (Emanuel
4 Kristallnacht also known as ‘The Night of Broken Glass’ (November 9, 1938) was a large, coordinated violent attack on Jews throughout the German Reich.
6 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
& Gissing, 2001). Most of the children came from Germany and Austria, but the term ‘Kindertransport’ was also used to describe a smaller rescue mission organised as “a collaborative and international humanitarian effort between several organizations and individuals” more commonly associated with the name of Sir Nicholas Winton (Brade and Holmes, 2017, p. 6). This included eight trains leaving from Prague, saving 669 Czech children. A ninth train was scheduled to leave on 3 September 1939, but its departure coincided with the outbreak of the war and it was prevented from leaving (Grenville, 2012). All 250 children aboard are thought to have perished in the Nazi concentration camps as part of the
1,500 Czech children who met the same fate.
The focus of this study is on the Czech Kindertransport. These transports were organised as a response to the annexation of Sudetenland by Germans in
September 1938 at the Munich Conference, resulting in the influx of Jewish refugees into Czechoslovakia (Emanuel & Gissing, 2001). In 1938, Martin Blake urged his friend Winton to cancel his Christmas ski trip and travel to Prague.
Intrigued by this request Winton complied and was shocked at the situation he met there. Moved by the numbers of refugees camped out in harsh winter conditions, Winton and Blake set about finding a way to help and began organising evacuation arrangements for the children. This resulted in Winton setting up the ‘British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, Children’s
Section’ and months of determined, tireless work by a small collection of volunteers, mainly women5 (Brade & Holmes, 2017). In Czechoslovakia, lists
5 “As far as the major Jewish organizations were concerned at the time, the most important individuals for organizing the Kindertransports were Doreen Warriner, E. Rosalind Lee, Tessa Rowntree and Beatrice Wellington” (Brade & Holmes, 2017, p.20).
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 7 were drawn up of names and details from parents desperate to get their children out of danger. Back in Britain, foster homes were located. This was implemented hastily with little attention paid to suitability of the home; in addition, siblings often had to be split between families (Baker, 2007). Much effort was directed into requests for funding and financial guarantors. Winton approached community organisations with emotional pleas for help. Once Winton had the children allocated to families he notified the volunteers working in Nazi occupied
Czechoslovakia; these included Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner. They in turn informed the parents, obtained the children’s exit permits and paid for the train.
It is difficult to comprehend the ultimate sacrifice of so many desperate parents in putting their children on the train. The parents’ fear and worry must have been palpable when we consider that they were sending their young children to an unknown country and to strangers they had never met. Their only consolation was the hope that this was a temporary separation.
Why this History?
The Kindertransport has become a way of discussing memory and loss and issues relating to the Holocaust. Hammel suggests that such discussion provides an access point into the “emotional and cultural issues relating to the Holocaust”
(2012, p. 152) without having to confront the explicit horrors. The evacuation theme has become popular for a number of writers of fiction. A recently published novel is Jake Wallis Simons’s The German English Girl (2013). In an
8 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration email interview (14 May 2011) with Hammel, Simons explains: “It contained both despair and hope; it had a profound link to the UK; and it gestured towards this ‘core’ [the Holocaust] without articulating it explicitly” (2012, p. 152). My aim in locating this point in history is as a vehicle to understand the emotional content of my own family history. The historical location and logical union of these historic events will mean my story inevitably connects with the tragedy of the Holocaust.
My interest in this history lies in my personal connection to the story since I am a child of a Czech Kindertransport survivor, Ella Eberštark, who was one of the
“Winton children” (Hammel, 2004, para 7). Being a direct descendent of a
Kindertransportee, I am one of a number of second-generation survivors (Baker,
2007). Having witnessed my mother’s response to her experience, my role in this study expands to both a ‘researcher’ and a primary source of relevant memories.
Hirsch points out that the second-generation survivors are the “living connection” (2008, p. 104) to this history. They have the challenge of telling these stories and contributing to the theoretical discussions about trauma and memory and thus producing cultural material for new generations. Therefore a particular aim of this study is to make a valuable contribution towards this end, and to remember the struggles beyond the war “as a sequel to survivor testimonies” (Fischer, 2015, p. 10).
In the decades after the war, Britain, like so many countries, experienced a period of recovery and rebuilding. From this general history my own history emerges. I was brought up with a vague understanding that the adults in my
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 9 world, with their broad Eastern-European accents, carried with them the weight of great loss and a separation from their childhood. Our family was a small, tight unit; however, our lack of older family members was noticeable. I was aware of an absence and felt this incompleteness. I grew up with a feeling that we were outsiders, with our strange food and traditions, a point that is often made by other children of immigrants (Gopfert, 2004).
The Kindertransportees who ended up in the USA had a different experience from those who settled in Britain. Arriving in a young country (USA) which was full of immigrants, Williams (2012) contends that they integrated and quickly shed their refugee status. A number of researchers have observed that even the second-generation British survivors commonly express how they have always felt different from their peers and have harboured a sense they have never belonged, a feeling that was passed down from their parents (Baker, 2007;
Morris, 2012). As Gopfert points out, a foreign accent was quite a “differentiating characteristic” in Britain (2004, p. 21). Even after 50 years of identifying herself as a British citizen, my mother was still being asked where she was from. We identified as being Jewish, though the adults had little knowledge of the rituals.
We decorated our Christmas trees with enthusiasm whilst attending the synagogue for High Holy Days. Our identity straddled two worlds, not fitting properly into either. The stories of where our mother, aunties, and uncles came from were not discussed in great depth: a combination of protecting offspring from the sadness of their history and a longing to stifle their own tragic memories. In more recent years, the silent suffering of the refugee children
10 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration began to be acknowledged, as discussed below, but until then, their trauma was repressed.
The Historic Response
Until recently the Kindertransport was a relatively unknown story, which has been attributed to the repression of the painful memories of the experience
(Baker, 2007; Barnett, 2004, 2012). This repression is now understood to have led to significant psychological problems (Barnett, 2004; 2012). There are a number of reasons for this silence from the victims that are significant to note in building an understanding of the response to their evacuation.
The Kinder children did not suffer the hardships of the concentration camps and consequently many experienced guilt of survival after so many perished. They were considered to be the lucky survivors who had enjoyed relative safety
(Baker, 2007; Gopfert, 2004). Hammel describes the “hierarchy of suffering”
(2010, p. 141) on which the Kindertransportees were ranked low on the scale.
There was also a desire from both children and their parents to try and fit into their new identity, country and language and conform at the expense of their formative identity (Barnett, 2004; Kroger, 2004). Indeed many parents expressed in letters the need for the children to be ‘good’ and not to upset their hosts with displays of challenging behaviour (Baker, 2007). Consequently these young children suffered silently, repressing deep anxieties in dealing with homesickness and worrying about the fate of their parents. Their childhood was over, but the effects of trauma had just begun, with some children displaying
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 11 physical and emotional signs of their despair. Problems integrating into British society manifested in behaviours such as desperate crying fits, social disengagement, bed-wetting and learning difficulties (Geyer, 2005).
In a wider sense, the overall feeling in Britain in the decades after the war was one of collective silence. The focus, according to Sharples, was “a universal message of liberation of Europe constituting the liberation of all of humanity from the yoke of National Socialism” (2012, p. 17). She suggests that there was little comprehension of the mass extermination of the Jews, but a feeling that everyone had suffered and that this suffering was not located in one racial group.
The delay in talking about the war has been raised by Novick, who believes that the post-war collective memory understood the WWII event from “a single committed perspective” (2000, p. 4). The horrors of the Holocaust could not be expressed in words and so the limitation of language was the reason for the silence (Pearce, 2013). Adorno took this belief further in stating that the silence was necessary because: "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" (1967, p.
34). Schmidt (2013) unpacks this statement by explaining that Adorno was criticising the role of poetry in a society that values such expression as a cultural commodity, rather than connecting to the essence of the message.
In the decades following the war, dialogue about the Holocaust was considered
“inappropriate, useless, [and] even harmful” by a British society in recovery
(Novick, 2000, p.5). Perhaps Winton’s experience of trying to share his story of the 669 children he saved and of it being received with little interest affirms
Novick’s argument (Winton, 2014). Even in 1989, for the 50th reunion of the
12 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Kindertransport, Barnett (1995) observes that a modest 1,000 people attended the gathering: a very small portion compared to the 10,000 children who were saved. Barnett suggests that the “idea of remembering, repossessing and reassessing the Kindertransport experience was too daunting for many who preferred not to disturb buried memories” (1995, p.191); after so many decades since the evacuation, the repression of memories still continued. There was a need for time to heal and for a stoic determination to move forward. This was the moment that society was rebuilding with a repressed fear of looking back.
The Children’s Trauma
For many children involved in the Kindertransport, the trauma started as their train was about to depart, with the Nazis forbidding the parents to farewell their children. Many trains left in the dark to exacerbate the trauma of the separation.
Furthermore, public gatherings of Jews were forbidden, as were their public displays of emotion so the Aryan population did not have to suffer contact with the Jewish community. Grenville (2012) suggests that predictably the Nazis made the family separation as unpleasant as possible.
Once in Britain, the children had many challenges to deal with. The persecution the children experienced in their homeland often continued in this new home, combined with the problems of dealing with the shock of living in a new culture.
A number of researchers have commented on the anti-Semitism that was rife in many British communities (Grenville, 2012; Kleinman & Moshenska, 2004).
Culture shock added to the multilayered trauma (Chettle, 2014). This was
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 13 experienced as a lack of control, powerlessness, feelings of loneliness and isolation – all exacerbated by communication issues and language barriers. In dealing with these problems there were no support systems, caretakers or professional understandings of the impact of such excessive emotional strain.
Some of the younger Kindertranportees were further isolated by being evacuated out of London in response to the Blitz, and consequently suffered intense feelings of abandonment. By contrast, the refugees who stayed together in hostels, where they could remain connected to part of their past identity, found it much easier to deal with their displacement (Kroger, 2004).
The More Recent Response
It took about 50 years before the collective silence that perpetuated the feelings of isolation and exacerbated traumatic symptoms finally started to dissipate (Lin,
Suyemoto & Kiang, 2009). Pearce (2013) proposes that from the 1970s there was an increased interest in telling Holocaust stories. She presents a number of motivations, such as the need to record survivor experiences, as well as more exploitative economic and political incentives. The public acknowledgement of the suffering led to a more open discussion from the Kindertransportees about what had happened. Indeed, public acknowledgement of this trauma played an important role in individual recovery. Part of this public awareness involved the creation of trauma experts to provide therapeutic help for the victims
(Andermahr & Pellicer-Ortín, 2013).
14 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
The first significant change for the Kindertransportees was initiated by the media coverage of Sir Nicholas Winton and the story on a popular British BBC television program hosted by Ester Rantzen in an episode of “That’s Life” aired in
1988 (Geyer, 2005; Hammel, 2004). It was the historian Elizabeth Maxwell who understood the significance of Winton’s scrapbook of saved children, after so many other Jewish and historical organisations had rejected it as uninteresting.
She passed the scrapbook into the hands of a BBC television producer, consequently launching Winton into the public sphere. Winton’s daughter
Barbara (2014) points out that the popular program “That’s Life” had an audience of over 18 million. Since then an excerpt of this program has been made into a short YouTube film of 2 minutes and has been watched by over 39 million people6. This was an important moment for the Kinder survivors, who were able to finally connect with the person who saved them and were able to piece together the series of events that led to their rescue. Finally, the grown-up
‘children’ had public confirmation that they had suffered a huge ordeal. Spurred on by this discovery, the Kindertransport reunions began in the following year.
Gopfert adds that another significance to this timing was that from “out from under the shadow of the Auschwitz survivors” (2004, p.17) the
Kindertransportees felt they could speak up with the passing away of a number of concentration camp survivors.
Thus began expansive enquiry into the memories of the Kindertransport experience. As Sharples notes, there was an “outpouring of memoirs and oral
6 "That's Life"- BBC Programme. (1988). Sir Nicholas Winton [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0, 3 July 2018.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 15 testimony from the refugees themselves in the last two decades” (2012, p. 16).
Indeed, it was only after 1988, for the 50th anniversary Reunion of the
Kindertransport organised by Bertha Leverton, that there was an increase in publications on the subject (Hirschberger, 2012; Baker, 2007). The first memories of the Kinder experience were published in I Came Alone (Leverton &
Lowensohn, 1990). In 2000 came the release of the Oscar award-winning documentary, Into the Arms of Strangers, directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and produced by Deborah Oppenheimer7 (Sharples, 2012). Since then a number of other movies have been produced, the latest being Nicky’s Family (2011), directed by Matej Minác8. Kindertransport writers and artists have also channelled their stifled emotions into creative works, such as the poetry of Karen
Gershon, Lotte Kramer and Gerda Mayer (Lawson, 2008). Indeed as Sharples
(2012) has observed, after the initial silence in the decades after the war, the
Kindertransport rescue went on to become one of the most extensively written about refugee movements9. A number of these efforts have been for a limited audience, primarily directed to a select audience of first- and second-generation survivors and scholars interested in refugee issues.
This plethora of memoirs and historic enquiry was the result of many of the
Kinder survivors finally confronting their locked away memories as a method of dealing with the trauma of their separation.
7 Into the Arms of Strangers won the 2000 Academy Award-winning Warner Bros. documentary feature film. 8 Brade & Holmes (2017 p. 26) discuss the historical inaccuracies of Minác’s films, All My Loved Ones (1999); The Power of Good: Nicholas Winton (2002); and Nicky’s Family (2011). 9 The Kindertransport Association website lists a number of these contributions http://www.kindertransport.org. Additionally, Hanauer (2012) provides a comprehensive list of publications – a collection that has been growing over the last few years driven by a greater motivation to tell stories as the refugees move towards an end of their life.
16 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 17
Understanding Trauma
Acknowledging that the 1940s was a different time, Hammel (2012) suggests that it was more common for children to be separated from the family unit and considered it to not be such an ordeal. Furthermore, it took a number of decades to understand the impact that the forced separation had on the victims and the psychologically damaging effects such a separation from home and family would have on children (Benz & Hammel, 2004). Barnett (1995) notes that at the time of the Kindertransport there was limited formal comprehension of the developmental needs of children and of ways to support them through subsequent life changes. Additionally, Geyer (2005) points out that psychologists and psychoanalysts of the 1940s wrongly believed that children “could not experience loss and hence would be more easily assimilated than adults” (2005, p. 343); consequentially there was little comprehension that the children had suffered at all. Overall, the children were considered to be managing well, with a belief that children could cope with separation. It was only after WWII that separation anxiety began to be understood and child attachment theories developed. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Barnett (1995) started working with groups of Kindertransportees in clinical sessions, exploring the psychic scars suffered by the children who were now adults. From the clinical trials, she uncovered symptoms of anxiety and depression.
18 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Trauma Defined
Trauma is characterised by a profound shock that initially cannot be assimilated into the consciousness. A traumatised person experiences a major shift in their sense of identity, damaging their “world-view and self-view” and resulting in loss of engagement and powerlessness (Gordon & Szymanski, 2014). Certain triggers cause the victim’s mind to return and repeat the fear or lack of control experienced from the initial shock, which can have lasting impact (Caruth, 2010).
Cohen, Deblinger and Mannarino have noted that medical practitioners have now identified traumatised children as having physiological symptoms, such as
“higher resting pulse rates and blood pressure, greater physical tension, and hypervigilance” (2006, p. 14). This results in symptoms such as fear, anxiety, depression and anger, that can persist throughout a life if left untreated. Early understandings of trauma were limited to include shock as a result of a physical event (Gordon, 2014). Subsequently Caruth, amongst others, furthered the limited physical ideas of trauma to include a psychic shock. A child and parent separation can have a profound impact on an individual’s identity and this can cause psychic trauma. This study directs its focus on a trauma of separation and displacement from a life writing perspective rather than a psychological one.
Nabizadeh (2011) explains that the word for ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek word (πληγή) for wound, and that it is understood to include both physical and psychic wounds. Hence, the title of my study, The Wounds of Separation, alludes to this etymology.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 19
Creative representation is a method of giving voice to trauma that can facilitate healing of traumatic wounds (Berger, 1997; Gordon & Szymanski, 2014). This method of recovery is of significance in this study because creative representation as a healing pursuit has resulted in a wide collection of primary source memoirs10. Consequently, these works have provided researchers with useful material in exploring issues such as child separation, some of which have been referred to in this study. For my purposes, elements of these accounts will be represented in the narrative.
Narrative is an effective way of making sense of traumatic memory (Pederson,
2014), and provides interesting research material for this study. However, in this study the focus on narrative is to reimagine a historic event and its human consequences.
Narrative and History
Narrative pervades all forms of communication in all cultures throughout history because stories function as an important way of making sense of events, relationships and, ultimately “give meaning to life” (Ryan, 2004, p.2). Narrative describes the world and beyond as a creative vision. Whether in oral, written or visual form, narrative functions to foster closer social bonds, present other ways of living and expand possible realities (Freeman, 2001a; Mallan, 2013a;
Pennebaker, 2000). The potential of merging parts of the narrative content into the formation of personal stories means that narratives play a part in the
10 For instance there are approximately 50 published memoirs referenced on the Kindertransport Association website. See: http://www.kindertransport.org
20 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration construction of identities, make sense of experience and help give life meaning
(Bruner, 2001b; Tan, 2009).
Framing a history in a narrative sequence helps to communicate the events of the past. The temporal nature of human existence plays out sequentially and in looking at a past, an understanding of histories is built in a narrative form
(Freeman, 2001b). Life can be understood to be arbitrary and unpredictable; also happenings can be seen to unfold in a temporal structure. In framing the past, a structure is imposed with an assumed belief that happenings unfold in a sequential, logical, temporal flow (Brockmeier, 2001). Such a structure makes past events more accessible and understandable, with an implicit belief that the temporal sequence follows a path to an ultimate goal. A “retrospective teleology”
(Brockmeier, 2001, p. 251) is where the narrated past merges together with the present, and the “uncertainty and arbitrariness of life” (p. 253) is subsumed into a logical structure which is framed according to culturally conventional plots.
Narrative comprehension is one of the basic skills needed for education and knowledge construction. However, to be understood, the narrative needs to present the reader with some structural and content familiarity (Bruner, 2001;
Brockmeier, 2001). Without connection to recognisable life experience, the unconventional work of art runs the risk of reaching a limited audience. This is of relevance in presenting a history to an audience that is generationally separated from the events. In presenting the narrative as a personal story, the narrative has the potential to represent a collective group that can potentially identify with and connect to the content. In this way personal narratives come to represent a
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 21 collective. Cardell and Douglas suggest such stories become “cultural and collective” (2013, p. 2) and that the personal memoir transposes into a story that represents a wider set of political and social values that a larger group have the potential to relate to (this is discussed further in Chapter 1).
The overarching aim of this study is to reframe the history of the
Kindertransport as a graphic memoir that combines historical facts with emotional, subjective content. In so doing, the story contains an understanding of the events as they unfolded and provides an interpretation of what happened, showing the consequences within the context of a family. Pearce (2013) suggests that historical novels are more about establishing a position in the present that is attained through a reflection on the past. Furthermore, as Davis points out
(2005), the mix of historical fact with subjectivity provides new ways of engaging with past events. Such a mix provides the emotional content that can be projected into the future, making the historical event part of a way of remembering as well as a way of living. If, as Barnett (2004) suggests, personal narratives are potentially retained while factual histories of events and dates tend to be forgotten, then these stories have “sticking power” (Allan, 2013, p.137) that make them a particularly good form of presenting memorial texts. It is connection with the emotional content of story of a personal experience that leaves a more profound impression on the brain (Leavy, 2015).
The graphic novel format facilitates reader identification by presenting familiar, recognisable images and showing emotional responses that could be universally experienced. On first glance, the reading of such a text seems straightforward;
22 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration however, there are many considerations for the creator of the graphic narrative in combining essentially two semiotic languages – written text and visual image – that require the reader to be interactively involved in the comprehension of the story. The following section offers a brief overview of the generic features of the graphic novel; a more detailed discussion of the subgenre ‘graphic memoir’ follows in Chapter 1.
The Graphic Novel
The term “graphic novel” (Eisner, 2006) is one term among others that are widely used - often interchangeably - such as, sequential art (Eisner, 1985) and comics (McCloud, 1993). In a graphic novel11, text and image combine to present a sequence of chained events and the implied consequences. This format is particularly well designed to visually capture the idea of movement through time and space and is therefore well suited to present a historic narrative (Chute,
2006b).
A graphic novel comprises distinctive parts as identified in Figure 1.1 taken from
The Wounds of Separation. The textual material is contained in speech or thought balloons, and some text may be inserted as a box in a panel or even freely associated with an illustration. Panels, which frame the action, are arranged in a progression or sequence denoting a movement through time and space. Panels are separated from one another with a gap commonly known as the ‘gutter’. The gutter signifies time, and it is the point of great significance in the reading and
11 Definitions of the graphic novel are discussed in many scholarly texts including: Eisner (1985); Chute (2006a); McCloud (1993); Sly (2014); Tabachnick (1997); Versaci (2007).
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 23 comprehension of the juxtaposed images: the place where narrative meaning is created. The use of the word ‘novel’ implies a sizable length, where the progression of the panels is further broken down into sections and/or chapters12. These texts successfully capture nonfictional subjects and genres such as biographies, autobiographies, documentaries, travelogues, and as with this study, history (Chute, 2008a; Tabachnick, 1997).
Unframed panel
Framed panel Dialogue narration
Gap between the panels. The gutter
Thought bubbles to verbalise the inner dialogue narration Hand drawn Panel narration lettering or contextual narration
Figure 0.1: Graphic novel page anatomy (TWoS, pp. 12-13)13.
The communication possibilities of the graphic novel make clear why this format is considered a good vehicle for storytelling and why McCloud, a comic theorist argues that , “[t]elling stories is why comics exist” (2006, p. 54). The structure of
12 Frey and Noys suggest that in Britain and the US in the last twenty years the use of the word graphic novel was “an attempt to rescue comics from their critical neglect” (2002, p. 255) and identify literature more suitable for adults in content and length. 13 The abbreviation TWoS preceding a page number identifies pages from the creative work accompanying this exegesis, The Wounds of Separation.
24 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration text and image in panels arranged in a sequence broken up by blank space
(silence) is an effective “transmission channel” to communicate stories (Ryan,
2004, p. 2). What the graphic narrative offers is something more than just
“merely illustrating the story related in its verbal/textual content, [it] serve[s] important and distinct narrative functions” (Ewert, 2004, p. 178). The graphic narrative is “cross-discursive” (Chute & DeKoven, 2006, p, 769) because the textual content can be quite distinctly separate to the visual content of the panel; alternatively, text and image can blend. Therefore in a graphic narrative the relationship between the image and words is not always obvious and there are a variety of options in structuring the content and telling the story. As a consequence, the reading of this type of text tends to be non-linear as opposed to continuous text, which is characterised by “disjunctive back-and-forth reading and looking for meaning” (Chute, 2008a, p. 452). The range of options can make the task of reading and understanding potentially challenging, and effort is required by readers to decode the meaning contained in the graphic novel.
Graphic Features to Engage Readers
For the purposes of this study a variety of communication options make the graphic narrative a good choice for reimagining a historic traumatic event. A number of key features make the genre a particularly effective literary vehicle to transmit such a story. The visual nature of the graphic novel can function to connect the reader with the historical content in different ways to text alone, thereby giving form to history and memory as visual manifestations of events and the pictorial embodiment of the characters. Additionally, in the graphic novel emotion and trauma can be visually represented, and inner abstract feelings
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 25 made visual. The terms interactive reading, non-linear narrative, and variety of narrative voices are introduced below, but a detailed explanation is offered in the discussion on representation in the next chapter.
All literature presents readers with gaps in the narrative structure that require connective understanding to link portions of text together, such as the narrative spaces between paragraphs and chapters. Kokkola (2003) explains that there is a need in literature to have gaps in order to motivate the reader to continue with the act of reading and so propel the narrative forward. In a graphic novel, the gap is a physical space between the panels, or the image that is unrelated to the accompanying text. The absence of content that prompts the reader to think or imagine is the interactive quality required in filling this absence. This reading process is an important feature of the graphic novel for storytelling. I will further explore this feature, practically and critically, adding to the theoretical discourse in subsequent chapters.
The graphic narrative has provided what Gardner calls a “database” (2006, p.
802) narrative. Instead of the traditional linear sequence of linked events, a database narrative presents a multilayered, branching and non-hierarchical structure that involves nonlinear reading. Consequently, a reading strategy that demands the reader to make connections in a nonlinear way has encouraged the graphic novel to remain more commonly in analogical form (Orbán, 2014).
Graphic narratives often have a variety of narrative voices and so can offer a wide range of storytelling approaches (Baetens & Surdiacourt, 2011). To fully
26 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration engage with the polyphonic nature of a graphic story, readers need to be able to identify the functions of these narrators in the reading of the text.
As an introduction to narrative and its graphic form I have briefly outlined major considerations for the storyteller and the reader and have defined keywords. I have also noted the features that make this medium particularly suitable for capturing a significant moment in history and its lasting consequences. To conclude this discussion, I identify the significance and potential contribution that this study makes.
Significance and Potential Contribution
This study draws together research and creative production to produce an interconnected account of how forced migration impacts children and their families long after the initial point of separation. I argue that there is a timely need for more literature for young adult readers that tackles the challenging subject of trauma caused by forced migration and family separation. In stating this, I am aware of how texts for young people inevitably incorporate views about the past, and implicitly raise ethical and moral questions important to the present. When the story takes the form of a graphic memoir, there are further considerations with respect to point of view, and the recasting of the past in a way that will reach a potential readership today, yet remain truthful to emotional and historical facts, personal experiences, and memories.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 27
Literature can contribute to the sociocultural acknowledgment of genocide which plays an important part in supporting traumatised victims (Lin, Suyemoto
& Kiang, 2009). Lin and colleagues have observed that the Holocaust in an educational context is widely understood as being a horror that must never be repeated. However, as they point out, there are more recent violations that have not yet entered educational discourse, such as the narratives about Vietnam,
Somalia, Bosnia, and other places that have endured violence creating refugees of forced migration (Syria is a recent example). For all victims of atrocities, it is important to give a voice to all suffering and to stimulate narrative discussions
(Pennebaker, 2000). I would argue that there is still more that can be developed in the form of a graphic narrative that focuses on the treatment of children, and raises public awareness of the experiences and consequences of politically motivated atrocities.
The Kindertransport has only recently entered the field of literature for young people. Watts and Shoemaker’s (2008) Good-bye Marianne: the graphic novel and
Robbins, Timmons and Oh’s (2011) Lily Renée, escape artist: From holocaust survivor to comic book pioneer, are, at the time of writing, the only graphic novels that directly address the Kindertransport. Good-bye Marianne presents a story of
Jewish persecution, focusing on the events that led to the evacuation of Jewish children in Germany. This text is targeted for an early primary school-aged readership and has a limited perspective, telling a simple cause and effect narrative suitable for a young readership. Lily Renée is directed at an older audience and focuses on the adventures of the eponymous character after the
28 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration train evacuation. It has a traditional comic approach to storytelling, using a linear chronology and a limited exploration of the graphic media.
The Wounds of Separation has an implied young adult readership but could extend to an adult audience when considering the content of the story. My narrative has a different focus to the above graphic novels as it looks at issues of separation and the repercussions that traumatic events can have on a life.
Expanding from the Holocaust and the Jewish story, the focus is more on a universal experience of persecution and separation that many children have suffered and continue to suffer. I show that traumatic histories can create wounded, vulnerable people who also have inner determination and strength.
Literature serves an important role in raising awareness, as Boatwright points out: “literature has the potential to ignite dialogue, force questions, and foster community building in an atmosphere of inquiry and reflection” (2010, p. 469).
In critically exploring historic and current implications of forced migration, I hope that the reader is stimulated to ask questions and think about the impact of such an experience on the lives of children and their families.
This study contributes to understandings of the graphic memoir’s potential to narrate history and story through its particular combination of text and image, and of the processes involved in creating such a piece of work for a predominantly young adult audience. A number of graphic novels/graphic memoirs tell historical stories and provide personal accounts of traumatic events. The trauma-themed graphic memoirs that are key case studies for this thesis are: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood (2007), about
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 29 growing up during the Iranian Islamic Revolution; David Small’s Stitches: A
Memoir (2009), about his childhood in a loveless family, dealing with sickness and eventually cancer in his teenage years; and Una’s Becoming Unbecoming
(2015), about a young girl’s isolation after the experience of male sexual violence at the time of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper. The Wounds of Separation therefore contributes to this emerging field of graphic memoir writing for young adult readers, and extends previous graphic novels’ discussion of the
Kindertransport. The dual nature of this thesis offers other scholars and creative artists an exegetical account of relevant theoretical, conceptual and historical material that informs the process of a literary creation.
In summary, this study is significant and fills a gap in knowledge, in that it:
1. contributes to the existing research material from extant primary and
secondary sources relating to a historic account of forced migration of
children;
2. reimagines this event into a story suitable for a young adult audience;
3. investigates the way a multimodal work might represent the migrant
experience and adds to our understanding of the graphic memoir.
In producing my thesis, the following questions have fuelled both the creative and the exegetical process, creating a dialogue between creative writing and theoretical exploration.
30 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
The Research Questions
The overarching question that prompted this study was: How can a historic trauma be represented through a graphic memoir? In seeking to answer this question, I explored methods that captured both historical accuracy and memory, while considering how the creative process can be deployed in ways that introduce a new generation of readers to an almost forgotten part of
Western childhood trauma.
This study is guided by two main research questions:
1. In what ways do memory, history and identity intertwine and shape the
ways in which trauma is experienced and remembered?
2. In writing for a YA audience, how can the multimodal features of the
graphic memoir be stylistically constructed to assist readers to connect to
unfamiliar experience in order to engender empathy?
Structure of the Graphic Memoir
The graphic memoir that accompanies this exegesis begins with a Prologue that identifies the narrative theme and foreshadows the proceeding chapters. The two central characters, my mother and my younger self, are introduced, as well as the idea that my mother suffered from recurring challenges caused by her traumatic past. It functions to set the theme and identify the narrative questions of how and why my mother was traumatised for much of her life by ghosts from
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 31 the past. From here the narrative is broken into nine chapters, with the first five chapters describing the family life that Ella (my mother) is forced to leave and the event that caused the trauma. The next two chapters tell the subsequent childhood struggles of settling into a new culture and country. After the war, Ella comes to terms with the permanence of her refugee situation until, finally, the last two chapters show how Ella represses her pain and sadness but is plagued with chronic symptoms of anxiety. The main thrust of the narrative is chronological, but there are flashbacks, flashforwards and parallel timelines used to tell the story. The image of Ella’s departing train connects and re-connects to the main theme of separation in the story and functions as a resolution to her life. The circular narrative structure acts as a powerful metaphor for the continuing challenge of forced migration. The final section or epilogue, from the perspective of the present, addresses the issue of family memory and intergenerational trauma.
Structure of the Exegetical Component
This Introduction has provided an overview of the background, key arguments and concepts that have informed this study’s approach to the topic of the
Kindertransport and the themes of separation and trauma. It has also expounded on the way in which narrative infuses our accounts of history. The
Kindertransport, an event connected to WWII, was a moment in history which, like other such traumatic events, has had lasting impacts when described as personal experience. In deciding to reimagine this historic event, I have argued that the graphic memoir has the potential to convey this narrative in a way that
32 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration is compelling and engaging for a YA readership. The graphic novel format can offer some interesting representational and multimodal options for a narrative about subjective experience. Two research questions guide the two components of this study.
Chapter 1: Representation and Multimodality in the Graphic Novel identifies and analyses a body of research that critically engages with the growing graphic narrative literature and with the complex notion of representation in various forms. In the conceptual framework and theoretical underpinning of the study the graphic memoir sits within the representational issues to do with history and life writing. Historic life writing is about a type of truth that is temporarily separated from the real event and is a subjective collection of memories. Life writing further comprises three representational needs of the story – change, history and trauma; needs which the graphic memoir is particularly effective in communicating.
Chapter 2: Creative and Analytical Processes explains the dual methodology of practice-led and life writing, which are brought together in a cyclical process of reflexivity. This requires a system to record and articulate the creative and critical approaches. The methods involve collection of historical evidence from interviews with family members, family records and analysis of key graphic novels. The journal and story boarding approach form the basis of the creative component. Consideration is given to the limitations, benefits and ethics of the chosen research process.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 33
Chapter 3: Emotional Journeys in Graphic Storytelling discusses three key graphic novels/memoirs in terms of the relevance of their conceptual and creative approaches in representing trauma through memory, identity and history. The analysis identifies particular multimodal features for each of the graphic narratives that address the two research questions and their influence on the artistic development of my own graphic memoir. A discussion of my own creative work is included with reflexive observations which highlight the conceptual perspectives that played a part in the direction of the creative process.
In the Conclusion, I draw out the contextual relevance of the study in the current global socio/political climate, as a way of developing understandings about increasingly common struggles. Particular features of the graphic novel format are identified as helping the reader to connect to the story and to build up a sense of other people’s experiences. I consider how the study’s creative and conceptual contributions open up different directions for future research and other applications in a variety contexts.
34 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
35 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
CHAPTER 1
Representation and Multimodality in the Graphic Memoir
This chapter investigates the complexities of representation and the challenges they posed for creating The Wounds of Separation as a graphic memoir. The following discussion critiques and synthesises current theoretical understandings of interpreting and translating personal historical content into a graphic story, identifying the features of multimodality. It also addresses my research questions: In what ways do memory, history and identity intertwine and shape the way in which trauma is experienced and remembered? In writing for a YA audience, how can the multimodal features of the graphic memoir be stylistically constructed to assist readers to connect to unfamiliar experience in order to engender empathy?
As discussed in the Introduction, the graphic novel medium is being increasingly accepted as a legitimate literary form to narrate history, often in the form of life narratives. Consequently, there is a growing body of research literature that addresses a number of relevant conceptual issues to do with representing a life in a historic context using a combination of text and image to produce a
36 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration multimodal text.14 While the communication of history is discussed by many academics from different disciplines, the dual focus in this chapter is on how history (both historical fact and subjective experience) is represented in graphic memoirs and in children’s literature more generally, and how multimodal features work to create meaning. The following discussion identifies the constraints and limitations of personal historical representation, but also highlights the way the graphic medium provides a discursive method of engagement with the past and in so doing animates historical content.
A representation is a translation of something real described into another form.
Cobley (2014) discusses representation in relation to narrative to show how meaning is constructed into a narrative representation. A process of construction is required because the representation attempts to capture the impression of the real, or, as Genette notes, “give more or less the illusion of mimesis” (1983, p.
164). In describing an event, Genette points out that it is a process of turning something “non verbal” into words, and that this happens through the use of language - whereby the event is signified into a representation. Such a transformation from one thing to another requires an interpretation of the original meaning, selection of what to describe and translation into the signs of the representation. Historic accounts are always a representation of an event that happened in the past; therefore embedded in a discussion of history are the contentious and complex issues concerning the interpretation of different forms
14 In the Australian Curriculum glossary multimodal texts are defined as, “A combination of two or more communication modes (for example, print, image and spoken text, as in film or computer presentations)”. Retrieved from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10- curriculum/english/Glossary/?term=multimodal+text, 26 October, 2018.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 37 of evidence that address ideas of truth and accuracy. Additionally, the translation of historical data involves the selection of the facts in the constructing of a past, and understanding of the part memory contributes to that process.
Individual interpretation of a historic event is inevitably shaped by the contextual influences of time, culture and personal experience, resulting in different narratives of past events. All these issues are interwoven in life writing, but the most significant aspect in relation to concepts of representation is that of subjectivity, especially when considering autobiographical writing. Here the historical text is infused with personal experience and emotional content, which dominate over the objective facts. Creating a historic narrative as a graphic memoir raises complex representational considerations that are relevant for a story about forced migration; these considerations include: ways of representing temporal, spatial and identity change; the conventions of capturing emotional content; and acceptable methods of expressing traumatic histories that are considered appropriate for the young adult reader. In identifying these representational strategies, understanding of what has been termed “comic theory” (McCloud, 1993) is outlined. This chapter addresses relevant concepts, identifies key literature that has informed these conceptual ideas, and locates the gaps that this study fills.
38 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Representing Historic Truths
Capturing an accurate truth is a challenge in representing an authentic past.
Truths are compromised by the contextual factors that influence the interpretation of evidence and the resulting translation into representation.
However, some researchers consider that the obstacles to truth and accuracy need to be overcome in order to bring the past into the present, as this past may ultimately influence possible futures (Alonso, 1988; Hirsch, 2008; Kokkola,
2003). Other researchers have questioned how historical representation is understood, and what sort of past is possible to describe when studying events from a position in the present (Adams, 2008; El Refaie, 2012b; Van Luyn, 2013).
Others again have looked for an evidence of truth in representations, acknowledging the ethical responsibility of describing an ‘authentic’ past
(Ahmed, 2012; Allan, 2013; Witek, 1989). Factual accuracy is especially important when considering the significance of historical accounts influencing possible futures. For instance, Kokkola (2003) emphasises the need for a truthful representation of catastrophic events such as the Holocaust, in response to an active movement that denies the accuracy or even existence of this devastating history.
According to Alonso (1988), it is from the study of science in Western societies that a search for objective truth and knowledge has become a primary concern of all investigation. However, from a postmodernist position ideas of ‘truth’ are considered to be unattainable (El Refaie, 2014a). Indeed, interpretation of a historic event is understood as always being a mediated process, involving an
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 39 understanding of a past that is always filtered, constructed and subjective.
Cobley explains that the accepted practice of writing history from archived records produces a re-presentation of the actual event, and becomes further removed from the “objective knowable truth” (2014, p.29) of what actually happened. The temporal separation from ‘what was’ involves collecting and interpreting evidence, reimagining this material in a different context, and a translation of this into a form that is a representation. This process raises a key conceptual question: What sort of truth is captured if historical truth and factual accuracy are impossible to represent?
Individual interpretations of historical evidence create different visions of the past and inevitably produce conflicting ideas about history: “the past is neither transparent nor given: ‘what really happened’ is a focus of conflicting interpretations” (Alonso, 1988, p. 50). Researchers highlight the fact that a temporal separation from the event involves an investigation from a fundamentally different viewpoint, that results in potential distortions of accurate truths and produces different accounts of history (Ahmed, 2012;
Alonso, 1988; El Rafaie, 2012b; Pearce, 2013). Kokkola (2003) emphasises the subjectivity of the historical account, pointing out that the historian takes control and chooses how and which facts are to be presented.
The interplay of the three contextual factors of time, culture and individual experience influences the way evidence is interpreted, resulting in an understanding that has particular biases in this interaction. The temporal moment that the material evidence is studied is affected by the particular
40 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration interest and understandings of that era. The archival documents, journals, letters, images such as photographs and illustrations, and other research writings will carry different meanings in particular cultural contexts. Finally, the individual interaction with the available evidence is affected by personal experience and background; and that inevitably influences the focus of a particular study and will influence the final attribution of meaning. All forms of representation are affected by these contextual factors (see Figure 1.1).
The conceptual framework presented below identifies the location of the material product, the graphic novel, in order to illustrate how the creative work draws on a wide range of representational issues. As discussed previously, representational meanings are influenced by the contextual factors of the temporal moment, cultural context and personal experience (indicated by the three segments of the circular diagram in Figure 1.1). Since The Wounds of
Separation is a narrative about an individual life that became entangled in a historic event, the representation of history and life writing is relevant. The specific narrative requirements for this story, identified above as change, trauma and history, all interplay in representational approaches. The framework forms the structure of the following discussion.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 41
Figure 1.1: The conceptual framework of representational issues.
The process of translating an interpretation into a representation is another
point of departure from potential truth. Since a past is never represented in real
time, an account of a history involves the selection of content from the evidence
and the construction of that content into a summarised and often reorganised
framework. Additionally, according to Alonso (1988), it is in the framing devices
one chooses to carry a history that another type of truth is conveyed. These
framing devices include a multitude of forms, such as the difference between
42 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration novels conventionally describing fictitious histories as opposed to historiographies presenting the facts.
The publication of Maus: A survivor's tale in two volumes by Art Spiegelman
(1986 and 1991) challenged accepted conventions of framing devices. This graphic memoir depicts the traumatic events of the Nazi era in an epic story of
Spiegelman’s father’s memories of the Holocaust. The narrative has been carefully constructed to attempt to convince the reader that the story is describing truthful memories, underplaying the fictionalisation of the representation. For Merino (2010), this truthfulness is represented in the scene where a tape recorder is used as a device to record his father’s speech
(Spiegelman, 1991, Bk. 2, p. 73); the reader is shown that the story is presenting information that came from his father’s recorded words. Consequently, the reader is given the illusion of witnessing accurate and truthful memories of his father. This exploration of truthful realism is embedded in stylised illustrations with the characters depicted as rats and cats. The reader is presented with an interesting contrast. The idea of a truthful account of his father’s memory is established and this is set against the unrealistic (fantasy) representation of the characters presenting this truth. Versaci explains that commonly comics’ presentation is “impressionism” (2007, p. 130) and not an attempt to capture realism. The minimal drawing directs the reader to focus on the meaning contained in the image and on its significance in the sequence that is needed to interpret the story. Notably in 1991, Speigelman managed to convince The New
York Times to move this bestseller graphic memoir from the fiction to the non- fiction list (Chute, 2008a); thus establishing the graphic novel as a serious
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 43 literary framing device for the representation of non-fictional historical narratives.
Memories have similar frailties in exactitude as interpretations from material evidence. Memories describe the individual subjective viewpoint of an experience connected to an emotional response. These descriptions can help fill in the gaps from the material evidence (Elmwood, 2005). However, information gathered from personal interviews and eyewitness accounts can produce other inaccuracies in historical records. In the same way that an interpretation is influenced by the present it inhabits, a memory is also a product of the moment it is accessed. El Refaie (2012b) writes about the unfixed nature of memory, in that there is constant reinterpretation of a memory according to the moment in which it is recalled. Consequently, memory is fluid in its interaction with different presents, and this results in a person being unable to repeat the aural memory in a constant form. Cobley (2014) argues that the written form of recording history has dominance because of its ability to lock memory into a stable form that can be referenced repeatedly. In her collection of oral history interviews, Van Luyn (2012) is alert to the fictional nature of memory. As she points out, the collection of such research material is often a fabrication, rife with inaccurate truths: “the characters that tell their first person accounts forget; reinvent; confess; hide; imagine; and borrow other people’s stories” (p. 37).
Memories communicated through generations are like the childhood game of
‘Chinese whispers’, which results in historical accounts moving further away from the original truth.
44 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
The theory of ‘postmemory’ developed by Hirsch15 (1992) adds another dimension in gathering evidence. Postmemories are also open to the effects of the fragile nature of memory, and they include indirect transgenerational memories, that can be described as hyphenated memories based on a generational separation from the actual historical experience. Second-generation memories are constructed from old photographs and the sharing of memories from a previous generation. As a genuine experience of indirect remembering these postmemories become part of a collection of second-generation memories.
Though postmemories hold a tenuous link to the actual historical experience, the generational connection to a history creates memories that are considered to be another source of evidence. For example, Spiegelman’s Maus represents his postmemory understanding of his father’s experience of the Holocaust. The representation of his father’s challenging obsessive-compulsive behaviour shows the signs of a wounded personality; and this is Spiegelman’s postmemory experience of his father’s trauma. Elmwood (2005), McGlothlin (2006) and
Morris (2012) point out that the second-generation experience of trauma is different but is a valid traumatic manifestation that becomes part of the remembering. Thus the postmemory transforms the individual memory into the collective, becoming “intersubjective transgenerational” (Nabizadehis, 2011, p.
26); and so can be a significant contribution to a historical representation.
Developing on from the concept of postmemory, Fisher’s interest has been to explore how the second generation’s memory work represents a “usable pass”
15 In Hirsch’s first writing about “post-memory” (1992) she hyphenated the term. In all her other writings she uses the unhyphenated form – postmemory, which I use throughout this exegesis.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 45
(2015, p. 3). Rather than “focus[ing] primarily on the transgenerational transmission of the Holocaust past” (p. 3), Fischer argues that these literary representations identify the genocide trauma as family memory rather than inherited experience. In trying to make sense of the past, second-generation literature connects to the family that came before the Holocaust and delves into what happened after. Second generation literary memory exploration is part of a healing process in moving forward, “emphasiz[ing] a longing for continuity as the basis for genealogical positioning and sensemaking” (p. 3). This aspect of second-generation healing is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. What is important to consider is that in acknowledging the fragmentary nature of these memories, Fischer makes no attempt to separate the fictional in life writing, but asserts that memory work is the basis of second-generation literature.
The interpretation and translation of historical evidence demonstrates that objective, truthful representation is conceptually impossible to achieve.
Consequently, historic representation produces ideas of truth that are not necessarily correct, and when the factual content of a history is questioned the history can lose power. Alonso (1988) argues that to be authoritative and credible, histories need to represent illusions of truth, and that in so doing such texts possess a political and communal power in the representation of history.
The individual voice embodies the socially dominant, agreed position; one that speaks of the collective group with a collective memory defining group identities.
This is illustrated in the way Sir Nicholas Winton has been bestowed with excessive honours for the Kindertransport operation, even though there were many other people, mostly women, involved in saving the children. Brade and
46 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Holmes argue that Winton is “a safe choice for a simplistic hagiography” (2017, p. 29). Typically, Winton, the white, middle-class male, became the heroic figurehead that the Kinder identify as their long-lived saviour, and that the
British and Czech governments have used to deflect attention away from their
“morally ambiguous” (p. 28) actions during the war.
With a multitude of possible voices there is a contemporary interest in historical information represented through personal stories, and the representation of individual histories become the symbol of historical moments. Life writing representation acts as a doorway into history.
Life Writing Representation
Historical facts provide the lessons from the past; but it is representations of personal stories that facilitate the remembering. As previously mentioned, researchers have identified that personal narratives help us access history and retain stories, unlike factual histories of events and dates which we tend to forget (Barnett, 2004; Freeman, 2001). Elmwood (2005) points out that basing a narrative on an individual role in a large-scale historic event functions as an entry into the complexity of a situation, and helps the reader to develop understandings. Additionally, the combination of fact and memory provides the emotional content that draws the reader in and assists in the retention of the history. In reading a text, the representation of an individual life can elicit emotions of a shared identity or a common experience, with the narrative having the potential of developing empathetic understandings. El Refaie refers to the
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 47 process of increasing the reader’s involvement with the text by creating
“affiliation” (2012b, p.187) through identification and empathy with the characters. The idea of empathy has created some questions about whether it is possible to really feel and understand characters’ experience, particularly when interpreted from different temporal locations and cultural backgrounds. A social constructionist view is one that considers that everyone understands things differently depending on their contextual situation (El Refaie, 2012b; Mallan,
2013a). Nevertheless, researchers acknowledge that life writing has become a very popular way of learning about the past (Brockmeier & Carbaugh, 2001;
Chaney, 2011a; Kokkola, 2003; Smith & Watson, 2001).
Life writing includes labels such as life narrative, biography and autobiography, and these texts are written in retrospect to the events of the life. Kokkola (2003) explains that life writing developed from the 1970s in the writing of personal histories for the social science disciplines of sociology, psychology and anthropology. From social science methodologies, a literary narrative style developed that described an individual experience and response to the events of history. Indeed Brockmeier and Carbaugh have pointed out how the social sciences use narrative as an "organising concept” (2001, p. 11) in developing an understanding of human existence. Biographies, on the other hand, detail lives separate to the writer, which means that the text can be written after the subject dies, based on archival material or from other people’s memories or post- memories. Smith and Watson (2001) explain that, like a historical narrative, a biography tends to be more scrupulous in objective fact than an autobiography.
An autobiography details the life of the writer and so the researcher is also the
48 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration subject in the creation of a text; as a result the text is inevitably considered to be a more subjective representation of a history.
Faction and Fiction
There is a particular type of truth that Smith and Watson describe in relation to autobiographical writing that is not so focused on ‘objective’ truths. Unlike historic or biographical texts, readers understand that autobiographies will deliver different truths, referred to as “subjective truth” (2001, p. 6), where accuracy of detail is less important than the delivery of a good story. There is a blending of fact and fiction and little need to separate the two: “As an intersubjective mode it lies outside a logical or juridical model of truth and falsehood” (Smith & Watson, 2001, p. 15). The process of construction of the narrative involves selection of research material, and factual gaps are linked together with fictional content based on possible experience. Therefore, in shaping historical representations around an individual life, historical accuracy becomes more difficult to identify and the boundaries between fact and fiction blur (Freeman & Brockmeier, 2001). The contextual influences of time and culture still affect the accuracy of the interpretation and translation of the evidence, but personal experience dominates in the representation of historic facts. Goodson (2012) argues that the construction of a life narrative becomes closer to literary fiction.
The subjectivity in autobiographical and biographical representation is considered to lie in the entanglement and intertwining of the constituent
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 49 elements that make up the text. Smith and Watson (2001) identify these in five parts: memory, collected from content that is fragile in accuracy, fragmented and often reinterpreted; experience, that gives meaning to the memory as an interpretation; identity, where the writer’s voice speaks to the reader as the narrator; embodiment, in that the writer of the text is both a narrator and an embodied character; and agency, being the action of the subject through the narrative or construction of the journey through the life presented in the autobiography. There are literary cues to flag the historical facts for the reader and otherwise these are identified by the reader and embedded in various parts of the autobiographical text (Chaney, 2011). These constituent elements can be identified in a historical narrative embedded in an individual life story. How these are treated in a graphic novel will be addressed later in the chapter.
The creative narrative designed for this research project is a combination of the two forms of life writing described above, biography and autobiography. The descriptive term “relational identities” used by Friedman (1988, p. 35) acknowledges the shared nature of an individual, unique life experience that is related and reflected against another. In forming the biography of my mother I use relevant autobiographical details of myself -as the daughter - to give shape to the story; thus showing the relational nature of the self with others. The life narrative, as part of this study, combines shared memories of a family combined with other material evidence relevant to the historical moment.
50 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Relational Autobiography and the Graphic Memoir
The Wounds of Separation is a relational autobiography because the main focalising role is shared between two or more central characters. The characters of my mother and me share an important related presence in the story that is carefully balanced for particular functions according to the moment in the narrative. Maus: A survivor's tale in two volumes by Spiegelman (1986 and 1991), as previously mentioned, has been widely discussed in scholarly writings, and many have identified the importance of the relationship between Art and his father16. It was Eakin (1999) who was the first to describe this celebrated graphic memoir as a relational autobiography. The story is about his father’s experience during the Holocaust and Art’s attempt to try and understand what happened. As Eakin says:
[It] is telling us something fundamental about the relational structure of the
autobiographer's identity, about its roots and involvement in another's life
and story. Thus, the focus of the autobiography is on someone else's story, and
the primary activity of the autobiographer is the telling of this story. (p. 60)
Other second-generation literature follows this form, using memory work: “[t]he authors engage with two stories at once, their parents’ as well as their own, in multilayered family narratives” (Fischer, 2015, p. 10). In The Wounds of
Separation my role, like Art’s in Maus, is to tell someone else’s story in order to find my own.
16 For instance Joseph Witek pointed out that, “[t]hough Maus was nominated for the Book Critics Circle Award in biography, it is perhaps more precisely an autobiography. In order to live his own life, Art must understand his relations to his parents” (1989, p. 98).
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 51
As a form of life writing, relational autobiography is conceptualised and characterised by women writing about women, voices that explored personal connections with others as part of shared communities. It is in their reflection in those relationships that the autobiographer comes to know herself, “very much with others in an interdependent existence that asserts its rhythms everywhere in the community" (Friedman, 1988, p. 56). The bond between mother and daughter is one of the most significant in that search for self, even against the
“matrophobia” that Hirsch argues exists “not only in culture at large but also within feminism” (1989, p. 26). The inability of daughters to listen to and to tell their mothers’ stories is one of the “difficulties feminists have in sympathizing with these perspectives” (p. 27). Poignantly, like the women in Hirsch’s
“mothers’ group”,17 I came to explore this relationship after the death of my mother.
The graphic novel is a relational medium (Rüggemeier, 2016) in representation that requires a process of comparison to fill in the gaps between and within the panels, as well as in the whole narrative content: “a potential relationship not just with other images on a double page, but with every other panel in the book”
(El Refaie, 2014b, p. 160). The presentation of different subjectivities similarly requires the reader to fill in the gaps in the “third space: between self and other, between biography and autobiography” (Rüggemeier, 2016, p. 256), observing how these relate and how they differ. In this sense, the relational autobiography is also referred to as auto/biography, in the bringing together of shared
17 “[I]nformally called a ‘mothers’ group’, which met periodically for two years in Cambridge”. (Hirsch, 1989, p. 25)
52 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration subjectivities into the one story, where the typographic sign ‘/’ denotes the
“limbo between” (p. 256). The main focus in The Wounds of Separation is my mother’s life; and my presence is to understand her past to take into my future.
In acknowledging that I use my mother’s story to discover my own, my shifting presence in the story - and my subjective involvement in creating the story - I too use the term relational autobiography.
The term graphic memoir locates The Wounds of Separation into the life writing category of visual literature18. The graphic feature or the image adds other possibilities in a narrative description of a life. In the autographic or graphic memoir (Whitlock, 2006; Kukkonen, 2013) there are greater options for communicating the subjectivity of a character, including the visual depiction of perspective, sequencing and facial expressions, and the textual combinations of dialogue and thought (Mikkonen, 2013).
The capacity to explore subjective connections has made the graphic memoir a popular form for telling relational autobiographies. In Bechdel’s graphic memoir
Are you my mother? (2013) Rüggemeier identifies three levels of relationality, in content, representation and production. By physically recreating all aspects that make up the narrative, Bechdel literally re-enacts all character perspectives in the production of the story. For instance, she traces her father’s handwritten letters, and models all characters in the photographs she used as reference for drawing the graphic memoir panels; by doing so, Bechdel steps into the
18 In the exegesis the terms graphic novel, graphic narrative, visual narrative are used interchangeably when describing features that are relevant to all forms of graphic literature.
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 53 subjectivity of related characters. Like Bechdel, I too traced excerpts from letters and some family photographs; but I also undertook a more conventional research process for stepping into my mother’s (and my grandparents’) subjectivities to gain an understanding of our relational autobiographies.
Personal memories from interviews with my family members, family letters and photographs, as well as information obtained from historical research were just as insightful for me as Bechdel’s elaborate “attempts to re-embody other people’s experiences” (p. 263). The research material provided me with understandings of each character’s subjectivity, which gave me a sense of how to incorporate the information in building the narrative.
Overall the graphic memoir as a form of the graphic novel has particular representational options that are unique to the medium and suitable for the telling of relational autobiographies. These features are discussed in the next section.
Graphic novel representation
As noted previously, the graphic novel has become a popular medium for presenting a history that is based around a life story, and a common motivational theme is the commemorative function of the documented evidence. Cardell and
Douglas (2013) note that the life writing of childhoods has been a recent focus, and Lightman (2014) identifies how childhood and trauma are popular twin themes in graphic novels. There is also a contemporary fascination with the individual voice entangled within challenging political situations. Scholars who
54 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration have discussed Satrapi’s Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood (2007), for example, have identified this approach, including Adams (2008), Brock (2012), Chute
(2008b), Gilmore (2011) and Muller (2013). Rather than presenting an authoritative factual history, a modern strategy is to focus on a natural, individual expression of a lived experience (Chute, 2010a). Though graphic representation for historic traumatic narratives is subjective in delivery, using the personal individual voice, clear authenticity maintains the historical credibility. This point is further explained below.
Graphic novels exhibit a combination of three conceptual representational strategies that is unique to this medium: interactivity; non-linearity; and a variety of narrative voices. Such possibilities make the graphic novel particularly suitable for communicating a narrative to readers. Other representational strategies are used to heighten narrative drama; to foster reader involvement; and to communicate emotion through metaphor. In the final part of this chapter, these representational strategies will be related to the particular communication needs of a historic graphic memoir about a forced migration traumatic event and its repercussions on a life. For clarity, these are discussed in relation to three identified representational categories pertinent to the narrative subject matter, though each strategy is actually relevant to all categories. The first category described is the representation of change. The second is representation of history and memory; and, finally, the representation of emotion/trauma (see
‘The conceptual framework of representational issues’ Figure 1.1).
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 55
In graphic novel representation, notions of a ‘text’ widen to include the relationship of text and image as one part of a chain in a larger framework. In a graphic novel, time and space are contained in a sequence of panels separated by a gap. In crossing that gap, the reader crosses into a different moment in time.
The text and image units are narratives in themselves, though sometimes the image and text are not always related and the idea of a unit working together is difficult to read. It is the relationship of the text and image together, and then as a unit in combination with the unit before and after, that locates its meaning in the context of the sequence. Additionally, it is where that text/image unit is located in the whole narrative that it finds its meaning in the context of the graphic novel (Chute, 2010a; El Refaie, 2014b; McCloud, 1993).
The constraints, limitations and conventions associated with the graphic novel can collectively be defined as forming its distinctive language; one that encompasses two semiotic systems. Baetens and Surdiacourt (2011) describe the necessity of being able to identify the symbolic and representational forms of the image and the abstract signs of text in reading a graphic novel. An understanding of a number of rules is required to comprehend the ideas presented in the text, and this seems to be widely understood by a literate readership. It is common to be exposed to the comic form at an early age, and this is possibly why there is a familiarity with the language of graphic novels for older readers. Comics present the rules, usually in a simplified form, without the more complicated narrative structure of the graphic novel. There are a number of in-depth discussions in the literature that identify the language of the graphic novel and its unique communication capacities. The most widely cited graphic
56 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration novel theorist is McCloud (1993, 2000, 2006), who has contributed insightful conceptualised observations about the medium, all presented imaginatively in the same graphic format he describes. For a scholarly approach, Groensteen
(2007) delivers a highly detailed analysis of the anatomy of the image and text form, accompanied by many illustrative examples. Cohn (2016) offers another scholarly approach that brings together theoretical, cognitive and cultural understandings of graphic novels. Kukkonen (2013), on the other hand, describes her text as an introduction to the study of graphic novels, and offers a practical guide without the critical analysis of a scholarly text. Researchers such as Monnin (2010) and Sly (2014) present clear structural descriptions of the graphic form as it can be used in the classroom.
In the same way that life writing is a subjective representation of history, a graphic novel embodies subjectivity in multiple ways. Versaci considers the graphic novel to be a “metaphoric interpretation of reality” (2007, p.74); as an alternative way, therefore, of describing reality, subjectivity is acknowledged in the construction of the message. The five constituent elements of autobiographical subjectivity identified by Smith and Watson (2001) can be related to graphic memoir representation. The graphic memoir presents a narrative that is a meandering collection of memories presented in the form of textual narration or situated in a panelled scene of direct action. Subjective experience is thus described in textual narration or played out in the action of the scene, written in the first person with speaking narrators often visible on the page. In this way the identity of the narrator is made apparent as a textual presence or as one that is embodied in the visual image of a character or actor in
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 57 a scene. The agency of the narrative becomes apparent as the subject moves through the action of the scenes, often in a highly fragmented progression.
Ahmed (2012) talks about the disjointed nature of a graphic narrative where the facts are broken up and reordered into a subjective significance. Additionally, the narrative often presents different points of view, and this can make the ‘truth’ difficult to identify. Subjectivity is also evident in the composition of the individual panels. Just as a photographic image is a window into the world, the panels fit a small portion of the world, displaying a limited perspective. What can be seen in the frame and how the elements are organised in the panel lies within the subjective control of the creator (McCloud, 2006).
The subjectivity displayed in graphic novels is so overt that it can be understood as being an authentic presentation of history. However, as all texts are constructed, authenticity can be a problematic term; even so, the handmade nature of the cartoon image and handwritten text foregrounds the creation and labels the representation as being an authentic individual utterance. Adams
(2008) points out that there are medium-specific strategies for labelling the subjective construction of personal responses to events which signpost the authenticity. One approach is to include the reflexive voice of the author in order to display the narrative construction. By foregrounding the ‘staging’ of the narrative by the creator, the reader is presented a truth in the fabrication of the text (Ahmed, 2012; Chute, 2008a; El Refaie, 2012c). Hatfield identifies authenticity as being embedded in the mixing of the temporally separate narrators: “Thus bizarre, ‘unrealistic’, and expressionistic images may coexist with a scrupulously factual account of one’s life. The resultant ironies confer an
58 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration authenticity that is emotional rather than literal: that of the present talking to the past” (2005, p. 128). Lightman contends that the “naive drawing style” (2014, p.
203) belies the sophisticated literary construction that forms the narrative.
Chute (2010a) makes a further point by noting how the intimacy of the drawing highlights the individual private message, and suggests that an advanced technical skill in aesthetic presentation is not necessary to communicating a story. Both comments point towards an appearance of simplicity that seems to encapsulate an authenticity in message representation.
The graphic novel can speak to a collective readership by using a simplification of representation. There is a disparity between the specific, individual, identified characters that manage to communicate universality in their simplification.
McCloud describes this as “amplification through simplification” (1993, p. 30); and so realistic representations are specific (e.g., a drawing of a particular girl) as opposed to simple images that are easier to relate to (e.g., a drawing of a universal girl representing all girls). Simplification enables others to identify with the image and so “when you enter the world of the cartoon you see yourself" (McCloud, 1993, p. 36). In relation to this process, El Refaie’s point, made earlier, is that the reader feels a narrative “affiliation” (2012b, p. 187), in that emotional connection can lead on to possibilities of involvement, identification and empathy. The images are simplified and rich, with a cartoon aesthetic, in a medium conventionally associated with lowbrow literature
(Chute, 2008a; McCloud, 1993). The contemporary graphic novel form is one of interesting contradictions: often unrealistic figurative images are mixed with a
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 59 constrained amount of text, but this medium still delivers narratives dealing with serious and sophisticated subject matter in an accessible form.
In the following section, discussion is organised according to the relevance of representational issues in relation to my own creative work. In a narrative about forced migration, it is important to capture clearly a movement through time and space. The first category describes the features of interactivity and non-linear reading as methods in representing change. Additionally, another form of change is identity, and how this can be represented through a changing pictorial embodiment. The shifting use of language, for example of grammatical tense in the text, and variety of narrative voices provide strategies in the representation of memory. Finally, as a medium to communicate personal, challenging stories, the discussion concludes with a focus on issues to do with the representation of emotion/trauma. It is important to acknowledge that these categories overlap and that all the strategies of representation are used throughout the text.
Structuring conceptual ideas in this way provides a method for clarifying the points.
Representation of Change: Time and Space
The space of separation between the panels that the reader needs to bridge in order to create meaning is the point at which time and space can be clearly traversed. This representational approach involves an interactivity that is needed to understand the graphic novel. It involves crossing the gaps between the panels and blending the “hybrid” (Chute, 2008a, p. 452) verbal and visual
60 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration tracks of the narrative that are sometimes unrelated in a “cross-discursive” interaction (Chute & DeKoven, 2006, p. 769).
Interactivity
One image, but particularly two or more images juxtaposed, always produces a reflex interpretation that is the result of “a viewer’s intuitive desire to invent narratives, themes and the passage of time” (Tablo, 2013, p. 40). The process of reading images involves a collaborative partnership between the reader and the author in the construction of the story (Sly, 2014; Tucker, 2011). This has been described as a process of ‘co-authorship’ by some researchers in the field (Low,
2012; Tabulo, 2013). McCloud suggests that the place for this interaction is located in the space between the panels, commonly known as the gutter, a point of “closure in comics … a silent, secret contract between the creator and audience” (1993, p. 69). Monnin (2010) refers to the gutter as the point of critical interpretation, and describes this as a process of critically contrasting the panels that came before and the panel that follows. This is where meaning is located and constructed by the reader. However, Tabulo (2013) warns that this interpretation is not always what the creator intended, as is the case for the reading of all texts. In all forms of literature missing information encourages the reader to become involved in the text and, in so doing, the story is propelled forward. However, a gap that is too large will confuse the reader and the thread of the story will be lost (El Refaie, 2014a; McCloud, 1993). On some occasions, the meaning is obscured because ambiguity is appropriate to the narrative development (Stoddard Holmes, 2014).
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The process of comparison is of key significance in reading graphic novels. There are two critical places of comparison where the reader produces meaning. The first is the point between the panels. The second is within the panels, comparing the text with the image. Chute highlights the point that the visual track and the textual track of this union are often “nonsynchronous(ly)” (2008a, p. 452): they are related, in being presented together, but the text presents different information to the image. In this situation the nonsynchronous relationship between the text and image presents a gap that the reader has to fill in order to understand the implied meaning. Such a process of reading comprehension requires particular interpretative input from the reader that necessitates a non- linear, meandering and retracing reading style. A number of researchers have identified the importance of this point of reading interaction (e.g. McCloud 1993;
Monnin, 2010; Sly, 2014). The process is explained visually in Figure 2.2.
COMPARISON + GAP = MEANING between text and image reader flls in diference before and after or between the sequence or earlier and later in the network of the narrative sequence chain
COMPARISON between text & image + GAP reader flls in diference between the text and image
= MEANING
Figure 1.2: Two points where the reader creates meaning in the graphic novel (Appleton, 2000).
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The gap between the panels signifies a transition between two states; this commonly represents a change in space and time. In his seminal work, McCloud
(1993) describes transitions between image panels19 but makes no reference to the types of transitions between the panels made up of text and image. The definition of graphic novel used in this study is a narrative sequence comprising both image and text; therefore, a transition description between panels needs to include both communication tracks (understanding that the text in wordless panels is silence). An area of graphic novel theory that has yet to be developed is a conceptual system that usefully categorises text and image panel transitions.
Non-linear Reading
The graphic narrative can combine temporal spaces showing the past, present and future simultaneously (Chute, 2010a). The move away from traditional reading of continuous text requires interpretation of multi-layered text and image combinations, involving browsing, meandering and rereading (Mallan,
2014). The narrative line and chronology can be sequenced independently in time. Such an array of options is particularly good for memoirs where linear sequences can be temporally fragmented, drawing out linkages between the emotional content of different eras.
Time and space representation is not just to do with the structuring of the narrative; it is also about the relationship of the reader to the physical pages.
19 McCloud (1993) identifies 6 types of transitions: moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect, non sequitur. Cohn (2013) has gone on to criticise this approach as being limited, explaining that a graphic novel sequence involves a string of panels.
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Film can present non-sequential chronologies with temporal spaces mixed, but this is shown in a linear form and as interaction with the moving images is not possible the viewer has no control. Stoddard Holmes (2014) observes that it is important that the reader can control the relationship of the time and space in the interaction with the graphic novel text. The reader determines the time to move through the text and decides the pathway in reading the panel sequences.
Sly (2014) offers a theoretical schematic representation of the pathway of eye movement in reading a variety of graphic novel layouts (see Figure 1.3). This is a simplified version of the reading pathway, as the mixing of the cross-discursive elements makes this schema much more complicated.
Figure 1.3: Graphic novel page layouts showing possible panel arrangements and pathways of reading (Sly, 2014, p. 129).
Combining text and image in one panelled unit and then the reading of the next text and image unit, followed by the process of comparison between the panels, involves a back and forth movement of the eye as represented in the two panelled example (see Figure 1.4).
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❶ ❷ COMPARISON COMPARISON between between text & image text & image BACK & FORTH BACK & FORTH reading path reading path bridging the gap. bridging the gap.
❸ COMPARISON ❹ between COMPARISON 2 text & image units between BACK & FORTH text & image units reading path on diferent pages bridging the gap. BACK & FORTH reading path bridging the gap in the narrative network.
Figure 1.4: The cross-discursive reading pathway involving comparison within the panel, between the panels and across the network of panels (Appleton, 2000).
Representation of Change: Identity
The Wounds of Separation deals with the experience of being separated from country and home and having to cope with the enormous change of resettlement.
Representing how identity changes with such an experience includes a combination of depicting an adjusted pictorial embodiment of the character combined with the mix of different, temporally-located narrative voices
(described in ‘Representation of History and Memory’ below). The present day
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 65 narrator can observe and comment on the narrator of the past who shows memories that describe what once was, and the present day voice points out how things have changed.
Pictorial Embodiment
The figurative nature of the graphic novel involves the repeated pictorial embodiment of self as well as of other narrative characters depicted in the scenes. El Refaie (2012b) suggests that these multiple portraits and self-portraits can be a way of pictorially describing many life changes in reinventing and repicturing the physical body. She underlines how pictures are always social and political, in that they connect to the sociocultural models of gender, beauty, sex and health, but that they also function to anchor the narrative in the time and place that it represents. The pictorial can capture changes in body appearance through the stages of childhood and adolescence to adulthood. However, it is the content of the narrative scenes and narratorial text that expresses the identity changes in definitions of self. The character actor within the panel scenes expresses the search for, “‘who to be’, ‘what to do’ and ‘how to act’” that Mallan
(2009, p. 148) identifies as changes in the maturation of identity.
Representation of History and Memory
In a graphic memoir about a personal experience of a historic event the representation needs to translate the historic evidence and memories in such a way that the reader is engaged and the facts are accessible. The reader needs to
66 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration be drawn into the action of the scene, with different narrators presenting the memories in a variety of ways.
Variety of Narrative Voices
In auto/biographical or life writing texts, the narrative voices are split between the narrated-I and the narrating-I (Chaney, 2011; Smith and Watson, 2001). The narrated-I is embedded in the graphic scene as a visual embodiment of the character, accompanied by text located in balloons as thoughts and dialogue. The narrating-I is the textual track of narration, or what I refer to as contextual narration, and commonly appears in caption boxes that accompany the panels, positioned above, within or below.
A particular strategy in the representation of memory is the temporal depiction of a narrative event or a graphic scene that describes a happening from the past but is presented as a present tense scene. The physical narrator ‘acts’ the content in picture form using expressions of emotion through body gesture, facial expression, typographic expression (when the words take on a pictorial quality of the word) and thought bubbles (Groensteen, 2013; Worth, 2007). The acting narrator both tells the story and can deliver their perspective on the action, or as
Genette (1983) describes, as focalisation (also discussed in ‘Representation of
Emotion and Trauma’). The scene is presented in the present tense and this
“creates a strong sense of immediacy” (Dicinoski, 2010, p. 195) that draws the reader into the real time action. Such a strategy increases the impact of the storytelling and creates a feeling of verisimilitude where the reader observes a scene that depicts graphic actors involved in direct or indirect dialogue. The
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 67 reader becomes a witness to the event and empathic responses potentially increase by writing in the first person (Hoeckner, 2014; Mallan, 2013a).
The narrating-I locates events in words written as past tense textual sections.
These summary elements, according to Dicinoski (2010), help to bridge the parataxical gaps20, the gaps in action where the breaks make comprehension difficult between the present tense scenes. Consequently, the scenes are linked together by pulling out the main focus of the story action in passages of text that condense time. Described as verbal narration, this text is sometimes accompanied by a visual presence. A narrator in the act of metalepsis (Genette,
1983; Kukkonen & Klimek, 2011) is shown to be graphically separate from the present tense action of the story. The ‘actor’ narrator draws attention to the construction of the story and functions as an omnipresent commentator with the speech directed to the reader, much like the role of a narrator in a play.
20 Genette talks of the narratorial strategy of regulating the information to the reader as the “mood” (1983, p. 162). Hayles refers to parataxis as the juxtaposition of elements and their close proximity points towards an implied meaning. Using parataxis in texts the gaps create the possibility of meaning being interpreted differently, therefore bridging the gap does rely on cultural knowledge; therefore parataxis is a “cultural seismograph” (1990, p. 398).
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A narrator in the act of metalepsis drawing attention to the construction of the story.
Narrating-I locating commentary.
Narrated-I characters acting within the scene.
Figure 1.5: Narrating-I locating the action and narrated-I acting within a scene. (TWoS, p. 9)
The link between the graphic sequences has an impact on narrative momentum.
This involves a balance between the narrative voices and the linkages between the sequences of action. The gaps between the panels or scenes in a graphic narrative, the point of interactive reading, can often be parataxical. These are moments in the narrative where the link between the juxtaposing panels is not obvious and the transition jars and interrupts the reading flow. Dicinoski describes these moments as “elements [that] are strung together like beads on a necklace, and the relationships among these elements are not specified” (2010, p.
158). It is up to the creator to decide whether these gaps need to be bridged with verbal narration to aid story comprehension and keep a narrative momentum.
Alternatively, sometimes the lack of clarity is a narrative choice where the disruption refers to confusion in the storyline; this can be a strategy adopted to represent an emotional or traumatic problem.
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Representation of Emotion and Trauma
The narrators tell the story but also express their emotional reaction to happenings in the story. The depiction of the emotional content of a history is a method of connecting the reader to the historical content of the narrative and an important way of animating past events (discussed by many, including: Chute,
2010a; Freeman, 2001; Kokkola, 2003; Smith and Watson, 2001). The graphic narrative has a variety of options in terms of making the inner qualities of abstract experience visible. As communicating the emotional impact of my mother’s separation from her family and home was the central theme of the story, a number of different strategies were considered and a number were used.
Connecting to the Characters
Genette (1983) was the first to use the term focalisation to describe the way readers are drawn into the storyworld by relating to a character’s subjectivity.
He contends that focalisation is transmitted through a character either internally, by expressing inner thoughts, or externally, by the reader witnessing the character’s action in a situation. Additionally, Genette describes zero focalisation when an omniscient or knowing narrator is giving a global, objective view of the storyworld. Developing on from Genette’s work, other theorists reject the possibility of objective focalisation. For example, Bal (2009) argues that textual creation by an author means that all writing contains a degree of subjective focalisation.
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In the refinement of Genette’s work, Bal also considers the focalisation strategies used in visual stories which lend relevance to a discussion about graphic novels.
The use of the visual metaphor, commonly used in graphic novel writing, is a method of using an object as a focaliser. Additionally, Bal explains that understanding the relationships of/between characters in a story is helpful in identifying the focalisers and how the focalisation is being expressed. The interplay between the focalisation of characters and objects in a narrative builds the reader’s understanding of the overall story. Sometimes, however, these relationships are difficult to work out in identifying levels of focalisation and
"who allows whom to watch whom?" (Bal, 2009, p. 161). Bal addresses this by describing non-perceptible focalisations as the thoughts and feelings of a character that are not disclosed to another character, as opposed to the perceptible, which are the actions and appearances. The theatrical scene presentation is specific to the medium of the graphic novel (Groensteen, 2013) and shows ‘actor’ characters focalising non-perceptibly and perceptibly.
The graphic narrative medium can be utilised to focalise the story in a unique way, which is addressed in another relevant theory termed ‘transmedial narratology’ (Hermann, 2004; Mikkonen, 2008; Kukkonen, 2011). Transmedial narratology identifies the media specific conventions in storytelling and this is of relevance to the medium of the graphic novel in terms of its particular strategies in telling the story. For example, Stitches: A Memoir (Small, 2009) is a highly focalised visual narrative, where even the opening images portray a strong sense of narratorial focalisation. The story begins with a visual description to set the scene and locate the context as Detroit. What is shown is an industrial city made
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 71 up of empty suburbs devoid of life, with a gloomy, oppressive greyness to the landscape (see Small, 2009, pp. 11-12). The visual irony of the lifeless residential location is an example of how the restriction of narrative information is a way of creating a focalised message (Genette, 1993). The stylisation and composition of the images show a clear negative narratorial position, with the panel sequence demonstrating how the graphic narrative medium can be utilised to focalise the story in a unique way.
A number of focalising characters can take away from the main thrust of the narrative significance. According to Bal (2009), the different viewpoints in character-bound focalisation can result in “neutrality towards all characters” (p.
151), with all characters essentially speaking at the same ‘volume’, resulting in narrative confusion. Additionally, Mikkonen (2011) warns of the ambiguities that the embedded focaliser can present in considering what is being focalised and who is focalising. This is made more complicated by the mixing of author, narrator, and character roles. Horskotte and Pedri (2011) point out an added complication in explaining that visual graphic narrative focalisation lacks pronouns and therefore makes it more difficult to follow than written text narrative that labels the focalising characters. When other characters are involved in a scene, the reader needs to interpret what each contributes and question what the additional character is there to express. The reader has the task of engaging in “inferential activities” (Horskotte & Pedri, 2011, p. 339) to work out the role of embedded characters. Visual narratives are more ambiguous in this respect for the reader’s interpretation of narrative meaning in the process
72 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration of following a character (Mikkonen, 2011) and the simultaneous perspectives that can be presented.
In this respect the medium of graphic narrative enables a more complex role for the embedded focaliser. As previously mentioned, the graphic narrative allows for “recursive” reading (Fischer & Hatfield, 2011, p. 85), revisiting and recapping through the sequences in piecing the focalised parts together. The speed of reading can be controlled in comprehending the text, and content can be shown rather than told (Kukkonen, 2011), with meaning conveyed using pictorial observation rather than words. Indeed the multimodal collaboration of text and image in the graphic narrative means that understanding the focalising threads is arguably more interpretatively complex than with straight prose texts. With the combination of verbal narration and visual focalisation, and options for simultaneous mixing of focalisers, the text requires the reader to work out which paths of significance to follow. Lefèvre stresses the interactive process in understanding the “schemata, assumptions, inferences, and hypotheses that readers rely on to impute narrative meanings to a sequence of images” (2011, p.
26), with the role of embedded focalisers complexifying the interpretations made in contributing another way of understanding the narrative significance.
Graphic Expressions of Emotion
The dramatic qualities of the line used in graphic mark making can translate into a visual representation of emotion (Lightman, 2014). The expressionist art movement at the end of the twentieth century explored the idea that emotions can be expressed through colour and lines (Gombrich, 1956). Such an approach
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 73 has been used in comics and graphic novels but in a conventional and exaggerated form that is particular to the medium. El Refaie describes the expressive use of “pictorial runes”, which are the marks set around the parts of the character’s body such as “twirls, spirals, spikes, or droplets” (2014b, p. 159), and are a visual representation of inner emotions such as confusion or intoxication. Alternatively, a similar approach is used as a way of conveying motion, where the use of a few repeated lines translate a two-dimensional static representation into an object in a state of movement. Typographic expression is another option in communicating emotion using a visual treatment of words that pictorially capture a word quality. Commonly this approach is for onomatopoeic words and these are often not contained in speech bubbles but become part of the image content of the panel (El Refaie, 2012b; Monnin, 2010; Sly, 2014).
Figure 1.6: Expressive typography functions like the image to show an emotion. (TWoS p. 40).
An obvious representation of emotion is the figurative depiction of facial and bodily expression; but there are also other representational strategies, including
74 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration panel size and panel composition. Panel size variation creates a rhythm or pace to the action. Like textual intonation created by the punctuation marks of commas and full stops, graphic sequences are structured into rhythmic phrases like the sentences of written text, the notation of music (Eisner, 1985;
Groensteen, 2013) or the dot and dashes of morse code (Eisner, 1985; Hoecker,
2014; Sly, 2014). This rhythmic pattern is further heightened according to the panel composition. For instance, a sequence of short, staccato, repeated panels with cramped compositions creates a claustrophobic tension to the narrative.
Alternatively, a character depicted as a small figure in a wide panoramic panel can communicate an atmosphere of freedom, depending on the narrative context. El Refaie describes a composition with a distorted perspective with a number of characters speaking in no particular order as "amorphous time"
(2012b, p. 121). The lack of sequence communicates a sense that in remembering, the order of moments in time is inconsequential to the message being described.
Use of metaphor is an important part of the graphic novel in the representation of experience and emotion, translating an abstract concept into a visual form (El
Refaie, 2014b). Metaphor is a popular graphic strategy as it combines the constraints imposed by the brevity of textual detail and the need for an image to communicate the message. There is a belief that messages presented in a metaphorical way can clarify ideas and draw people in. However, the metaphor only functions if it is collectively and culturally recognisable and is therefore often limited to the use of a clichéd visual form. The light bulb above the head to denote an idea, for example, is one metaphor that has been used extensively.
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Also the mirror is often used to communicate a character’s confusion with a notion of self (Chaney, 2011b; El Refaie 2012b and 2014b). A graphic metaphor can turn extreme emotional experiences into visions of humour and soften the intensity of the expression. Overall, use of the metaphor, with its ability to re- present the real in a different way, is an important reason why the graphic novel has become a chosen format to present traumatic subjects.
Trauma
Graphic novels are particularly suitable to present traumatic narratives: the three case studies cited in the Introduction deal with traumatic subject matter21.
The graphic novel’s non-linear chronology and fragmented and disconnected sequences mimic the nature of traumatic memory, where short disjointed scenes highlight the distress of the event. Also, the repeated image that comes back to haunt a character is another expression of trauma and can easily be represented
(Bredehoft, 2006; Chute, 2010; Martin, 2011). Brock (2012) observes that fragmented sequences are far more prevalent in a graphic novel than in film.
Furthermore, Chute argues that the graphic novel’s interactive, cross-discursive dialogue that deals with challenging subjects gives a voice to “unspeakability, invisibility, and inaudibility” (2010a, p. 3). For Chute, the graphic novel has made the unpresentable possible and provided a way of representing a variety of traumatic subjects. Consequently, graphic narratives about trauma have become an important form of life writing.
21 Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2007), David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir (2009); and Una’s Becoming Unbecoming (2015).
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The use of minimalist images with a summary of content enables the issues of trauma to be presented in sensitive ways. The ‘subtractive’ rather than ‘additive’ depiction, or “the dance of the visible and invisible” (McCloud, 1993, p.205), allows the creator of the narrative to be selective about what to show. Kokkola
(2003) discusses this process in terms of gaps of content which she identifies as a useful strategy in writing for children about traumatic events such as the
Holocaust. A way of holding back on distressing content is through an absence such as the black space or by not showing the act of violence. The absence creates a presence in stimulating questions to start a text-reader dialogue. What is considered ‘acceptable’ to represent is defined according to an understanding of a target audience.
Representation for the Young Adult Audience
Representational choices need to be appropriate for the potential readers (or addressees) of the graphic narrative, and such questions are relevant to consider in making literature suitable for the target audience. The YA consumers of literature dominate the international marketing scene, particularly as consumers of graphic novels (Pearce, Muller & Hawkes, 2013). As mentioned before, the YA category is defined by publishers, librarians and booksellers and includes an age group from 12-18 years; and according to Pearce, Muller & Hawkes (2013) it can potentially expand to an age of 30 years. Notions of appropriateness become difficult to stipulate with such a wide age range.
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YA literature has for many decades represented challenging content.
Confrontational texts can be useful in classroom settings to stimulate discussion of contentious or difficult issues that are part of the everyday lives of many young people. For many young adult readers, their experience of a wide variety of media on a range of topics assists in their ability to deal with or understand challenging issues. Pearce (2013) uses the examples of incest and paedophilia to argue that only a few decades ago such subjects were censored, but are now controversial subjects that can be openly discussed. Additionally, a creative narrative is of greater importance than historical facts in YA literature. This mixing of fiction and historical reality is what Pearce terms “transhistorical”
(2013, p. 17).
The fragmented and disjointed nature of the graphic novel is part of its appeal for YA readers who are accustomed to a similar reading strategy in the consumption of digitised media (Ahmed, 2012). Having been defined as a serious literary form (Mallan, 2014; Witek, 1989) that encourages critical and multiliteracy skills, graphic novels are increasingly being used in classrooms
(Muller, 2013). A number of researchers have shown that there is a need for multimodal skill development in a world that is increasingly technologically dependent (Cazden, Cope, Fairclough, Gee, et al., 1996; Geyer, 2005; Kress,
2003). Graphic novels require a number of multimodal reading skills, involving: interpretation of the image, textual literacy, combination of text and image and comprehension of the sequence. These are the ‘interactivity’ strategies that this chapter identifies as playing an important part in understanding graphic novel representation. Therefore graphic novels are multimodal texts that require a
78 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration level of multiliteracy in order for them to be read and understood in all their complexity; this level of reading sophistication is of particular relevance for the
YA consumers of graphic literature (Dallacqua, 2012; Ghiso & Low, 2013;
Monnin, 2010).
Concluding comments
In discussing the complex issue of representation, this chapter has highlighted how readers and publishers understand that a form of truth will be delivered in
(re)presenting history. For the creator of the text, making decisions about how a type of truth can be achieved is a challenge. A popular format in the representation of history is shaped around an individual life experience. Such a representation is subjective in its personal content and so becomes further from objective truth than a factual history account. However, descriptions of individual experience provide the emotional content that enables the reader to connect with the subjective content, thereby making the history accessible, memorable and animated. Combining life writing in a graphic novel presents options that can enhance historic event storytelling. A number of communication strategies can be exploited in the representation of the narrative, such as: interactivity, non-linearity, a variety of narrative voices, pictorial embodiment, and emotional and traumatic representation. These have relevance to the representational needs of the graphic memoir, The Wounds of Separation, namely, representation of change, representation of history and memory, and representation of emotion/trauma.
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The next chapter maps out the methodology adopted for this thesis. A dual methodological process is described, practice-led and life writing, involving a creative and critical approach that comes together in reflexive thought and action. The methods involved in this process are described, including a system to record the cyclical process of reflexivity bringing the creative and critical together. A variety of other methods are explained, including a qualitative research method which uses techniques in the collection of evidence from interviews with family members.
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CHAPTER 2
Creative and Analytical Processes
Graphic novels enable socially complex histories to be framed in allusive and arresting ways. Being a cultural product, the narrative presents a truth that mixes both personal subjectivity and factual objectivity, located in the time and place it was constructed. In creating a narrative of the life of an individual positioned in history, I critically engaged with the theory and practice of both life writing and graphic novel design. Therefore the methodology for this study is situated in both practice-led and life writing approaches. This chapter describes a “process of study” (McGarth, 2004, p. 74), as a framework for this dual methodology. The process discussed in this chapter makes sense of life writing and the representational decisions involved in presenting this research by: critically engaging with theories and literature; exploring graphic novel creation; and analysing historic evidence and sample graphic novels. My approach addresses the research questions in a way that is appropriate to the subject matter of this thesis, and offers a systematic process for developing a dialogue between the exegetical and creative components.
The nature of this thesis – its exegetical component and creative work – required a methodology to support both a critical and creative approach, one that integrates conventional approaches to qualitative research and critical enquiry
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 83 with a creative practice approach to narrative and graphic design. Therefore, I outline a system that involves practice-led, research-led and qualitative research strategies that form part of a dual methodology of practice-led and life writing.
This multi-faceted research approach entails both critical and creative questioning and reflexivity and is guided by the theoretical imperatives discussed in the previous chapter and with respect to the conceptual framework
(Figure 1.1). Reflexivity can be understood as the analytical observation of a circular dialogue between the theoretical and the creative, which contributes significantly to the emerging conceptual understandings and development of creative work.
The dual methodology of practice-led and life writing allowed for change of approach during the journey of the study. Researchers highlight the need for flexibility, with Gray and Malins (2004) describing a responsive methodology where the course of action needs to be a living system that will adapt and change according to the research requirements. Furthermore, Grierson and Brearley
(2009) refer to methodology as being a contextual framework from which methods are framed and built. The following sections explain the contextual framework that supports this study.
Practice-led Methodology
Methodological choices are selected from our understandings of the world
(McGarth, 2004). With a background in design, I engage with the concept of creativity for functional use that is born out of a process of problem solving
84 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration through analytical research and practical exploration. Therefore, the practice-led methodology sits comfortably with my creative and critical approach to design.
The practice-led methodology used in this study involved an intertwined system of practice-led and research-led critical enquiry (Figure 2.1). In the practice-led component the critical enquiry was led by practical exploration, whereas when research-led, the dominant investigative activity for the critical enquiry was a theoretically-informed analysis. Such an exchange can be described as a recursive process of questioning and critique to inform the action in creativity or action in thought. For Van Luyn, these dual actions form a symbiotic relationship, whereby “critical and creative thinking are enmeshed” (2012, p. 68). For others, the relationship between the two approaches is "bi-directional” (Smith & Dean
2009, p. 1). This is a dynamic process, that of being active and reflexive in the creative practice directing the theoretical explorations and vice versa.
The practice-led methodology described by Haseman (2006) asserts that the practice always leads the research; according to him the circular relationship between practice and research is uni-directional. Haseman further stresses the primacy of the creative component, describing practice-led methodology as following a "performative research paradigm” (p.1), with the concept of
‘performing’ action holding the greatest research significance. My approach is bi- directional, as described above; however, I have used the term ‘practice-led’ to locate this particular methodology. Haseman argues that having the research findings presented in a creative product is an important part of the practice-led process, where “research outputs and claims to knowing must be made through
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 85
the symbolic language and forms of their practice” (2006, p. 4). My approach
aligns with this aspect of a practice-led methodology since the creative
component of my thesis is a graphic novel; and so I have chosen a methodology
descriptor commonly used in the disciplinary field in which my study is located
(McGarth, 2004).
The exchange between the two approaches of investigation – practice and
research – ebbed and flowed at different speeds during the life of the study. The
initial stages flowed at a slower rate between the creative and the conceptual
(Gary & Malins, 2004), with research-led critical enquiry dominating these
stages; but as the creative work developed, this dominance changed.
Figure 2.1: The practice-led methodology.
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Reflexivity
Reflexivity is a central feature of this practice-led methodology and serves an important function for the researcher (Haseman, 2006). Unlike a reflective thought, that just considers the subject in relation to the object, reflexivity involves an internal conversation described as a process of “bending back”
(Archer, 2009, p. 2). The reflexive thought moves from the subject to the object and back to the subject, involving a distancing from self, and a questioning of the habitual and the conventional. Archer (2009) acknowledges that reflection and reflexivity are often difficult to separate, as both involve introspective thinking.
However, reflexivity is a complex problem-solving thinking process. For instance, in the context of a graphic novel the creator might reflect on whether the title has been positioned correctly on the front cover. Being reflexive, the creator considers the title position and thinks of other alternatives, analysing how the alternatives work and then back thinking how the title is conventionally positioned, and how the creator has dealt with such an issue in the past - weighing up whether an alternative might present a better solution.
Reflexivity requires an ability to step out and create distance between the researcher and the social context, and to observe the relationships between the subjects and objects (Archer, 2009; Caetano, 2015). The practical explorations are combined with scholarly conceptual ideas in the process of reflexivity. This involves a self-critical analysis and assessment of the subjective and objective factors shown in the creative response or critical text. The creative work needs to be positioned correctly within the discipline to which it belongs, and this
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 87 requires a balancing of the constraints and conventions of that discipline, allowing the creative process to expand possibilities (Ryan, 2014). For this study, the critical enquiry of conceptual issues helps the creator develop a clearer understanding of the conventions of life writing and also of graphic language communication in the graphic novel media. The practice-led approach is the place where boundaries are explored, with introspective reflexivity assessing whether the right balance between convention and innovation has been achieved, as well as other creative assessments relevant to the area of practice.
In the context of a graphic novel these include: use of the graphic language conventions; objective and subjective presentation of subject matter; sequencing of the narrative content; balance of narrative voices; text and image relationship; framing of panel content, to name a few examples. Archer (2009) has observed that modern pragmatists value reflexive input as providing the potential for new, original directions.
The bi-directional critical dialogue is further enhanced with the contribution of professional knowledge to the practice-led methodology. Being able to reflexively identify the part played by specialist experience has the potential to add valuable input to the process. The researcher needs to be able to separate how their professional knowledge is embodied in creative action. However, the intuition that is born out of artistic experience is difficult to articulate or insert into a methodological framework (Duxbury, 2009). It can also be difficult to identify qualified knowledge that is the result of a long engagement with the discipline or field, as it becomes too familiar to observe. This is often described as reflex action or unconscious action, which is quite different to reflexive
88 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration thought. However, such insights and understandings add valuable conceptual and theoretical input to the creative research process (Smith & Dean, 2009;
Ryan, 2014).
Identifying the manifestations of reflexivity can enable a reflexive strategy to be worked into the methodological research process. The reflexive dialogue is revealed in two different ways: as an internal conversation or as an external expression (Caetano, 2014). The internal conversation may directly influence the practical exploration or conceptual analysis as a subconscious or conscious interaction. For instance in graphic novel creation internal reflexivity might change the way the panel is composed as the creator considers the filmic conventions of storyboard sequencing that are relevant to this graphic medium.
An internal reflexive action might come from a subconscious embodiment of film conventions. Alternatively, the knowledge obtained from conceptual understandings gained through study might have a direct influence on the approach taken. Coming from an informed position, this type of action often involves more conscious reflexive thought. Reflexivity expressed externally is documented in writing or as aural discursive interactions. Collecting such information in a scholarly practice-led methodology is an essential part of the process, whereby the records of reflexive thinking will be discussed in the exegetical conceptual analysis and play an important part in providing evidence of the creative journey.
The journal is the place where reflexive observations are collected. It is a stored collection of dated entries of practical and conceptual reflexive thoughts
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 89 combined with related creative explorations. Such a journal is also a place for the researcher to record the internal direct action reflexivity, which is often a challenge to identify or articulate. Consequently journals are commonly handwritten to facilitate the recorded note taking of spontaneous thought and creative ideas. The reflexive responses contain subjective expression, the individual life experience, and evidence of skills and knowledge (Ryan, 2014), and their regular analysis can make the creator more able to identify elements of each in the critical assessment. Caetano (2015) suggests developing a disciplined system where the notes are made close to the reflexive thought. This is a useful strategy in capturing self-reflexive dialogue, as memory failures disrupt the ability to capture detailed reflexive analysis and some of the potential nuances are lost.
Ryan (2014) suggests that a consistent system for identifying reflexive thought is facilitated by using a collection of heading prompts, which include: reporting and responding, relating, reasoning, and reconstructing. I intended to use this system to assist in the recording of consistent and regular assessments of my creative explorations and the reflexive analysis of the key sample texts. However, I found that systematic note taking stifled the creative process.
In undertaking the stylistic analysis of the key graphic novel texts, the theoretical framework provided assistance with respect to the core semiotic codes of the graphic novel. Additionally, in the assessment of my creative work, I reflexively and analytically considered my graphic novel in relation to the three case studies or focus texts.
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Overall the dual methodological system works together and at other times functions apart. Understanding the role of each component of this dual system clarifies how the approaches function in this study. Haseman (2006) explains that practice-led research uses methods that follow the conventional form of the qualitative research model. Therefore the life writing component complements the practice-led methodology.
Life Writing Methodology
A narrative is formed out of a process of information selection and construction in order to present an individual perspective that is located in a time and social context. This provides us with a strategy to access past events and to connect those events to emotional content, with a potential of reaching a wider audience.
A life writing methodology describes the research process that collects the narrative content, and clarifies possible approaches for the life writing construction.
Life writing involves qualitative research, which is the analysis of human action as understood from a variety of different sources of evidence. Glesne and
Peshkin (1992) explain that this form of research involves a search for the social interaction of personal stories. In the context of this study a family history is understood through the collection of information and analysis of that evidence.
The sources of evidence include interviews, letters, diaries, photographs and public records, as well as the secondary sources of scholarly texts and
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 91 documentary material. In analysing material in a qualitative research approach the researcher identifies the social construction of the material evidence according to contextual positioning. Qualitative research can be understood to use an interpretivist paradigm, as the analysis of reality is always changing
(McGarth, 2004). Therefore, in the research of a personal family history my understanding of events is located in my contextual location of time, place and cultural background.
There are a number of life writing areas that lack methodological scrutiny; these include the collection and interpretation of biographical evidence, the relationship between the writer and the life writing subject, as well as ethical issues in the collection, interpretation and presentation of individual evidence
(Oakley, 2010). There is therefore a need for scholarly methodological commentary about how biographers go about collecting and interpreting available information in biographical writing. While relational autobiography 22 is not mentioned by Oakley, as previously explained, this term is most appropriate in the case of my study, as my narrative combines biographical and autobiographical content and therefore comes under the category of life writing.
Certainly from a scholarly research point of view, the relational autobiography form of life writing raises some interesting complexities with regard to intersecting roles. For instance, with the narrative based on my family history, I both observe from a distance and participate in the story, performing a combined role of researcher, creator and ‘actor’ in the narrative action.
22 For a description of relational autobiography see Chapter 2, ‘Life writing representation’.
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Therefore this study raises some challenging issues and questions of evidential trustworthiness regarding the boundaries of my role as both academic and participant in the “‘family’ history, narratives and identities” (Greenway, 2008, p.
317). Qualitative researchers adopt the stance of reflexivity to guard against subjectivity in the analysis and interpretation of evidence. However, life writing demands some subjective input. Therefore, the study uses qualitative strategies but also draws on the narrative and personal aspects necessary for life writing.
This aspect of the research is further discussed as a limitation of the study.
Another under-discussed area of life writing methodology is the relationship between the writer and the life writing subject in the text (Oakley, 2004). The autobiographical text is in essence describing the life of both the writer and the subject. The challenge for me as writer is to maintain a careful balance between these two voices, making clear whose life the narrative describes at different points. However, there is little scholarly research that addresses this issue in life writing methodology. It is therefore a challenge in a narrative where I both create and participate in the story action. I have sought guidance from the feedback of other readers to achieve the correct character balance between my role and the main protagonist; and the Prologue proved to be the biggest challenge in this respect.
Finally, Oakley identifies ethical issues as an area that has not been addressed adequately by biographers in life writing methodologies. This is an area I have considered in relation to interviewing participants and this will be discussed in the methods described for interview. Ethical considerations also address
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 93 questions of who has the right to present an interpretation of a family history; and whether family members should be consulted in the decision to construct a family narrative. For my study, I have resolved this issue in the acknowledgement that the graphic novel is a creative product and a subjective presentation.
Leading to the Research Outcome
The final element of a scholarly methodology is the presentation of the research findings. Smith and Dean use the metaphor of an “iterative cyclic web” (2009, p.
10) to describe a methodology involving a continual exchange between practice- led and life writing approaches. However, Van Luyn (2012) warns that the researcher can become trapped in this web, whereby the cyclical creative and critical processes may mean that the end point is hard to identify. As a consequence, the methodology has been defined by the constraints of a time frame in which my research needed to be completed.
The Wounds of Separation is the “presentational form” (Haseman, 2006, p. 5) of the research findings accompanied by the conceptual analysis in the exegesis.
The conventional presentation of research findings in text form has a limited scholarly audience, unlike a study such as this one, which involves an additional creative component (Barone and Einser, 2011; Haseman, 2006; Leavy, 2009).
Leavy (2009) argues for the presentation of research via an art-based research approach, where the research findings are translated into a creative form that can be digested by a wider audience. This has the potential of encouraging
94 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration inclusive participation by spreading knowledge and ideas in an accessible form, and thereby stimulating debate and further thought: “This is the nature of aesthetic experience: it is interactive, encourages dialogue and generates debate”
(Sullivan, 2009, p. 50). How the user experiences the artwork and narrative is an important part of the exploration, but this will not be tested in this study.
Informal feedback was sought from others, including my family - who are an integral ‘voice’ in the development of The Wounds of Separation. Additionally, I understand that the creative piece, being a cultural product, will always embody new interpretations in the contextual position from which it is read.
Methods
The dual methodology described above required a number of different methods in the process of collecting and analysing research material due to the range of evidence. Each part of the investigation, such as the selection and analysis of sample graphic novels and the development of the creative work, required different but complementary methods of information collection and analysis.
Therefore, in the following discussion I will outline the methods I have used to research the primary sources, including analysis of selected key texts and interviews with family members. I also outline the methods used to develop the creative work, as well as the process of collecting and recording both creative ideas and reflexive thoughts as journal entries.
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Primary Sources
Key Sample Texts
I have analysed three key sample graphic novel texts as well as my own creative piece. As mentioned before, the sample texts include: Marjanne Satrapi’s
Persepolis (2007), David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir (2009), and Una’s Becoming
Unbecoming (2015). These texts display complex use of the graphic novel form in engaging and original ways. The criteria for selection have been based on graphic and narrative relevance to the research questions addressed by my study, which are: In what ways do memory, history and identity intertwine and shape the way in which trauma is experienced and remembered? And, in writing for a YA audience, how can the multimodal features of the graphic memoir be stylistically constructed to assist readers to connect to unfamiliar experience in order to engender empathy?
The key graphic novels were analysed to understand how each text reflected the relevant theoretical concepts associated with narratological approaches to life writing in multimodal texts (as outlined in Chapter 1). My interest was to understand how these authors approached historical storytelling for the implied audience while maintaining a relevance and factual authenticity. Each book uses particular media-specific ways of telling their stories and of dividing the narrating roles between the character voices. Using focalising strategies, different characters also show their reaction to the events, and particular strategies were used to weave the impact of traumatic struggle throughout the
96 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration network of the narrative. I also explored how the narratives managed to maintain an authentic truth whilst infusing the story with subjective connection.
Interviews with Family Members
This study represents an exploration of methods that capture both historical accuracy and memory. Therefore the interviews add to the empirical research material in the form of anecdotal recollections and personal stories, with an understanding that these memories are distortions of truth. Combined with the secondary literature, the interviews help to personalise the narrative.
The interview participants (7) are family members and contribute to the story of my mother’s (Ella Eberštark) experience as a child involved in this historic event.
The participants include two of Ella’s sisters who were children transported on the Kindertransport and were close to Ella during her life. Both these interviews were conducted with the aim of gaining information not included in the historic records or scholarly research. From personal information, I wanted to gain insight to the direct experience of the evacuation and of living as a refugee in a new country. Ella’s ex-husband Tom was also an interviewee as he had a close connection to the early part of her adult life. Ella met him just after the war.
Being Scottish, Tom’s connection to the refugees was one of an outsider. He was originally drawn to them through his political interest in communism. Therefore the aim of the interview was to collect his observations of the refugees with regard to their British identity formation and their assimilation into a country at war and in the recovery after the war.
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To gain a second-generation understanding of these historical events one of
Ella’s daughters, two nieces and one nephew were also interviewed. The aim of these four interviews was to contribute a postmemory understanding of the
Kindertransport and the experience of being a child of a refugee. I also enquired about their childhood and adult memories of my mother. These interviews, particularly for the elderly participants, required the intimacy of a face-to-face exchange and each session lasted for about one hour initially, with both Ella’s sisters having subsequent one-hour interview sessions. All participants’ interviews focused on questions that asked them to describe historical and emotional memories23. I developed three different groups of questions according to the aim of each interview. Ella’s sisters’ questions addressed their childhood in Trstená, the evacuation, and their memories of settling in Britain; all with an emphasis on what they remembered about my mother. Tom’s questions were about his impressions of the refugees and the atmosphere in prewar and post- war Britain. The second-generation participants were asked about their understanding of the Kindertransport, when they found out about what had happened to the family, and their experience of being a child of a refugee.
The methodology for the collection of the interview data involved: pre-interview communication with the participants, open-ended and steered interview sessions, transcription and analysis of the interview content. For the pre- interview participant communication I sent an Interview Information Sheet24 (a requirement of the university ethics procedure) to explain the interviews and
23 See Appendix A for the ‘Interview Questions’.
24 See Appendix B for the ‘Interview Information Sheet’.
98 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration the process involved. I asked other younger family members to go through this information with my aged participants so that they were totally informed and were able to voice any concerns. The interview sessions lasted approximately one hour as I was sensitive to the elderly relatives’ stamina and emotions. As Van
Luyn recommends, (2012) I adapted the time and questions to suit individual requirements. The questions addressed the narrative events that I identified in the plan of the novel. An open-ended interview strategy allowed other stories to be discussed as directed by each participant. However, steered interview sessions were needed for the older participants who needed a more directed approach to help focus their fading memories. The interviews were audio recorded, and later transcribed from the recorded files.
Family Ephemera
I used a variety of family ephemera in the research process. Approximately 20 translated copies from a larger collection of Czech letters from my grandparents written to their children in Britain (transported to them via the Red Cross between 1939-1942) were used as a source of research evidence. Short segments from these letters are incorporated into the narrative (e.g., see Chapter
4, Figure 4.26).
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Figure 2.2: One of my grandmother’s letters written to her children in Britain (approximately 1940).
Family photographs were used as drawing reference and panel composition, three family photographs were included in the narrative (see e.g., Figure 2.3).
Greenway (2008) discusses family records as being quite different from what is considered academic historical evidence; however, in describing a different type of history it is important to interact with more personal evidence. Smith and
Watson (2001) point out that letters and diaries are now being valued as records of historic evidence, in that they describe the experience of life at a different time.
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Figure 2.3: The top photograph is included in the graphic novel. The photograph below was traced into one of the panels, removing one person in the image who was not discussed in the narrative.
Developing the Creative Work
The creative methods component of this research had a working strategy that formed part of the combined multi-method process. This included methods of stimulating creative thought and skill development. Also an essential part of this creative development was the storyboard production.
Creative Inspiration and Storyboarding
Practice-led research allows the freedom of imaginative thought without inhibiting the ability to rationalise within an intellectual framework. Dethridge
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 101 highlights the importance of subconscious daydreaming as an essential part of this research approach: “to dream expansively and to plan logically using a process of reflection and critical interrogation” (2009, p. 97). This idea was taken further using the term “reverie” (Duxbury, 2009, p. 56) to describe an important element involved in creative methodologies. This acknowledges that a range of stimulating material produces ideas in the form of creative imagination, “making imaginative associations between such disparate elements” (p. 57). For example, although only three graphic novels were formally analysed in this exegesis a number of others were used as sources of inspiration. Other creative stimulation came from ideas expressed on ABC’s Radio National, particularly the interviews with writers talking about historical narrative and life writing. Additionally I visited a number of art galleries to inspire my ideas. One modern history artist of note is Jacob Lawrence, whose Migration Series (1999) comprises sixty small tempera, text captioned paintings he completed in 1941. The narrative sequence represents the movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban
North that began in 1915. Lawrence’s minimalistic compositions in a series of related images were a different approach to reimagining a historic happening.
Finally, another method that played an important part in this study was my development of appropriate artistic skills, particularly a fluency in figurative drawing. My graphic novel required an expressive drawing style that was not always anatomically correct. The images needed to balance a graphic spontaneity that depicted recognisable human gestures. My strategy in capturing this mixture of energy and accuracy required a fluency in drawing where the final images were based on first sketch drawings that I digitally refined. Barone
102 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration and Eisner identify the need for representation skills for creative research work, stating that “technique must be available. If there is no skill, there is no technique. If there is no technique, there is no expressivity. If there is no expressivity, there is no art” (2011, p.4). Therefore, I found that an important skill in graphic novel development included ease in graphic mark making, particularly in the representation of the human form. I refined these skills through life-drawing sessions.
My method of graphic novel development involved the use of the storyboard.
The novel was initially outlined into a text-based plan that detailed the content divided into chapters. The plan was translated into working sketches of text and image representations divided into the panels that formed a storyboard of potential ideas. The development of the storyboard played an important function in my process of graphic narrative realisation. I used the plan to edit, change and refine the narrative sequence after self-reflexivity and supervisory feedback.
Therefore the storyboard was a working draft of my graphic novel that I developed through many versions in the creation of the finished novel. In the first drafts I focused on splitting the narrative content into panels, manipulating the balance between image and text. In later draft decisions I became more page layout focussed; these decisions were affected by the fit of panels into the space of the page, trying to finish each chapter on a left hand page. New chapters begin on a right-hand page and because all space contains meaning within the sequence of the narrative I tried to avoid too many random, blank left-hand pages. A blank page reads into the story as a meaningful pause rather than as a physical by-product of the medium. I achieved this by manipulating panel
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 103 numbers, size and layout. A creative balance was required to effectively tell the story within the constraints of the medium, so that the page layouts enhanced reading pathways and helped comprehension. The final draft of the storyboard was the base for the finished panelled text and image drawings. Figures 2.4 and
2.5 show a first draft storyboard of the Prologue with reflexive comments attached.
Figure 2.4: Example draft prologue pages with reflexive comments.
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Figure 2.5: Further sketches to develop on from the reflexive comments.
Journal Entries
My journals contain a collection of handwritten creative and reflexive notes.
Each book has been numbered and dated with two varieties of formats, A5 and
A4. The larger one was particularly suitable for storyboarding. Journal entries were dated, though the journals have non-formalised page layouts, allowing for entries to overlap when further thoughts developed in a non-consecutive way.
The journals allowed for random and spontaneous creative thought processes.
The notes or creative sketches contained ideas stimulated by scholarly texts or creative work written as text and/or image that led onto further work, and problem solving possibilities. I annotated the handwritten pages with notes about how the storyboard ideas could be incorporated into the graphic memoir, reflexively considering possible narrative problems. An example (see Figure 2.6) shows a journal page with annotated explanatory notes.
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How to represent group trauma in response to Bennett’s (2005) comment. People dealt with feelings of trauma, anxiety, fear or shock during the war as feelings of isolation. Ideas of images to show the constrast between the communities being together but also feeling alone.
Figure 2.6: An example journal entry to show conceptual thinking and creative idea development.
When the practice-led approach dominated the process I considered a formalised system to record the reflexivity in a detailed and consistent way. As previously mentioned I initially adopted the prompt system suggested by Ryan
(2014) to direct a self-reflexive dialogue. I used the prompts of reporting and responding, relating, reasoning and reconstructing to focus my reflexive thought.
As an example here I show how these labels directed the assessment of the prologue storyboard section.
I started thinking about the Prologue to reflexively assess the initial emotional impact of my creative piece. Using the suggested prompts of reporting and
106 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration responding I considered if the opening sequence adequately set the scene and had directness of dramatic energy to draw the reader into the narrative. I questioned the balance of the narrator’s voice in relation to the subject of the story.
In response to the second prompt, relating, I identified and located the presentation in the context of the traumatic, graphic narrative genre, and in so doing I made useful parallels with other graphic memoirs. I used some effective multimodal strategies to summarise the introductory information in the
Prologue. As in Satrapi’s Persepolis (2007), particular strategies were used to summarise the historic background and set the scene.
For the reasoning prompt I considered how the story would be interpreted, comparing message meaning with potential audience understanding, and noting the difference between the two. I recognised that asking for responses from an informed audience highlighted some interpretation issues to do with the stacking of Ella’s problems in the Prologue.
Finally the reconstructing prompt involved redrafting and the development of improved ideas. The reader feedback about the prologue directed me to explore strategies to make some page layouts clearer and more appropriate for the narrative content. For instance on page 3 (see Figure 4.2), rather than a sequence of panels, I explored a layout that visually described how my mother and I were trapped in a vicious circle. Initially I found this prompted system of reflexive analysis useful for analysing my creative work.
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As a reflexive researcher I initially adopted this disciplined approach of note taking to stimulate and organise internal reflexive thoughts that I might otherwise forget. This enabled my reflexive thinking to become external, and the documented system provided me as a researcher with valuable information from which to progress the creative conceptualisation and gather evidence for the analysis for the practice-led critical enquiry. As my work progressed, the prompts helped direct my thoughts, but I moved to a free flowing system of note taking which I referred to when compiling the reflexive discussion in the analytical chapter of this exegesis (Chapter 3).
Approach to Analysis of Key Sample Texts
From the analysis of the key sample graphic novel texts (as described in this chapter’s previous section on ‘Primary Sources’) I built an understanding about how the conventions, constraints and possibilities of the medium could be balanced using graphic and narrative strategies. The analysis in Chapter 4 identifies representations that are common to all the graphic novels, and describes particular creative strategies unique to each text. I examine how the texts incorporate historic witnessing and truth telling (the types of truth that are offered), and identify methods of presenting authenticity and balancing subjectivity and objectivity. Being autobiographical texts, I considered whether the individual voice is clearly located in the historical moment, and how the personal narrative speaks to a collective – approaches relevant to my own text.
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My analysis also examines how the narrator is positioned - whether the autobiography is told solely through the eyes of the protagonist or whether other characters become the subject of the story. Similarly, in the creation of The
Wounds of Separation I considered how to assist the reader in becoming emotionally and cognitively involved in the text and illustrations. As the implied reader is the young adult, such strategies include presenting emotional life experiences that are familiar and recognisable but wrapped in an original and compelling plot. Also, I considered how the pictorial embodiment of a character displays identifiable struggles of identity and confidence in a way that the YA audience could potentially connect with. In the analysis I isolate the life writing techniques that address witnessing, commemoration and remembering. The analysis focuses on the graphic novel, the multi modal-features and particular strategies for representing change in time, space and identity; emotion or trauma; history and memory.
.
Analysis of the Family Interviews
From the interviews mentioned above I identified key themes and particular language expressions that provide insight to my participants’ notions of identity, community and historical memory. The transcriptions fulfil my ethical obligations to my participants in documenting what was said with complete accuracy from the recording. I selected small parts of the interviews to include in the graphic narrative, according to what I considered to be significant. I used my creative licence to reword their recorded voice in the context of the narrative.
Oakley (2010) warns that biographical interviewees, unlike other interviewees
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 109 for qualitative research, can be marginal to the main focus of the study. For my purposes, since the interview participants were witnesses to the event and to the life of the narrative subject, their contributions added a personal quality to the research material. I combined the interview material with my own memories and with historical fact. My memories included stories told to me by my mother and witnessed memories. I found that all participants were interesting in different ways; consequently, each interview contributed to different parts of the narrative.
Ethical Considerations
There are two important ethical considerations in telling a family history. The first addresses the participation of family members in an interview process resulting in an interpretation of their memories. The second is the use of narrative representations of family members in the final graphic novel.
The university ethics application and subsequent ethical clearance acknowledged that I presented a well- considered approach for involving family participants in an interview process. The ethical considerations had to be carefully considered in conducting interviews with elderly participants recalling traumatic, potentially distressing memories. Consequently, the interviews were conducted in the homes of the participants (USA and UK) to create a comfortable and safe environment. I also suggested that a younger relative be present during the interviews for extra support, but in the end this was found to be neither
110 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration possible nor necessary. Before the interviews, in the pre-interview information,25
I made it clear that they were not obligated to participate if they did not want to and that the interviews could be terminated at any time at their request. I explained that the analysed interview material was to be used in combination with letters from the family members directly involved in the event, as well as extant documented information. I also made clear that their interview responses could be changed if they so desired, but would possibly be unrecognisable in the context of the final narrative.
I was aware that the interviews had the potential to cause emotional distress from remembering past traumatic memories and lost family members. Also, participation could result in fatigue, due to the concentration required to understand the questions as well as to listen, remember and describe. There was a possibility that the elderly participants could be confused from the process of muddling through old memories that are sometimes difficult to access. I did witness a degree of frustration from one participant not being able to remember, and her feeling of sadness in thinking that she had let me down. The day after the interviews, I followed up with the participants to assess how they were feeling, asking whether the process of talking about their memories made them feel sad.
I discussed whether there was anything said that they felt uncomfortable about.
Overall, the interviews were conducted as planned, with no apparent feelings of distress. In two interviews I sensed fatigue from the elderly participants and subsequently concluded the interviews.
25 See Appendix B for the ‘Interview Information Sheet’
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The second consideration is the representation of family members in the graphic novel. The narrative, being a relational autobiography, means that I am an actor playing a role in my own story; therefore to some extent the ethical considerations in these parts of the narrative are less complex. Nevertheless, what about the other family participants in those scenes? What about the other parts of the narrative history that I didn’t witness, as well as the issues to do with the representation of dead family members? As noted previously, Oakley (2010) points out that ethical questions in the writing of biographical texts have been overlooked. Indeed, in applying for University ethical clearance, I found that the requirements only focused on the ethical treatment of my participants being interviewed; no questions were raised regarding the representation of my participants in the graphic novel. In reimagining another person’s memory, Van
Luyn questions whether it is an act of “stealing” (2012, p. 142) in using a story that belongs to someone else. In the interview process I made clear to the participants that the interviews served two purposes: as research material to add to the evidence related to the Kindertransport event; and as possible material to personalise the narrative. As stated before, they were aware that in the context of the narrative their contribution could be changed or might be unrecognisable. I informed all family members about what this study aimed to do and how I planned to achieve my aims. I had no requests to check a transcript or the final narrative, but I did offer them this opportunity. Additionally, I feel I have resolved my ethical questions regarding the representation of dead family members as this is a commemorative text that aims to keep their memory alive.
The graphic memoir is intended to be an ethically considered research product about a moment in history that witnessed unethical events.
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Limitations of my Study
Potential limitations of this study relate to reimagining a historic event as a narrative. I was aware that the construction of an engaging story might take precedence over factual truth, leading to a questioning of the trustworthiness of the represented historical events. In creating literature for the YA audience,
Pearce’s point about “transhistorical” (2013, p. 21) texts for this audience, which mix the real with the fictional, guided the melding of my subjective connection with the research material and objective facts of history. Van Luyn (2012) also supports the mixing of the objective and subjective forms, and identifies the value of hybrid fiction as a way of making literary works engaging and accessible to readers. The hybrid form uses the authenticity of oral histories combined with imagined narrative linkages to form a constructed narrative.
As discussed earlier my personal connection to this story infuses my subjectivity into the historic story, as does the relational autobiography basis of my graphic memoir. Hirsch suggests a researcher with “post-memories” (1992), such as my interconnection with the evidence of the traumatic history, has the advantage of incorporating additional insights and understandings. Qualitative research allows insights derived from first-hand, lived experience – with a view to enhancing understanding of complex human phenomena, such as trauma experienced through forced migration. Overall, my dual position as researcher and subject in the narrative can be described as a benefit, rather than as a
The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 113 limitation. I have contributed subjective insights and widened the possibilities of a history reimagined.
Another foreseeable limitation is part of the bi-directional approach of the practice-led approach. As an experienced practitioner, I have always found that the switching of tasks between graphic languages used in text and image combinations and the requirements of academic writing can be a challenge. I am distinguishing this from the switching between creative and conceptual thought.
Instead, I am describing the difference between the expressive requirements of two semiotic languages and two written forms of language. Language construction used in academic writing is quite different from the structuring of the text and image form of the graphic novel. They require contrasting approaches and this study required a fluency in moving between the two different forms. As the methodology developed and my working system improved this became a benefit rather than a limitation. The bi-directional expression was more easily achieved and the flow produced an increase in creative output and conceptual reporting.
The final limitation to this study is the constraint of the timeline. What is possible to create and research was balanced against the time available. Like all creative projects the process needed to fit within the limitations of its framework. Again this was considered a benefit, as creativity is often enhanced by the boundaries imposed, enabling a focus within the limitations in order to reach the finished work. The time restraint meant that the graphic memoir does not have all images as final artwork, which would be expected from a published work.
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Concluding Comments
In creating a YA graphic novel about forced migration at a particular period in history and the trauma it produced, I have drawn on a number of approaches to develop a particular methodology that explains a process that, to my knowledge, has not yet been discussed in a scholarly research context. Therefore, this study is significant in that it identifies a process and fills a methodological gap.
The methodology involves a process of critical enquiry that requires the researcher to explore a problem in two ways: a process of enquiry that developed conceptual understandings and one that explored graphic novel creation coming together in reflexive thought. The process of reflexivity enabled the exploration of further investigation and the development of new ideas. A life writing methodology feeds into the bi-directional exchange. Initially, using a qualitative research approach, participants were interviewed and subsequently key sample graphic novels were analysed to inform the critical and creative approaches of narrative construction and graphic language strategies.
This study raises some ethical challenges: not only in relation to the issues with regard to the interviews but also to the representation of family members in the narrative. There were also challenges in limiting the potential vision due to my close and emotional connection to the research content. However, there are some benefits that I identify as being my subjective, postmemory insights that add value to the creative piece.
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The next chapter, Chapter 3, comprises critical analysis of the chosen key texts and of my creative work, showing how the novel fits within the genre of traumatic, graphic memoirs. The chapter also identifies how the theoretical perspectives discussed in Chapter 1 have been realised in these four examples of graphic literature.
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118 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
CHAPTER 3
Emotional Journeys in Graphic Storytelling:
Approaches and Possibilities
This chapter considers how the three sample texts – Marjane Satrapi’s (2003)
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood26, David Small’s (2010) Stitches: A memoir27 and Una’s (2015) Becoming Unbecoming – informed the use of representational and multimodal features for my creative work, The Wounds of Separation. These three texts complied with my selection criteria, namely that all the texts display complex use of the graphic novel form to tell their stories and emotional journeys, using engaging and original approaches, and attend to both graphic and narrative relevance to the research questions that guide my thesis, namely:
In what ways do memory, history and identity intertwine and shape the way in which trauma is experienced and remembered? In writing for a YA audience, how can the multimodal features of the graphic memoir be stylistically constructed to assist readers to connect to unfamiliar experience in order to engender empathy?
The key sample texts can be termed graphic memoirs or life writing narratives and each contains similar narrative themes about trauma and coming-of-age
26 From here referred to as Persepolis 27 From here referred to as Stitches The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 119
challenges. They share similar commonalities to the selection criteria Chute outlines in Graphic women: Life narrative and contemporary comics, in that they
“tell and show [what] could not be communicated any other way” (Chute, 2010a, p. 2). I too aimed to use an original and creative approach in the remembering and telling of traumatic family memories. Through graphic “repictur[ing]” (p. 2), the past is brought into the present, with the possibility of building new understandings.
As shown in the key texts and in my own work, traumatic historical events are reframed in a visually untraumatic way to create recontextualised memories. All the stories are about the traumatic challenges endured by a young character who has little power in the historical, social/political context. The four texts focus on coming-of-age themes and describe personal struggle to find identity and gain agency against powerful obstacles, topics that have relevance and are considered suitable for the category of the young adult reader. They also explore the interplay between different temporally separated narrators. For example, using homodiegetic storytelling techniques, the image of the child protagonist narrates within the panel replaying relevant historical scenes and the adult narrator
(usually textual) commentates on this visual past. Located in different temporal contexts, both young and mature perspectives create interesting dramatic tensions. Other characters within the panels change the balance of the narratorial roles, increasing the complexities involved in identifying who is telling and how to understand the narrative.
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The reader is drawn into the story action which uses techniques to connect with the struggles of the characters. With simple drawing styles and minimal text each graphic novel uses shifting focalisation, metaphor, allusion and symbolism to heighten the emotional content. Each story, drawn from life, explores narrative time in different ways, with an emphasis on a subjective representation of time.
Genette (1983) explains how a subjective representation of time manifests as a complex temporal sequence, as episodes or fragments. The experience of remembering involves flashbacks and flashforwards rather than a linear progress in a uniform sequence. In all the key texts, intergenerational connections are relevant as a way to link the past to the present.
As an introduction to a detailed analysis of the key texts and to reflexive observations of my own narrative, I begin with synopses of the three focus texts and of my own creative work.
Narrative Synopses
Stitches: A Memoir
Stitches is a coming-of-age graphic narrative about David Small’s own childhood and the trials of growing up in a dysfunctional family. An adult David narrates the story, but this retrospective textual narration is minimal and used to anchor the context and chronology of episodes. Events are presented in a sequence of pictures that show David neglected and emotionally abused as the youngest in a non-communicative family. The powerlessness David feels as a child is captured
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in the imagery that portrays a boy who is “frightened, exposed, and completely at the mercy of his parents” (El Refaie, 2010, p. 60). Pictures dominate this text and visually convey the experience of growing up as a child in a family of few words and emotionless disconnection (Gilmore & Marshall, 2013). David’s suffering manifests as a frail boy who experiences many bouts of illness; he also suffers invasive radiation therapy (given by his father) which contributes to his contracting cancer in adolescence. Despite these difficult childhood experiences,
Böger describes Stitches as a “transformative narrative” (2011, p. 206) in its use of a traditional narrative structure that depicts a difficult journey through childhood, ultimately moving to a conclusion of young adulthood.
Becoming Unbecoming
Becoming Unbecoming combines Una’s personal experience of sexual abuse juxtaposed with the details of the female rapes and murders by the so-named
‘Yorkshire Ripper’ that took place in Britain in the 1980s. The story is collaged together using fragmented sequences, symbolical imagery, and documentary evidence to describe the traumatic memories of growing up in the misogynistic social climate of the time. Una, the protagonist, appears as a small figure often alone in a large, sparse landscape, to highlight her silent suffering and social isolation in dealing with the trauma of her attacks. Using a fragmented structure, the story is interwoven with details of the inadequate police search for the other women’s attacker, and shows the media-fuelled fear and misogynistic judgment within the community. The narrative content uses fact, experience and emotion to build a feminist argument, identifying an urgent need for social change. In this graphic memoir, Una adds her voice to those of other women by confronting
122 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration traumatic subjects, and through her authorial presence she makes “the hidden visible" (Chute, 2008b, p106). Comprehension of this graphic narrative requires a high degree of interactivity from the reader in filling in the textual absences and bridging the gaps to connect to the experience of sexual abuse and social judgment. Through a variety of narrative approaches, such as documentary reporting and fragmented imagery, the story captures the disruptive and partially hidden nature of traumatic memory.
Persepolis
Another powerful feminist voice is expressed in Satrapi’s Persepolis, which combines a strong and balanced ‘narrating-I’ and ‘narrated-I’ to tell the story. I have limited my analysis to the first book of Persepolis: The story of childhood, in which the young figure of Marji expresses confusion, anger and frustration in dealing with the unjust political system in Iran. The mature narrator (Marjane) guides the reader through a story that unfolds over a number of chapters. The historical location is of significance in Persepolis, which details how Satrapi’s childhood intersects with political events in Iran at the time of the Islamic
Revolution of 1979. The narrative tries to bridge a gap of understanding between
Eastern and Western cultures by showing universal life concerns using a child’s voice to describe an experience of political trauma. Young Marji’s voice is represented in the bold, black-and-white drawing style that describes her subjective witnessing of a traumatic history. Powerless to resist the oppressive regime, Marji’s parents feel forced to send her away for her education. The first book of Persepolis concludes showing how the family’s entanglement in Iran’s political history impacted on the closeness of their lives together.
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The Wounds of Separation
Unlike the autobiographical style of the three key texts, my graphic memoir, in its focus on my mother’s life in connection to my own, is a ‘relational autobiography’
(see Chapter 1). The Wounds of Separation explores how the traumatic experience of forced migration impacted my mother’s life. My presence in the story is primarily as a narrator trying to understand my mother’s life in order to unravel aspects of my own. As a child, Ella (my mother) travels on the
Kindertransport train in 1939 to escape from mounting dangers in Europe, especially for Jews, and leaves her parents, home and country to become a refugee in Britain. Drawing on primary source material – family letters, photographs, conversations with family members and my own personal memories – to support historical facts, I have re-created my mother’s story to show how Ella learns to deal with the challenges that she faces growing up by compartmentalising her life. She represses her crippling anxiety as a way of functioning in the world and seeks distractions to take her away from the pain.
Ella struggles with her inability to deal with her past traumas and integrate all parts of herself. My presence in the story provides a framework to ask the universal questions of how to deal with trauma and how to go beyond victimisation to hope. As a second-generation voice my interrogation provides an understanding that I use as a way to go forward. The story is episodic, using contrast and conflict to show Ella’s life challenges, starting with the localised home comfort enjoyed within the family which is destroyed as the disturbing world political situation unfolds. Additionally, her subjective reaction to history
124 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration is expressed in the visualisations of the inner emotional scarring of traumatic memories.
Representing Trauma and its Impact
Each of the three key texts informed my creative approach in a variety of ways.
In the following discussion I focus attention on certain aspects of each graphic memoir and analyse the storytelling techniques that have particular relevance to my creative work. For convenience, the analysis is discussed in three parts; however, aspects overlap and have relevance across these separations. In the outline of the approach taken in my own creative work, I refer to other texts that have been inspirationally useful. I reflexively consider how I adapted or expanded methods in my representational choices from this analysis. I also draw on the conceptual research understandings that have informed my work.
I begin by looking at ‘Who Tells the Story and How’- understanding that connection to the storyteller/s plays a significant part in the reader entering the story world. The narrator tells the story and the focaliser shows how the story events are experienced. Stitches is told through textual narration and shown in
‘iconic’ images, as well as through embedded narratorial roles for the characters in the scenes of the frames. My analysis aims to identify these narratorial and focalising voices and to suggest why they are endowed with this role in the storytelling space. In The Wounds of Separation, I use minimal text to contribute as an interpolated narrator with a role of linking the panel sequences as well as
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appearing as a character within the panels to become a pictorial or experiencing-
I narrator.
The section, ‘Making Connections’, considers how the narrative connects the historical past to the present. These autobiographical coming-of-age narratives are journeys of experiential self-discovery against historical challenges that ultimately describe a search for identity. I discuss how the graphic memoir shows overt emotion in character facial gestures and embodiment or through suggested expressions of emotion using illusion, metaphor and symbolism. For instance, wings are a motif used in Becoming Unbecoming that represents a shifting emotional expression in the journey of the narrative. Intergenerational references also highlight the connections between past and present. Each of the key texts uses mixed strategies relevant to the stories in establishing the significance of a generational link. In The Wounds of Separation connections between the generations are of particular relevance for a story about forced migration with generations destroyed through genocide. The story shows how links between generations can survive such traumatic disruptions.
The final section, ‘Reconstructing History’, asserts the truth of the traumatic history, structuring the content into episodes and fragments and probing how this content is linked together. The episodic structuring of Persepolis combined with the simple, stylised historical events as well as the fragmentation of sequences and juxtaposition of unrelated imagery are effective in telling the story. In discussing this narrative I analyse the spaces in-between the sequences, text and images, wordless images – the absences that need to be filled in order to
126 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration comprehend the story. Unlike the key texts, The Wounds of Separation jumps from childhood to adulthood, therefore the episodic structuring at times required large jumps through time; consequently, the gaps between temporal spaces have been carefully considered.
Who Tells the Story and How
As noted above, this section explores how Stitches and The Wounds of Separation tell their stories through the main protagonist and other characters using narratorial and focalising techniques. It examines how in a relational autobiography focalisation shifts or is shared between characters to serve in the telling of an intergenerational story. The discussion also considers how the treatment of colour contributes a dramatic focalising quality to the image.
Stitches: A Memoir
For the reader, story is a doorway to another way of being, and stepping into the shoes of a character is a powerful way to understand a different world. Stephens argues that the function of children’s literature is “to socialise its readers” (1992, p. 68) by presenting different attitudes and perspectives that can expand their understandings. The reader can be subjectively connected to a character’s experiences, but - importantly - narrative also needs to work towards developing an objective vision in the process of understanding other points of view.
Stephens (1990) points to a common practice in contemporary children’s literary fiction that limits the story to a single point of view. He criticizes the
"dominant practice amongst children's authors of employing a single focalizer"
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(1992, p. 81), which he argues perpetuates a simplistic understanding that experience is just an individual concern. He claims that literature needs to show the reader that situations are experienced in a variety of ways, and, if it is to contribute to the development of a more tolerant society, then different perspectives of experience need to be presented so that a range of viewpoints can be understood.
In describing his traumatic childhood in Stitches, Small uses particular strategies to clearly communicate his memories of these difficult years. A number of researchers have identified ways that Small has shown his own point of view using visual strategies to focalise his experience. For instance Böger describes the cascading, nested image of David’s screaming face (Stitches p. 234) as a
“visual rendition of David's state of mind” (2011, p. 613). Koch identifies the fact that the bird’s eye view composition of David strapped under the x ray machine with three angled fragments of parts of David’s face (Stitches, p. 290) “does indeed not make sense” (2016, p. 39), but that it expresses David’s childhood confusion of such an ordeal.
What has yet to be discussed is how the experiences of other characters are described in this narrative, and whether readers are being presented with another point of view or whether their presence is David’s focalisation of them as
‘object’. Using Stitches as the focus of the discussion, I discuss three aspects of focalisation technique, namely: (i) how graphic novels can embed other
“character-bound” points of view in telling a story (Bal, 2009, p. 151); (ii) how
128 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration the characters focalise a possible different vision; and (iii) how other perspectives can provide a deeper complexity to the causality of the story events.
Palmer (2002) uses the term “embedded focaliser” for the other character, as opposed to the main character. The following discussion will refer to theories of focalisation (Genette, 1993; Bal, 2009) and extend the discussion to include more recent ideas expressed in transmedial storytelling (Hermann, 2004; Mikkonen,
2008; Kukkonen, 2011). Collectively, the theories will help explain the potential effects on storytelling in shifting the focalisation between the characters.
Stitches has captured a lot of attention in the literary world because of the strength of the storytelling strategies used to communicate Small’s trauma and his attempts to connect the reader to his experience. Genette suggests that stories can give a reader “direct access” (1993, p. 65) to the subjectivity of the character’s experience, which supports an emotional reaction, enhancing meaning and understanding. This direct access is provided in a sequence of panels that shows David’s ocularisation28 of a foetus in a jar at the hospital: the panels change between or simultaneously show internal and external focalisation. Pedri (2015a) explains how one image is used to represent what
David sees followed by his anxious focalisation of that experience expressed as an image from his imagination, a strategy which can “draw readers into a storyworld” (p. 17). In another sequence, David travels in the lift to the 4th floor of the hospital; the regular-shaped, repeated panels give the feeling of the restricted space of the lift and convey the staccato rhythm of the movement of
28 As Pedri (2015a) explains, ocularisation is a term used in film studies, first used by Jost (1983) and then Gaudreant (1990), and which refers to the pictorial representation of a character’s vision. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 129
the elevator carriage moving between the floors (see Small, 2009, pp. 32-34). We witness David’s reactions of anxious curiosity as he ascends the levels of the building, catching a glimpse of what he sees along the way. On the third floor he encounters a haunting image of an old man with a tube coming out of his nose.
The old man’s fixed stare triggers a fearful response from David, and the reader is presented with the external ocularisation of David’s response to this exchange.
Finally, David arrives on the 4th floor and a new sequence is cued with a panoramic panel to highlight the new scene of the story. David is represented as a tiny figure in this large space. Segmentation of space and time into panels and panel sequences and the variation of panel size and transitions across the gutter can vary the rhythm of the graphic sentence and help to direct an interpretation of David’s experience shown in the visual text.
Stitches is about David’s experience and therefore his focalisation dominates the text. However, the discussion that follows focuses on the focalisation of an embedded character and shows how another character brings greater complexity to the understanding of the text.
The Embedded Focaliser
The addition of the embedded focaliser increases the complexity for the reading and understanding of the whole story in terms of the shifting of perspectives, attitudes and motivations. However, it is common to have one voice that is more dominant than others, and a central character that leads the way. David is the main focaliser, but, running against this, his mother focalises her role, one that is central to his abuse. In this respect the mother’s presence is part of what
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Stephens (1992) calls more generally the simple cause and effect cycle. She becomes the character-bound focaliser who is shown to be both a dysfunctional parent and an unpleasant person. The other dimension of the mother as the embedded focaliser is to increase the narrative complexity in her focalisation of her personal life challenges.
How each character contributes to the narrative is controlled by the author in the organisation of the narrative events. In Stitches the mother plays an important role in scenes where she is often shown to be an aggressive, powerful and controlling parent: the ominous figure she presents to show her “silent fury” as a she stands erect, with clenched fists, as a “black tidal wave” rages above her.
Her role in the narrative unfolds to the reader as the scenes progress (Small,
2009, p. 46). It is interesting to note, however, that the factual biographical details of Small’s parents, with the accompanying photographic portraits of them, are added in the appendix and not in the body of the graphic narrative. The inclusion of this biographical evidence shows Small’s attempt at “truth telling”
(Gilmore and Marshall, 2013, p. 26); but its placement outside the graphic text is significant in emphasising the subjective truth that Small clearly tries to communicate. The story is mainly told from his point of view. He wants the reader to empathise with the suffering he endured as an abused child. Placed at the beginning of the narrative the factual information could potentially change the way the text is understood in relation to him as central focaliser. Instead, the factual information functions as an explanation for bad parenting, not as an excuse that warrants deep consideration in comprehending the story.
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The reader needs to interpret a networked, intertwined chain of narrative relationships to understand the path mapped out by the author. This path is not always linear, though in Stitches the story is told in an essentially chronological way. An example that illustrates this is the party scene where the mother focalises her emotional reactions to the events using eye expressions (described in more detail later in this chapter). The significance of these emotional displays is clarified later in the story, when her sexual relationship with Mrs. Dillon is revealed. The narrative is structured so that the focalisers and narrators carefully reveal and conceal selected parts of the story content as an effective strategy for maintaining readers’ interest. Additionally, the graphic narrative medium allows for particular reading strategies to comprehend the related but often separated sequences in the story.
In Stitches, a very clear example of simultaneous perspectives is in the presentation of the absence or the presence of the parents’ eyes. The following section discusses this in relation to the mother’s character and what her focalising presence contributes. The reader is positioned to consider the meaning of the mother’s absent eyes as a statement of her authoritative voice and David’s expression of how he experiences her formidable presence.
Seeing Through the Mother’s Eyes
The significance of both looking and eyes in the focalisation of Stitches is an important way of showing the different subjectivities within the narrative.
Repeatedly throughout the narrative the mother’s eyes (and those of other adults) are omitted behind the surface of their spectacle glass. Larkin (2014)
132 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration argues that the blanked-out eyes cue the reader to understand that the story is not a realistic representation but a subjective expression: a subjectivity that describes David’s focalisation of his parents’ “emotional distance” (El Refaie,
2012a, p. 61). The spectacles become a visual metaphor - presenting an emotional barrier to human connection, with the missing eyes emphasising the adult blindness to David’s presence, and highlighting their lack of love and care.
Therefore, absence in pictorial representation takes on a focalising function.
The absence of the eyes creates expressionless characters, which in turn represents Small’s experience of his parents’ abusive power and control over him. In one scene, David is pulled away from the mirror in the bathroom and summoned downstairs to have “a word” with his parents (p. 148). His mother ignores his presence as he enters the room, her eyes are absent eyes but her attention is focused on manipulating a rope into sailing knots. Blanked-out spectacle glasses remain a presence as his father reprimands him, and his mother continues the lecture (while focused on the sailing knots), adding ominously, “and that is not all!” (p. 153). Three panels build a sense of rising rage from his mother, she is still devoid of eye expression but the anger is expressed in the depiction of a gaping, turned-down, black hole of her extended mouth, combined with the large type in the last speech bubble where she spits out the words: “All that smut!”(p. 153). Throughout Stitches the missing eyes are repeatedly used to show the adult contempt for David and to serve as a clear representation of the young boy’s focalisation of the embedded characters in the story.
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In contrast, the times when the eyes are shown raise all sorts of character-bound focalising possibilities that require the reader to consider which character’s point of view is being represented. I would argue that when the mother’s eyes are shown, the reader is witness to the character’s vulnerability, fear, anger and other emotional expressions, which enable understanding of her as a character.
This is clearly portrayed the first time when her eyes are seen (p. 101), which marks a significant moment, especially since it takes so long into the narrative for the expressionless mask to slip.
During a visit to Indiana with his mother, David is left alone for the day with his sadistic and tyrannical maternal grandmother (p. 83). When his mother returns to the house he tells her that he is afraid of his grandmother and begs her not to leave him alone with her again. The mother reacts by quickly covering his mouth and the next panel is a revealing moment as the mother faces away from him as she listens out for the creaking noise outside the bedroom, worrying that the grandmother might possibly be listening to their conversation. Only the reader is privy to the mother’s fearful eyes and briefly we see the vulnerable, powerless inner child of David’s mother (p. 101).
This is the first time in the narrative that the mother’s eyes can be seen behind the glasses, and the look is one of being scared and anxious. The fact that the mother is turned away from David leaves us to assume this is an expression of her emotional experience and is quite separate from David’s own focalisation. It is the first time in the narrative that the embedded focaliser demands an empathetic interpretation from the reader. It also suggests that Small
134 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration understood that his mother had a difficult childhood, with her own challenging life issues to deal with. We are given a hint that Small, as the adult storyteller, wants to show some compassion for the mother character, his difficult parent.
There are other moments in the story where the main and embedded characters could be said to be simultaneously focalising the story. In this situation meanings can be ambiguous, with alternative ways to understand the narrative.
Larkin (2014) argues that in the scene where David visits his dying mother in hospital, his focalisation is one of a young man who is “finally able to see his mother realistically” (p. 207). The realistic representation of her unguarded eyes could be the moment that he sees his mother for what she really is, a pathetic, damaged person, and not the frightening, powerful force he had previously feared. An alternative analysis of this scene is from understanding the mother’s point of view. Her expression could be interpreted as expressing the remorse she feels at her inadequate caregiving; she looks David deep in his eyes to communicate her sorrow for how she has treated him. Both interpretations are of course possible and valid, and Small offers us an ambiguous position from which to choose. The reader builds up a collection of perspectives and attitudes in constructing narrative meanings (Stephens, 1992).
There are other times where media-specific strategies clearly direct attention to the focalising character. Again relying on the impact of revealing the mother’s eyes, a significant moment is represented when David stumbles upon his mother in bed with Mrs. Dillon (p. 272). A full page with an unusually long passage of text accompanies a realistically rendered look in his mother’s unguarded eyes.
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The large piece of prose appears in contrast to the minimal narrative text in the rest of the story; and this passage is written in the first person by the narrating-I.
Text and image work together, with the text expressing his shock at what he sees and the image revealing her personal pain by showing his mother’s bare eyes, unprotected by the spectacles. Her emotion is clearly focalised in this image but the presence of David’s obtrusive voice means that these panels are balanced towards David and the reader follows him as the focaliser. The text describes his reaction and point of view in understanding her personal challenges:
After that awkward moment, while my own emotions ricocheted between
extremes of betrayal and foolishness, anger and confusion. What stayed
with me the longest time was the look mother gave me, itself full of
complex feelings few of which, I’d guess, had much to do with me. (p. 273)
Stitches contains quite a few instances where the expression depicted in the mother’s eyes reveals the focalisation of her situational experience. The figurative aspect of storytelling makes graphic narrative a powerful medium in terms of character focalisation of experience. Suzanne Keen (2011) explains that images of facial expressions and body postures are readily recognised by readers and these can be understood without the use of the locating text. Indeed, looking into a person’s eyes is considered to be a window into their soul and many literary references allude to this belief 29. For instance, on a rare social occasion, a sequence shows her animated and excited eyes at the beginning of a party (p. 113), but later her eyes show irritation and confusion as a result of Mrs.
29 One of the first references can be found in the bible Matthew 6:22-23 (King James Version) “22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light”.
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Dillon’s surprise about finding the lump on David’s neck (p. 117). The visual tracks from the mother’s doleful eyes bidding Mrs. Dillon farewell (p. 119) to her wide, crazy eyes and angry outburst – “fine end to the party” (p. 120) – and finally closing the sequence with her furious eyes accompanied with the bold, large typography of her complaint of “Doctors costing money….” (p. 122). A number of other media-specific strategies heighten the representation of these expressive eyes, such as the framing and composition of her as subject and the use of tints to add drama and focus. Overall, as an embedded character, the mother visually reveals a range of expressive perspectives that all contribute to the network of cause and effect layering in the construction of the story.
The relationship between David and the mother is a central one to understand in the telling of Stitches. With an emphasis on the visual track of the multimodal medium and through the focalisation of both David’s suffering and the mother’s bad parenting the narrative unfolds. The main focaliser holds the narrative authority in communicating his position as an abused victim. However, the mother embeds a focalising position that serves two functions: expressing her as the evil parent and revealing her personal challenges. Such a role encourages the reader to have insights into a more complicated embedded perspective and thus helps build skills of “interrogative engagement” (Stephens, 1992, p. 69) in the process of looking through different eyes.
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The Wounds of Separation
In Stitches, David’s childhood trauma is conveyed through powerful imagery and minimal use of words, an approach that I followed in The Wounds of Separation.
Both stories describe the psychological damage endured by children who are powerless in difficult and unsupportive situations. The narratives describe the effects of psychic shock: David after his operation and Ella after she is separated from her family. Each event leads to repressed emotions in the character’s inability to express fear and anxiety. The main protagonist’s silent, unexpressed trauma is shown pictorially with a minimum of words, an approach that has also been used in Becoming Unbecoming (Appleton & Mallan, 2018).
Additionally, the sharing of narratorial and focalising roles between characters, that contributes to narrative complexity within the story content, is a feature of
Stitches that informed my creative work. In Persepolis the main character Marji shares the telling and showing of the story with other characters, particularly in the recurring familial relationship within her domestic setting. The conflicts
Marji has with the authority figures within her home reflect the struggles of
Iranian citizens against the oppressive state. In The Wounds of Separation a number of characters are embedded in the text and have particular functions in the storytelling, as discussed later in this section. However, the partnered relationship between my mother and me, with the focus on my mother’s life, is different from embedded focalisation. Throughout the narrative my mother and I share the storytelling space, shifting from scenes that show our interactions to scenes where I am telling aspects of her life or the historical context with which
138 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration she is entwined. Consequently, such a partnership has led me to identify my story as a relational autobiography.
Relational Autobiography
In the creation of The Wounds of Separation I initially identified the narrative function of each character in order to achieve the correct overall narrative balance required for this relational autobiography. To achieve this I needed to understand the particular character roles for narratorial telling and experiential showing in the story world. As previously discussed, the narrative shows events in my mother’s life as well as her reaction to traumatic experience. I initially developed strategies to visually communicate perceptual and non-perceptual (or cognitive) focalisation as a reaction to these experiences. In order to understand aspects of my own life, my presence was to tell relevant parts of my mother’s story, which included scenes before I was born as well as our shared life.
Therefore I needed to not only be a narrator telling the story but also a focaliser in order to show how our mother/daughter relationship impacted my life. My role as narrating-I in the captioned text and experiencing-I in the paneled scenes changed throughout the story. Other characters in the narrative also are relational to my mother and intertwined in the historical context with her. In the performative nature of the graphic memoir scenes, a character’s role in The
Wounds of Separation appears like the director’s notes for each of the actors in a play (Groensteen, 2013). For instance, my mother’s uncle (Heino) is the special relative who Ella adores in the way that he spoils her with presents and plays
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games with her (TWoS, pp. 22-2430). He goes to great lengths to try and find a way to help the children escape from the impending danger.
The story is told through the character narrators and focalisers using the action or speech of the characters, the captioned text, and the paneled scene. As the director/creator of the paneled sequence I have used “the medium-specific features in graphic storytelling” (Mikkonen, 2011, p. 637) to tell this story of personal traumatic experience entangled in complex world events; a discourse that is achieved through the manipulation of a range of elements working together or apart, each with an allocated function in the telling of the story
(Mikkonen, 2008).
Shared Telling and Showing in a Relational Autobiography
The Prologue of The Wounds of Separation foregrounds the text as a relational autobiography. The reader is introduced to the struggles my mother faces after my sister leaves home, while I express anger at her inability to be a parent to me.
My mother is overpowered by haunting demons depicted in black cells as they surround and engulf her small figure. On the next page I go on to show how “I tried to get through” (TWoS, p. 6, see Figure 4.1), as I peer through a keyhole into this tormented world. As a cognitive focalisation of her emotional state, it is difficult to identify the source of these images, whether they are my visions as the narrating-I looking into a world I cannot get her out of, or a nightmare imagining of what my mother is experiencing. I reflexively considered whether this distinction was important to show but decided it was clarified later in the
30 The page numbers will be accompanied with the abbreviation TWoS in this section refer to pages from The Wounds of Separation, the graphic narrative that is being discussed.
140 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration text. However, I did conclude that the difference is inconsequential in understanding the story where the mixing of the mother/daughter related perspective is not one that always has to be separated.
Figure 4.1: The difficulty of identifying the focalising character (TwoS, p. 6).
Additionally, in a visual medium the narration and focalisation often work together and cannot be separated. For instance my forceful presence in the first two pages asserts me as both focaliser and narrating-I. My narratorial role is maintained throughout the text, except for a few passages where, for specific narrative reasons, other characters take over (discussed in the next section). On the first page all pictorial and textual elements work together to deliver a dramatic opening to the story. In contrast to the tensions that can be created when “verbal narration, scenic showing, and visual focalization” (Mikkonen,
2008, p. 313) work in opposition, another narrative tension is created in expression of an angry, unpleasant character-bound focalisation. The narrating-I establishes the retrospective temporal location, “When I was a teenager I was so full of anger” (TWoS, p. 2, see Figure 4.2); the experiencing-I thought bubble text
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supports the captioned text using typographic emphasis in the word “hate”. In the image, the facial grimace and upward glance looking directly at the reader boldly crosses the boundaries of the storyworld using a metaleptic narratorial approach that strongly focalises a clear perspective (Kukkonen, 2013). Thus, from the beginning the text establishes that narratorial and focalising roles are closely associated and sometimes cannot be separated. Additionally, though my presence is not obvious throughout the narrative, this full-page image of the experiencing-I firmly shows that my presence will be an integral part of the plot.
Figure 4.2: Establishing the relational characters (TWoS, pp. 2-3).
The relational story demands a flow of narratorial and focalising roles coming together and moving apart for the two character perspectives in telling the story.
Using little dialogue, my mother consistently functions as an experiencing-I, visually narrating aspects of her life and focalising emotional reactions to experiences. In contrast, my role fluctuates in the storytelling space. For instance, my presence in the captioned text narrating-I is foregrounded with the
142 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration use of the first person; alternatively, it is backgrounded using an omnipresent textual style. Groensteen (2013) comments that the graphic memoir is suited to varying the storytelling approaches as the plot develops, “the intervention of multiple narrative ‘voices,’ a reciter that is successively interventionist and mute, narration in the past or present tense, etc” (Groensteen, 2013, p. 117). In the first five chapters my relational identity functions in the background and as an omnipresent narrator I contextualise the paneled scenes to create an illusion of objectivity in describing historical events. The scenes focus on the relationship of previous generations and provide an answer to the question implicit in the statement “I have always wondered how my grandparents could have put their children on the train” (TWoS, p. 14). The chapters that follow show the events that led to my mother’s separation. The emotional climax of the story, after the moment of separation, is the point at which I step forward into the storytelling space as a diegetic and mimetic narrator, where three generations of women narrate and focalise the impact of this catastrophic event. I then step away again to highlight the isolated phase of my mother’s life moving into a summarised transition between childhood and parenthood. In the last two chapters we come together in the intertwined shared space as mother and daughter to show our conflicted and contrasted perspectives. The concluding section, “Next…” (TWoS, p. 209) is left for me to narrate and focalise my understanding of the past that I take into my own family’s future.
While the first page foregrounds the voice of the narrator, the second page establishes the relational aspects of this story in a media-specific way. The mise en page organisation shows a panel sequence that highlights two figures trapped The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 143
within a circular temporal movement. Initially laid out in the conventional progressive sequence of panels, I decided to reconfigure this page to visually emphasise a repetition of experience and the feeling of being trapped in time.
The arrangement of the paneled boxes, together with the arrows, form a circle around the narrating-I text that sits in the small space in the middle of the page,
“I was trapped in a vicious circle” (TWoS, p. 3, see Figure 4.2). In this way the narrating-I text manages to graphically produce a focalised discursive message, expressing an experiential perspective of entrapment, which works in collaboration with the content of the panels.
In each of the five panels that make up the circle, two figures face each other within the limited space of the frames to highlight the significance of the relationship with self and consequently with mother. The first panel, as a continuation of the ‘hate’ thought on the first page, depicts a common symbol used in graphic memoirs, the experiencing-I staring at my mirrored reflection
(Chaney, 2011b; El Refaie, 2012b). In the act of observing self, “the framing of the mirror-frame within the panel often functions to represent the subject’s sense of fragmentation” (Elahi, 2007, p. 321), which is manifested in this panel as self- loathing in my search for identity. In the next panel the experiencing-I looks away from my reflection, visually focalising the self-disgust and shame that expresses my “lack of confidence” (TWoS, p. 3). The remaining three panels in the circle are essentially a repeat of the first two panels; however, the mirrored reflection is replaced with my mother. Echoing the focalisation of self-anger, the frames show the reflected sense of self that a daughter receives from her relationship with her mother and vice versa. I show the anger that my mother
144 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration never had the opportunity to express as I use her to support me to stand up tall.
For both of us, we are enmeshed in our reflected perspectives, a relationship that is explored in the content of the book in an attempt to move out of the angry entrapment of this vicious circle.
I did question how to make my main narrating-I character visually recognisable with a changing appearance through narrative time. I followed an approach taken in Becoming Unbecoming that uses a distinctive visual first person representation throughout the narrative. Except for a few significant representations, Una appears with a black hair fringed bob (at different lengths) in a short white shift dress. The consistency of this representation is highlighted in the double-page spread (Una, 2015, pp. 144-145) that visually summarises her consistent visual appearance as she grows up “with the knowledge that [she] had to be careful or the Ripper might get [her]” (p. 144). Apart from a few subtle changes in hair style, dress length and dress shape, Una’s distinct, expressionless look is also handled with a constant pictorial treatment that conveys a particular affect: “view[ed] from a distance; aloof, alone with an air of melancholy, a character that embodies a ‘victim’ demeanour – hunched shoulders, downcast look” (Appleton & Mallan, 2018, p. 51).
Apart from a few child versions of myself, I am consistently drawn with the same appearance over the decades that the story covers. My older diegetic narrating-I presence leads the path of this introductory section in the Prologue and develops the relationship of struggle in the focalisation of my mother and my connected
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perspectives. In my pictorial embodiment (El Refaie, 2012b) I focalise a self- absorbed teenager who is shown to find the fluctuating emotional states of my mother hard to deal with; and who has little compassion for her and her troubled state. In two places, I use a metaleptic approach to step out of the story world, and a portrait image of my experiencing-I presence addresses the reader. I explain that “My mum didn’t have a good start in life” (TWoS, p. 9, see Figure
4.3), with a finger crossing over the panel frame and pointing to the bottom of the page. My action makes the reader conscious of "the materiality of text”
(Hatfield, 2009, p. 147) in my use of the space of the page to build my visual explanation. I hover over and assertively direct the unfolding pictorial presentation. However, this figurative depiction is the same ponytailed image of myself shown in the teenager experiencing-I acting within the scenes. The image symbolically stands for me by describing my identity, rather than presenting a realistic representation of my appearance. I am, as Eakin notes, “proclaim[ing] the continuous identity of [my]sel[f] early and late” (1999, p. 93), using a symbolical image of self that represents the first person ‘I’ pronoun. Eakin identifies the problematic nature of use of this static ‘I’ pronoun that does not contain the notion of “the body changes, consciousness changes, memory changes, and identity changes” (p. 93). In the context of the narrative, my presence is always as the daughter of my mother and so my relational identity never changes; therefore, I consider my fixed physical representation appropriate. Also the consistency shows that my mimetic and diegetic personae might be temporally different but essentially share the same understandings.
146 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Figure 4.3: The metaleptic narrator observes the story world (TWoS, p. 9).
In contrast to my fixed identity, my mother’s life drastically changes in the story.
The significance of three identity changes – the supported child, the independent young (refugee) adult, and finally the responsible and challenged mother – I consider are important to separate as a way of helping character narration and focalisation of these different life positions. These life stages synchronise into significant time periods which have been graphically visualised into three distinct stages: the pre- and war period (1935-1945), the immediate post-war period (1945-60), and finally the 1960s to recent decades. I am considering labelling these time periods with the use of one extra colour, as discussed below.
All the key graphic novels have restricted the use of colour, mainly limited to black and white. In all cases the treatment of colour contributes a dramatic focalising quality to the image. This feature has been discussed elsewhere in relation to Persepolis and Stitches. However, Becoming Unbecoming uses an inconsistent treatment. The majority of pages in Becoming Unbecoming
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incorporate a grey tint to give form to the line drawings that “contributes to the bleak mood of the story” (Appleton & Mallan, 2018, p. 51). Additionally, on a few random pages a bright spot of color stands out as a feature on the page, but the significance of this colour is sometimes hard to determine (e.g., Una, 2015, p. 68).
I also chose to restrict the colour palette to black and white, but unlike Una’s approach, I experimented with the use of extra colour to add another layer of visual meaning. Rather than use a full colour rendering in the panels I tried using three extra colours to denote the three different periods of time. I have used a dull sepia tone for the pre-war years, a medium sepia hue for post-war years, and an orange for more recent times. Consequently colour takes on a particular visual meaning and helps to articulate the telling of the story, so that
“the ideas behind the art are communicated more directly. Meaning transcends form. Art approaches language” (McCloud, 1993, p. 192). There are a number of temporal mixes in the narrative with generational connection and the past interacting with the present. The use of the extra colour works with the spatial dimension to label the temporal locations.
I am always shown dressed in trousers as opposed to my mother who is always drawn wearing a dress or skirt, even as a young girl. As El Rafai notes, symbolic cartoon images “rely more heavily on cultural conventions than on material likeness.” (2012b, p. 152) In this respect I did question whether my choices for these figurative narrators relied too heavily on gender stereotypes. In Becoming
Unbecoming there are only two occasions where the main character ‘Una’ is wearing trousers; otherwise, as previously mentioned, she is wearing a white
148 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration dress. With only two depictions of Una in trousers the images stand out as being significant. The first, as an introductory image, establishes Una as a symbol of any girl of her age who would wear trousers, denoted by the tabs that protrude from the sides of her body (Una, 2015, p. 13). The second time Una is shown wearing trousers is in a scene showing her first encounters with sexual molesters, when she was told “it’d be a lot easier next time if you wore a skirt” (p.
36). In this case the trousers are part of the story of her attack and so are included as part of the evidence. This is in contrast to the narrating-I depiction of
Una in her simple white dress, in which she is a figurative symbol representing a perception of feminine vulnerablity attributed to all teenage girls, and is therefore “one of many” (p. 10). I am aware of the sociocultural implications that artists face when depicting themselves and others, for as El Refai notes,
“[p]ictorial embodiment is thus always profoundly social and political activity”
(2012b, p. 73). In reflecting on these considerations for my novel I considered that some conventional approaches are necessary in order to keep the correct narrative focus, and I assessed that the treatment I chose for my female styling was appropriate for the era. I did try to attend to such issues throughout the creative process, and I raised questions about other possible gendered treatments that I identified that extended to other parts of the narrative. In the styling of my mother and myself I understood that the use of trousers and the skirt signifies generational difference between these two relational characters.
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Making Connections
To make historic stories relevant to readers in different temporal contexts requires building pathways from which to connect. In this section, I consider further methods of encouraging links between the story’s historical content and the reader. I explore how Stitches and The Wounds of Separation have addressed intergenerational connections.
A connection of particular relevance to the implied YA reader is the coming-of- age challenge – the search for identity. The graphic memoirs I discuss depict such struggles in the expressive focalisation of characters in dealing with their traumatic memories. Additionally, internal emotions and mental states are commonly represented as symbols or metaphors. In Becoming Unbecoming, desolate landscapes, problem mounds and wings are recurring images and metaphors. Similarly, in relation to The Wounds of Separation I discuss how significant objects (blanket and suitcase, threads of yarn) and the haunting images of Ella’s mind are woven into the story and have narrative symbolic meaning.
Building the Vision of Trauma Through the Generations
Stitches: A Memoir
Intergenerational transmission of trauma is a strong theme in Stitches (Small,
2009), and this is clearly focalised by the mother and David. Marianne Hirsch
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(1992, 2008) discusses ideas of intergenerational trauma being passed down the generations in her theory of postmemory (as discussed in Chapter 1). Stitches addresses such issues in a story that suggests history repeats itself. David’s mother’s memory connection to the past has infiltrated into her life challenges with an implied belief that it will affect her son’s future.
Significantly, there is a small section of the narrative that is devoted to the voice of the mother and presents as an embedded narrative by an embedded narrator.
It is a section of the text that has been generally ignored by commentators of this literary work, even though there are many aspects that are important to the understanding of the overall story. This section is visually separated from the main narrative by a different drawing style to cue the change in narratorial voice from the adult David to the reminiscing mother (pp. 68-75). She describes ancestral history using a surprisingly light-hearted, caricatured visual register to represent her authoritative voice. Fisher and Hatfield (2011) consider how style of drawing is like voice or syntax in prose fiction, and how it helps to show a character’s subjectivity through pictures. The “graphic handwriting”
(Groensteen, 2013, p. 112) chosen by Small to represent his mother’s voice is a whimsical style that mimics the genre of the early twentieth century comedy comics31. Characters are depicted with overly exaggerated body gestures and overstated expressions as a way of highlighting the humour in the graphic stories. Lefèvre describes drawing style as an important part of the narrative world in the creation of the “ontology of the representable or visualizable” (2011,
31 Such as Rudolf Dirk’s and Harold H Knerr’s 'The Katzenjammer Kids' (1912 to 1949), a comic strip that was first published in the New York Journal (see Booker 2014). The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 151
p. 16). Small has created an interesting contrast by using a humorous graphic style for the voice of a serious, dominating mother who is recounting tragic family stories. An ironic representation using graphics that suggest comedy, nostalgia and ‘the good old days’ provides a visual contrast to the verbal description of the mother’s dysfunctional family and the sad memories of her disturbed background. Her acerbic humour expresses her bitterness in recounting the sad history that has affected her life.
The mother’s narrative fills eight pages, coming early in the complete story, and briefly touches on some quirky family history. Her stories seem inconsequential in describing generations far removed from their time in 1950s America. In the middle of her narrative section, a double page (pp. 70-71) returns the reader to present time (1950s), with David and his mother travelling in her car across a level crossing. The representation repeats the retro grey, tinted line and wash drawing style used on previous pages to evoke this era. However, this double spread mixes the narration and time zones in a way that only the graphic narrative medium and film are able to do. The narratorial text is the voice of the mother placed in combination with the 1950s’ image that juxtaposes an image from the mother’s story. It takes some deduction by the reader to work out this confusing mixture of voices and time zones, but it highlights how her stories of the past have relevance to the story of the present. The mother describes a few family members, briefly touching on a number of stories, though the significance of the details is hard for a reader to identify on first reading. However, it is in the connecting of narrative threads and the medium’s facility to recap and revisit
152 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration that Small is able to embed these seemingly unrelated stories, using the mother’s voice as her narratorial focalisation. This embedded narrative is an alternative method of presenting the factual biography inserted in the appendix (as previously mentioned), and provides a more subtle explanation of the cause and effect dimension of the mother’s past. The drawing style chosen for this section creates an interesting embedded focalising perspective from the mother in her narratorial role.
Some of the mother’s stories are later shown to have intergenerational connections - such as the genetic intergenerational connection of the heart being on the wrong side of the body (p. 69); but this is only understood after reading the mother’s biographical details at the back of the book (p. 327). Also, part of her story points towards the repetition of history in the loss of the great grandfather’s32 vocal cords (p. 73) and David’s later vocal loss (p. 183). However, the embedded narrative and the focalisation in the storytelling serve to describe the source of her own emotional dysfunctionality: that she was raised by people who were unable to give or receive love.
Another sequence that implies intergenerational connection and the repetition of family history is when the mother visits David in hospital. The image focalises her fear that her son is about to die (pp. 171-173) by using the expressive qualities of her face and eyes. However, her worry is turned back into conflict with an image that represents the blurring of genetics, generation and trauma in
32 The Great Grandfather lost his vocal cords by coincidence and not otherwise related as a consequence of drinking Draino. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 153
the panels that come together to present the two halves of David’s face and the mother’s locked together in a scowl (p. 174). In the illustration, the mirrored similarity of these juxtaposed images gives a strong statement of intergenerational trauma.
Finally, David’s dream sequence at the end of the book again shows his mother’s belief in their intergenerational connection. A figure sweeps the path from
David’s house to another building that turns out to be the place “where grandma had been locked away. The Old Central State Asylum” (p. 324). In the depiction of the mother’s deranged appearance, the reader is led to understand that she is focalising her inherited insanity. She too is part of the Asylum shown in her wide, beady eyes as she directs David into the building, “clearing the way for
[David] to follow” (p. 324).
The Wounds of Separation
All the selected memoirs include connections between generations in their focus of remembering; and each generational character role is constructed according to the direction of the story. As discussed above, Stitches includes his mother and grandmother as embedded focalisers to show the emotional disconnects between the generations and their role in creating his childhood trauma. In
Persepolis, Marji’s mother shows “her dissidence, her feminism, and her desire for her daughter’s freedom”, but the “cost of maternal sacrifice” (Millar, 2007, p.
27) is only suggested. Only at the end of the story is this theme addressed, using
154 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration a dramatic last image when the mother is seen collapsed in her husband’s arms as her Marji leaves Iran (p. 153). In Persepolis, Marji’s parents and grandmother were included to explain the relevant history and show the intimacy of intergenerational connection. Indeed it has been suggested by Nabizadeh that
“Satrapi uses the figure of the mother as a metaphor for the intensely intimate relation she holds with Iran” (2011, p. 137). In the same way that the focus is on
Marji’s experience and the generational contribution is only to add to her story, my presence in The Wounds of Separation is limited to the telling of my mother’s story. However, as a second-generation story I show the connections between generations and the results of severing familial ties. There is a suggestion of a
“transgenerational transmission of the Holocaust past” (Fischer, 2015, p. 3), but like Fischer’s critical study of second-generation literature, my story tries to probe into an “active, conscious exploration of [my] family’s past and present” (p.
3) in an attempt to understand the wounds of my mother’s history.
It is in the Prologue that I identify the motivation of the story as being the need to reconnect intergenerational disruptions in order to move forward with understanding. My mother tells me that her therapist recommends that she revisit the past to deal with her present unhappiness, but these are memories
“[she] would rather forget” (TWoS, p. 13, see Figure 4.4). Her figurative embodiment shows that she is unable and unwilling to move out of the temporal space she inhabits, while a child version of herself attempts to take her back in time. My mother’s hand crosses the frame into her childhood space. The active
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sweep of the child’s dress and the expansive unframed space she inhabits expresses this free and happy place, compared to my mother’s constricted existence. In the next frame (TWoS, p. 13) I stand as a reluctant mediator between these two temporal places. Standing in the present I contemplate what my mother’s past can offer me. Fogelman has suggested that it is the third- generation descendents of Holocaust survivors who have the “ability to transform the emotional effects of the Holocaust by letting go” (2008, para. 20).
In the next panel, by stepping out of my angry skin I show that I too can make this choice as a second-generation survivor. I do not need to suffer the “silent scars” (Fogelman, 2008, para. 15) of intergenerational trauma; but in order to protect myself, I need to develop an understanding that the trauma is my mother’s and not mine.
Figure 4.4: The mixing of temporal locations and generations (TWoS, p. 13).
In the story I represent my distant connection with my grandparents by showing how I have imagined a link with these missing family members. In Chapter 6 (p.
156 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
TWoS 115), I depict the limited relationship I had with the couple that look out of a “silver halide, two dimensional image” (TWoS, p. 116, see Figure 4.5). I show the comfort I felt from a blanket that I thought was “infused with my grandmother’s love” (TWoS, p. 117, see Figure 4.5). In another image I hold two images in the palm of my hand above my head and look out with sadness into the eyes of the reader, highlighting the severed connection between three generations (TWoS, p. 124, see Figure 4.6). My viewpoint and placement are significant. Centred between two images, I show how I am embroiled in the sadness of their separation, and - positioned above my head - I imply the influence this parting has had ‘over’ my life.
Figure 4.5: Connecting the generations (TWoS, pp. 116-117).
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Figure 4.6: The severed connection between three generations (p. TWoS 124).
It was important to represent the nonexistent relationship with my grandparents, one that my mother did not try to bridge. In the panels I do not show any imagined or direct interaction with these family members. Like many of the second-generation, my sister and my cousins grew up with a silence of the past,33 with the survivors repressing past memories and protecting their children from the sadness of their loss (Barnett, 2004). I have further visually distanced the younger generation in the concluding section of the book entitled
“Next: Into the light” (TWoS, p. 209, see Figure 4.7), where I subtly suggest a fragile familial link between my grandparents and my children. The shadows of two figures can be seen from behind the net-curtained window in the house, looking on as my children play in the snow, while my narratorial voice contemplates that the snowfall “felt like a gift from them to their great
33 For instance, in an interview with my cousin (interview, 6 November 2015), when asked how close she felt to her grandparents Anne Masters said, “I feel sorry for them, but I feel I know very little about them, and I wonder why actually, I don’t know if whether that’s because my mother left when she was young, she’s never sort of painted much of a picture of who they were”.
158 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration grandchildren” (TWoS, p. 216). With no figurative form, the vague outline of their shadows symbolises the faint influence they exert on my children’s lives. In contrast, on the next page the inclusion of the realistic framed, family photograph shows that the memory of my grandparents will never be forgotten.
Figure 4.7: The shadows in the window symbolise the faint influence between generations (TWoS, p. 124).
Thematic Braiding to Show Personal Struggle
Becoming Unbecoming
Thematic braiding is the use of a “network of associations” (Fischer and Hatfield,
2001, p. 82) that can be interwoven throughout the story to represent emotional reactions. The concept of braiding makes the graphic medium particularly suitable for a story that includes emotional themes of trauma and/or repression
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(Groensteen, 2007). In Becoming Unbecoming the reader comes to recognise recurring wordless themes that symbolise the enduring nature of such feelings.
Una weaves particular visual motifs into the story to express the fear and alienation she felt as a consequence of her sexual attacks. A significant motif that appears intermittently throughout the story is the empty speech bubble to which she is attached. It is a visual metaphor that represents her inability to talk about her traumatic experience. Silence is highlighted as a central theme in the story, and an opening, wordless full-page image shows Una struggling up a steep mound, hunched over under the weight of her difficult load, her empty speech bubble. On the front cover her silence takes on another form and the empty speech bubble becomes a balloon that Una hangs onto as she floats, isolated and alienated, above a desolate landscape.
Symbolic themes are sometimes used as “reflective, emotional pause[s]” which often follow as a reaction to experience (Appleton & Mallan, 2018, p. 59). Despite the statement – “the incident with Damian was thoroughly buried’ (Una, 2015, p.
25) – Una is depicted carrying her heavy load, now an enlarged bubble, up one steep mound and then other, and later as she trudges over mounds and steep rocky heights she contemplates upon the fact that ironically, “hindsight is a marvellous thing” (p. 46). In the first half of the story, this repeated symbol of silence is one of the themes that appears fragmented in the narrative network.
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It is sometimes difficult to understand the symbolic imagery with no words to anchor meaning and, as a result, filling in the gaps between juxtaposed images requires a high degree of interactive interpretation by the reader. The significance of the mounds and trees (e.g., p. 15), for example, early in the story is difficult to identify, but progressing further into the story the repetition of this mounded landscape leads to an interpretation of struggle. For instance, the backdrop behind the “other girls at school” is a landscape made up of steep mounds (p. 27), following on after an image of Una struggling with her empty speech bubble, the contoured backdrop suggests life at school wasn’t easy. In another example, words confirm what the sloped mounds represent: following the contour of steep hills, they speak of struggle: “It was not easy to negotiate this landscape” (p. 69).
Some of the symbolic themes become absent or change in reaching the narrative resolution. For instance, to show that Una was “in a different category of female”
(p. 52), she represents herself with wings and a proboscis protrudes from the top of her head. The additions are repeated as she walks past hostile students on her way to school (p. 68), and again as she stands in front of the landscape that was difficult to negotiate (p. 69). The side vision of Una’s winged figure (though she loses her proboscis) is depicted on ten more occasions, until she represents herself as a green winged insect and explains: “I got better at concealing my true form” (p. 120). After grappling with some of the facts about sexual violence and moving to a place that was “better than being a victim” (p. 142), the insect theme is gradually resolved. On a full page, a chrysalis (p. 142) denotes an important The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 161
change for Una, and a few pages on, “Una’s wings are shown to work and flight becomes part of her recovery” (p. 162). From representing Una’s emotional isolation and alienation, the winged symbol is shown to metamorphosise. She is transformed into “a different creature” (p. 163) and the wings become a metaphor for freedom.
The Wounds of Separation
The metamorphic theme in Becoming Unbecoming is braided into the network of a story to describe a journey of change. In the other key texts, graphic themes are used to bind the story fragments together, showing that “braiding in comics does something medium specific: it confers unity via fragmentation” (Fischer &
Hatfield, 2011, p. 85). Alice in Wonderland is deployed as an important theme in
Stitches. As a boy, David wanted hair like Alice as it gave her “magic ability”
(Small, 2009, p. 56) and gave him a way to escape the horrors of his life into a fantasy world. Later in the story, David’s therapist, being the first person to show him care, is depicted as the White Rabbit (pp. 251-256), giving a visual connection to David’s Wonderland. In The Wounds of Separation I use a few approaches to draw out the emotional content, linking the different narrative parts together, and to help readers connect to the story.
I use yarn as a metaphor and thematic braiding device that changes through the course of the story. Initially, Sidonia uses yarn or thread to “sew[] love into their skin” in the hope that it “would keep them together” (TWoS, p. 87, see Figure
162 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
4.8); and so the thread is a symbol of Sidonia’s focalisation of maternal love. At the beginning of their separation, and as a reflection of her emotional turmoil,
Ella finds her mama’s yarn in a tangled mess (see Figure 4.9). In this instance, the symbolic meaning of the yarn changes and becomes an object to focalise Ella’s feelings of withdrawn love and abandonment. In the process of coming to terms with the separation from her parents, Ella manages to unravel the ball of yarn so the thread can be used in a cat’s cradle game (see Figure 4.9). The yarn reflects
Ella’s emotional state, and here she moves into a place of greater understanding in being able to feel the love of her parents. Not until later in the story does the yarn reappear as a summarising bridging device between Ella’s childhood and her adult life. This time a ball of yarn represents her emotional journey with each strand composed of “love and struggle […] all tightly wound so not to unravel”
(TWoS, p. 167, see Figure 4.10). Later the threads do unravel, winding round
Ella’s neck and around the arms of anyone wanting to help, to show that the ball of yarn works - together with the suitcase - to symbolise her repressed emotions
(see Figure 4.10).
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Figure 4.8: Yarn is used as a metaphor and thematic braiding device (TWoS, p. 87).
Figure 4.9: The symbolic meaning of the yarn changes in the story (TWoS , pp. 133-134).
164 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Figure 4.10: Emotional journeys and repressed emotions (TWoS, p. 167 and TWoS, p. 184).
Figure 4.11: The suitcase signifies different emotional feelings (TWoS, pp. 9-10).
Using an object as a metaphor to represent an embodied experience needs an understanding of contextual conventions, so that the meaning is recognisable and translatable (El Refaie, 2014). The suitcase is commonly used as a symbol in
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literature about journeys and leaving homelands 34. In The Wounds of Separation the suitcase not only conveys its normal function in a journey, but also features throughout the story to signify a variety of emotional feelings. In the Prologue, the upright, stacked suitcases represent the unstable emotional foundations on which Ella built her new life. With an understanding that Britain was to be a temporary home, “she never unpacked” (TWoS, p. 9, see Figure 4.11). Here the suitcase symbolises ideas of impermanence and movement, using an upright suitcase that is ready to be carried away for the outward journey. In contrast, on the next page, I contemplate how her life might have been different if the suitcase had been placed on its side, connoting a settled permanent position (see Figure
4.11). Later the suitcase’s symbolic meaning changes, becoming the emotional baggage that she carries through her life, that sometimes she can leave, but other times it flattens her to the ground (see Figure 4.12). Connecting the theme of the suitcase being a “portion of [Ella’s] home” (TWoS, p. 89, see Figure 4.12), in the
Wyberlye Children’s Home Ella climbs into the small, safe space of her suitcase
‘home’ (see Figure 4.13). Here the suitcase becomes a place to hide herself; later this idea develops further and Ella realises that the suitcase is a place where she can hide her struggles. Difficult emotions, such as Ella’s fears and feelings of inadequacies, and the sadness that comes from reading her parents’ letters, are stuffed into the suitcase and hidden under her bed (see Figure 4.13). Having never dealt with her repressed emotions, the slow “unravel[ling]” (TWoS, p. 167) of Ella’s tightly woven ball of emotion later climaxes in the explosion of the
34 For instance a well-known wordless graphic novel that uses a suitcase is Tan, S. (2006) The Arrival: London, Hodder & Stoughton.
166 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration suitcase (see Figure 4.14), releasing her past fears and anxieties. After this point, her physical strength wanes and she becomes terminally sick (see Figure 4.14).
At the end of my mother’s story, significantly but subtly represented, the suitcase containing traumatic and repressed emotions is left on the platform on the station (see Figure 4.15). In the concluding section, I realise I have to deal with my “inheritance”(TWoS, p. 211, see Figure 4.16), to stop the possibility of intergenerational trauma. The suitcase is a repeated object throughout the story, primarily used as a metaphor for the representation of repressed psychic imagery, the emotional parts of Ella’s life that she is unwilling and unable to deal with.
Figure 4.12: Emotional baggage (TWoS, pp. 11-12).
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Figure 4.13: A place to hide emotional struggles (TWoS, p. 131 and TWoS, p. 152).
Figure 4.14: Emotions unravel (TWoS, p. 186 and TWoS, p. 189).
Figure 4.15: Traumatic and repressed emotions left behind (TWoS, pp. 206-207).
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Figure 4.16: Dealing with an “inheritance” (TWoS, p. 211).
Some themes are used to bridge different parts of the story together in the framework of the narrative structure. I use a circular narrative arrangement, beginning with the train leaving the station and ending with the return journey.
Using the train in this way both highlights the importance of this travel feature of the story and functions as a symbol that connects the past to the present. At the beginning of the story, a full-page train on a track visually cues the movement back in time, from my temporal location into my mother’s childhood (see Figure
4.17). Half way through the narrative, after the children leave on the train (see
Figure 4.18), the temporal location changes again, and in the final chapter or epilogue, located in my present, I contemplate what my grandparents would think of me. The departure of my mother on the train at the end of her story is a sentimental option in suggesting her journey back in time to her home concluding the circular structure of the narrative (see Figure 4.19).
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Figure 4.17: The travel feature of the story and connecting the past to the present (TWoS, p. 16).
Figure 4.18: The train is used in the circular structure of the narrative (TWoS , pp.112-113).
Facial expressions, bodily positions and dialogue are the obvious way to connect to a character’s subjective perspective and emotional states (Keen, 2003;
Kukkonen, 2013). Additionally, I highlight another prominent, expressive feature in my drawings by accentuating the drama of the hands. I am aware that my drawing style depicts hands out of proportion to the dimensions of the represented figure. I consciously chose “a certain perspective on the diegesis”
(Lefèvre, 2011, p. 16) to visually emphasise connection and separation by using
170 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration hands as the expressive focus. I consider this to be an intrinsic graphic theme to feature in a narrative that addresses the trauma of forced migration.
Reconstructing History
Graphic memoirs combine historical facts and life memories moulded into the speculative imaginings that are necessary in the construction of a story. In a mix of fiction with non-fiction, claims of truth become redundant; instead, an authentic blending of content helps separates the real from the creative (El
Refaie, 2010). An authentic reconstruction of history in a graphic memoir incorporates the creative reinterpretation of the past whilst retaining some factual integrity. The following analysis shows how Persepolis and The Wounds of
Separation can be seen as "not mimesis, copies of [a] life, but poiesis: a creation and construction of [the] past” (Mallan, 2013b, p. 18). The reframing of history used in the key texts reveals imaginative ways of limiting information and integrating the factual content into the narrative.
I now examine how the reframing of history in a graphic memoir raises questions of truth telling and authenticity as they are presented in both words and images, as well as through fragmented sequences. The discussion considers the different ways in which visual treatment – black and white contrast, simple stylisation, and the remixing of original texts and images into the content – are deployed in the texts to confirm the basis of historical truth that underpins the stories. It also examines how the manipulation of time and space is integral to
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creating rhythm and dramatic tension, and to building the links between the past and the present. Combined with the connected memories of the creator of the story and the linking of sequences by the reader, I argue that the graphic memoir builds a reconstructed approach to history.
Limiting and Presenting the Facts
Persepolis
In Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis (2007), Marji bears witness to the Islamic
Revolution (1978), and in the act of remembering, this graphic memoir visualises history as seen through the eyes of herself as a child and then as a teenager. The story is told in two main parts, separated by two different visual representations of the experiencing-I. In the first part, Marji is depicted as a strong-willed and defiant small child, shown in the first panel with captioned text that states, “This was in 1980” (p. 3). The second part comes half way through the book, where a more mature visual depiction of Marji takes over the narratorial role as the experiencing-I. The change is cued by the words, “it was the beginning of the war” (p. 71). However, this moment, “in September 1980…” (p. 77), has the same temporal location as the beginning of the story; but Marji now has a different visual appearance. These two versions of the young Satrapi - or
“autobiographical avatars” - (Whitlock, 2006, p. 971) divide the book into two distinct parts, and I argue that each has a different narratorial function in the story. Overall, both figurative narrators are used to present Satrapi’s
172 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration reconstructed version of a history that she insists must never be forgotten: “One can forgive but one should never forget” (Satrapi, 2003, Introduction).
The initial depiction of Marji is as a visual narrator whose primary role is to make sense of the political upheaval in Iran, and, as Gilmore and Marshall note:
“the use of the young girl as narrator positions the reader as a learner alongside
Marji” (2010, p. 681). A character background of Marji is built up over a number of panels, setting her up as an authoritative narrator and focaliser of Iran’s complicated history, for example, “At the age of six I was already sure I was the last prophet” (p. 6). Marji is shown to be an unusual, precocious child, with her desire to become a prophet, her discussions with God (p. 8), and her passion for theoretical readings (p. 12). The younger Marji witnesses political unrest, as shown in the demonstration she attends with her maid Mehri (p. 38), and is critical of the “difference between the social classes” (p. 33). She is shocked when she listens to descriptions of trauma and torture, which she tries to understand in her play with other children (p. 45 & p. 53). She is depicted with a down- turned mouth and a short physique, appearing to be a younger child than the 10- year-old she introduces in the first panel: “This is me when I was 10 years old.
This is in 1980” (p. 3). In the bottom panel, a group of children (the same age as
Marji) irreverently use the veil in their games in the playground. The first part of the book time “does not always progress in chronological order giv[ing] it a dreamlike quality” (Harris, 2007, p. 40). Scenes mix between Marji’s present time and flashbacks that describe the country’s historical past, as well as events of the
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Islamic revolution. With the help of her family, the young Marji tries to make sense of the confusing events that surround her.
A pattern is repeated in presenting the relevant background needed to understand the Islamic revolution and the history that the book covers. The pattern is first set up with Marji (dressed as Che Guevara) talking about “the revolution being like a bicycle” (p. 10). This analogy equates a failing
(political/cultural) revolution to a bike unable to transport passengers without the ‘revolutions’ of the turning wheels. An image shows her childlike, humorous visualisation of this idea in the panel and a pile of bodies are scrambled together above a long connected bike. In the following panels, Marji quotes the words of her father, but the images, in their childlike simplicity like the preceding panel, present her visual imaginings of the “2500 years of tyranny and submission” (p.
11). She visually focalises the words of an adult narrating-I character as a pictorial explanation of the country’s past, and so the reader is shown her non- perceptible focalisation of her limited, visual understanding of history.
Her father’s words, accompanied by Marji’s visual translation, are used as a way to ‘”retrace’” (Chute, 2008b, p. 103) Iran’s traumatic past in a visually untraumatic way that also simplifies the historical background. In one scene,
Marji stands outside her parents’ bedroom and overhears her father telling her mother about the burning of the Rex cinema that night (p. 14). The horrific murders of so many people are described in a similar visual style to the images
174 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration that can be found in a children’s book illustration35, using character caricature with a (black) comic appeal. The policeman’s truncheon hits an angry man on the head (p. 14) and the ghosts of the burnt people in the cinema rise up into the burning flames (p. 15). The images are powerful symbols, showing Marji’s limited understanding of the real horror, and it is left to the reader to translate the pictures into the traumas they represent. Such an approach is repeated with the visualisations of Marji’s imaginings of the torture of her parents’ friend,
Ahmadi (p. 51). The sequence culminates with a particularly jarring representation of his dismembered body (p. 52). The tidy, symmetrical representation, like a “dismembered doll on an operating table” (Chute, 2008b, p.102), is a brutal image in its unemotional abstraction from reality that challenges the reader to fill in the gap. Marji’s child perspective provides a restricted vision as a way of presenting horrific traumas and one that simplifies complex historical layering.
A traumatic event cues the second part of the book, and the change is shown using the new pictorial embodiment of the pictorial narrator. Marji’s childhood comes to an abrupt end and her world is shattered after Uncle Anoosh is executed after accusations of being a “Russian Spy” (p. 70). Her young physical identity is shown to float off into space (p. 71), and time contracts in bringing together the execution of her uncle and the beginning of the war, which in reality represents a span of a few years (El Refaie, 2012b). An older, more mature depiction of Marji emerges on the next page to take over the narration at the
35 Such as: Ahlberg A. & Ahlberg J. (1999). Funny Bones. London: Penguin Books Ltd. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 175
beginning of the next chapter, marking a new era in Marji’s life (p. 72). The difference between these two representations symbolises a significant moment for Satrapi that she figuratively identifies as the loss of her childhood innocence.
Unlike the first half of the book, Marji’s role changes from this point and her extradiegetical narration becomes more assertive. She speaks for herself rather than through adult narrators who had previously assumed that role. As a teenager, Marji witnesses the traumatic events that define the war between Iraq and Iran ( 22 September 1980 – 20 August 1988), and therefore, functions as a narrator of her own experiential memories.
The chapters read like distinct short stories, all of which combine to form a collection of her authentic memories to describe a truthful past. Marji steps forward and asserts herself as a metaleptic narrator to comment on the political situation and the laws defined by the fundamentalist regime. For instance, she explains that though the dress code was oppressive, there was “a kind of justice”
(p. 75) between men and women. In contrast, at other times she steps back to show the universal nature of her story, for example she becomes unidentifiable in the crowd of students who are required “twice a day to mourn the war dead”
(p. 95). However, her narratorial presence for the most part remains foregrounded, which is particularly evident in the passage where she leads the reader into her “hideaway” (p. 114). Travelling down the stairs of the basement,
Marji looks directly out of the page to the reader and describes how Iraq
“proposed a settlement” to end the war but Iran was against it. Two panels in the visual style of the whole book interrupt her descent into the basement and the
176 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration segment ends with Marji continuing her steps down the stairs. The insertion emphasises the fact that the storyteller in the whole book is young Marji. In this metaleptic narration, Satrapi boldly positions the extradiegetic narration as her teenage voice and asserts the authenticity of her own memories and her enmeshed experiences. She uses this approach to verify the truth that is embedded in the story.
Truth is validated in the first half of the book using the authority of adult voices to describe both the historical trauma and their family involvement in Iran’s history. Marji’s father, mother, grandmother and Uncle Anoosh explain their family connection to the country’s colourful past. Their connection is shown to begin with Marji’s grandfather’s father (p. 22), who was Emperor before his rule was toppled by the Shah with the support of the oil thirsty British. Each adult explains part of the family story as a wide-eyed Marji listens on with marvelled attention. The scenes start with panels that show an adult explaining to the listening child, then cuts to the visuals depicting the dramatic past. These flashbacks are nested within the temporal location of their ordinary domestic family setting.
Satrapi juxtaposes the domestic and the political to encourage a collective understanding of this complex region. She wanted to show how the colonial involvement led to political instability, which Tensuan considers: “literally as well as figuratively draws out the collusion of Western forces in creating the foundation for Islamist rule” (2006, p. 960). Additionally, she shows an
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ordinariness of the life in the East in a hope of dispelling what Malek comments as “the media-driven negative images of Iran in the West” (2006, p. 370). She repeatedly depicts a universally recognisable domestic scene of a family who are very critical of the growth of fundamentalism in Iranian society and of the changing political situation. She builds a vision of her parents as having similar ideals to the West and describes them as being “very modern and avant-garde”
(p. 6). In so doing, Satrapi “disrupts the categories of good and evil which have emerged in recent Western political discourse about the East” (Naghibi &
O’Malley, 2005, p. 245). Satrapi’s aim in making this complicated history accessible to a wide, particularly Western audience, has been facilitated by using a coherent and consistent stylisation of her own unique visual language.
The Black and White of Picture Language and Placement
Persepolis
The use of whimsical cartoon images to describe a truthful past presents an interesting incongruity, but, as Mallan notes, “the black and white comic strip of these graphic novels shows how truth-telling need not rely on conventional styles of illustration, but can create its own poiesis” (2013b, p. 26). Another level of meaning is created using a simple visual style restricted to the solid black and white colour range (McCloud, 1993). Persepolis mixes the conventional features of the graphic medium into a unique form of Satrapi’s visual language, or her particular visual schema (Gombrich, 1960). The visual expression makes no
178 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration attempt to be realistic, but by “draw[ing] attention to itself… to the artificiality of all representation”, the reflexive, authentic story makes memories and experiences believable (El Refaie, 2010, p. 171).
Persepolis is told using a bold stylisation of historical information to visually locate the narrative within the relevant historic culture. The title of the book,
Persepolis, being the ancient name for Persia, ties the book to a traditional past
(Muller, 2013). Additionally, the drawing style of the “awakening” (p. 11), and other images of public clashes (eg. the demonstration, p. 5), use a geometric patterning and repetition of elements, possibly as a visual reference to Persian miniatures (Chute, 2010b). Chute also suggests that the use of the stark black and white images contains an expressive, abstraction from reality similar to the avant-garde, black and white films of the 1920s and 1930s. Alternatively, I argue that the simplification of information is reminiscent of the visual design approach used in the creation of infographics36, where statistical information and conceptual ideas are reduced to simple forms by taking out any extraneous details that clutter the clarity of the visual message. The simple focused presentation is easier to understand and remember. Such considerations show that the bold, simple stylisation of Persepolis is a representational choice made by Satrapi. In so doing, she has made accessible the complex issues of identity and national politics. The stylisation of the panels connotes many possibilities of meaning, one of the most important being a visual language that mimics the voice of a child (as discussed earlier).
36 Ottto Neurath (1936) was the first person to develop an articulated system to visually present information. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 179
The visual style of the panels harmonises with the young bold character that
Marji portrays and is effective as a visual representation of her ‘voice’: a character that reduces the complexity of the world into a black and white simplicity. The harsh contrast between the solid colours devoid of tonal softening adds a visual drama that works together with her feisty character. The restricted colour palette and flat perspective devoid of visual detail creates naïve, minimal drawings that function to focus and dramatise the visual content
(Nabizadeh, 2011; McCloud, 1993). For instance, in the prison scene the white figures of Marji and Uncle Anoosh stand out against the solid black background of the cell wall, amplifying the dramatic intimacy of their last meeting (p. 69).
The duality of the binary palette also helps emphasise the conflicts addressed in the story, such as West against East, the divisions between secular and religious, the social classes and between the generations of the family (Muller, 2013). In the panel composition, two colours are used to create contrasting shapes that emphasise the divisions within and between these conflicts. For instance, two groups of demonstrating women face each other with clenched fists: one – a group of traditional black-clad women, with eyes closed - call repeatedly for “the veil”; the other – a group of modern women dressed in white - staring angrily, chant for “freedom” (p. 5).
The images are childlike and expressive, but treated with a consistent style and organised into a repetitive, rigid structure. There is a uniform treatment of both
180 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration the images and textual elements, with a regularity of the bold, simple panels, arranged with little size and layout variation on the page. Each of the short twenty chapters that make the structural whole contain 8-11 pages. As Davis notes, each chapter “emphasizes breaks, beginnings and new beginnings, episodic structuring of lives and selves” (2007, p. 270), with the spaces between each part functioning like the panel gutter that the reader links together to make sense of the complete narrative.
Marji’s diegetic narration directs the progress through the panels, smoothing out the gaps between the scenes, connecting, locating and contextualising the content of the panels. As explained previously, occasionally other adult voiceovers take on the role of explaining past events. Nevertheless, there are no visual cues to label the temporal jumps between panel sequences; the diegetic narrator directs the reader through narrative time and is placed firmly within the text by the repeated use of the personal pronoun. The use of this first-person narration, and Marji’s repetitive embodied presence within each scene as a mimetic narrator, emphasises her entanglement in this history. Worth (2007) suggests that Satrapi does not just want to document Iran’s history, but to perform her personal memories in her act of recreation and a reconstruction of her truthful past.
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Limiting and Presenting the Facts
The Wounds of Separation
In the first half of The Wounds of Separation, like Persepolis, the political situation is intrinsically linked to the cause and effect flow of the narrative. In the same way that Marji’s voice was used to simplify and summarise the factual background, two embedded characters, Ella’s sister Alice and her father Salamon, are used to provide the necessary information to understand the pre-war political scenario. Alice and Salamon offer a basic understanding of the rise of
Hitler and the economic shortages suffered by the population. However, unlike
Persepolis, where the intradiegetical and extradiegetical narration are split between an adult and Marji (as discussed previously), in my text each character,
Alice then Salamon, describes the facts and the visuals represent the non- perceptual focalisation of their voices.
A character that explains a complicated history in a simplified way to child characters is used as an approach to limiting information. I have taken this approach in The Wounds of Separation, Chapter 1, to contrast the idyllic, domestic home life of Ella’s world to the mounting troubles in Berlin. Alice overhears disturbing details in a conversation between her Uncle Heino and her mother (see Figure 4.19). As the sisters get ready for bed she tells them about what she has heard. Her dialogue focalises her worry as she translates his words into her own direct language: “there is a bossy leader whom everyone follows like sheep” (TWoS, p. 34, see Figure 4.20). The struggles in the country are
182 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration relayed over four pages, each panel being captioned with Alice’s explanation in a speech bubble pointing out of the page, and the visual sequence showing her cognitive understanding of the political tensions. Each image uses a simple graphic boldness to illustrate her direct speech, for instance, the “bossy leader” is shown in the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute, looking down on a silhouetted crowd (TWoS, p. 34) which is depicted as a repeated patterning of saluting body shapes. The next image collages elements together to build a layered summary of historical information that suggests a more chaotic unravelling of the political situation as understood by Alice. Hitler is shown to be writing the text of Mein Kampf and portions of the text flow out of the page. Arrows point from this book, some find a way into the exposed brain of a figurehead and bold letters of ‘HEIL HITLER’ also overlap into this space. The quotes that surround these elements appear to fill all available space as a fire “destroys the rest” (TWoS, p. 35, see Figure 4.20).
Alice’s growing realisation of the situation over each of the four paged panel sequence is shown using an inconsistent visual grammar in making sense of a complicated political situation. Each image shows a unique way of presenting the ideas as she grapples to make sense of what she overheard from her parents’ conversation.
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Figure 4.19: A character to explain a complicated history (TWoS, p. 33).
Figure 4.20: The struggle to understand a complicated political situation (TWoS , pp. 34-35).
The simplification of history told through an embedded focaliser does not essentially change the factual basis of history, but tailors the information to fit into the narrative structure of the story suitable for a young adult reader. In
Chapter 4, Salamon uses a consistent approach in his cognitive focalisation of historical fact to explain the political situation to his children. As an adult, he has a deeper comprehension of world events and uses a way of limiting the
184 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration information so that his children can understand. My narrating-I presence introduces how he does this: “My grandfather was a builder so he always explained ideas related to houses, roofs and ladders” (TWoS, p. 81, see Figure
4.21). He separates countries into houses and uses a ladder to illustrate the hierarchical structuring of Fascist ideology. I am speculating as the creator of this narrative that my grandfather would use such an approach to clarify his explanations. Although the fictional device of the ladder frames the story, the factual content retains historical accuracy.
Figure 4.21: Fictional devices frame the story but the factual content retains historical accuracy (TWoS, pp. 81-82).
In The Wounds of Separation historical evidence (posters, newspapers, secondary sources), family memorabilia (photographs, family letters) and interview data appear within the story content wherever possible and appropriate. By creatively mixing the evidence into the framework of the story I facilitate “the meeting between the real and the creative, the melding of the nonfictional and fictional” (Pedri, 2015a, p. 20) which enriches this historic story. Becoming
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Unbecoming was a great source of inspiration for this approach as it cleverly combines a wide range of evidence into the story world. For instance, it collages a collection of three small newspaper clippings from The Yorkshire Post from
January 1981 onto a page. Each report on rape incidents shows there was little support for the victims: “Man, 40, denies rape”, “Barmaid tells of rape”, “Jury rejects rape claim” (p. 91). The lonely figure of a melancholic Una stands at the bottom of this page with bubbles pointing away, and an older Una reflects on her isolation, her self-blame and lack of support after her attack. In the juxtapositioning of the elements – the evidential material, character depiction and metacommentary – the author directs the reader to make interactive connections to understand why Una felt so isolated and unsupported.
In The Wounds of Separation I creatively incorporate extracts from letters into the story world to highlight the fact that the written correspondence was the only form of connection for Ella with her family. For instance, extracted quotes from my grandparents’ letters are graphically moulded into Ella’s figurative depiction as an expression of her embodied connection to her parents. In one panel, after Ella’s foster mother removes a blanket from her bed, Ella is covered by the loving words of her mother, and so the letter extract becomes a visual metaphor representing a warm blanket (see Figure 4.26). In another panel, as a response to the question, “Can words really be a life line?”, my grandmother’s letter forms a rope to pull Ella out of her pit of despair (see Figure 4.22). Finally, an imprint of a sentence written by Ella’s parents appears on her skin, showing her strong emotional connection to what she read. In her attempt to find a way
186 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration forward Ella is shown pulling the thread of etched words that she considers are
“not doing [her] any good” (TWoS, p. 152, see Figure 4.23) off her body. Each letter extract is captioned with the date it was written to verify the truth of the evidence. The final sentence that Ella pulls off the skin of her body is captioned with the information - that only the reader is privy to - that this is the last letter that Ella will receive. Ella’s dismissal of her parents’ final letter could be interpreted as a callous act, but it is more an act of survival. This thread of information, however, is woven into the cause and effect network and is important for understanding the whole story.
Figure 4.22: Letters are graphically moulded into the images (TWoS, p. 141 and TWoS, p. 143).
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Figure 4.23: An embodied connection to the letters (TWoS, p. 152).
The recreation of research material placed into a different context builds new meanings in the reconstruction of history (Pedri, 2017). As mentioned previously, Una reproduced a number of newspaper clippings in Becoming
Unbecoming. In the new temporal context, and with the strategic placement of an accompanying image, the reported excerpt is understood in a different way from when it was originally published. For instance, a page presents a collection of newspaper cuttings detailing the strong societal prejudice against prostitutes or
“the Twilight Girls” (p. 54). The fragile figure of Una hovers over these reports while she hangs onto an empty speech bubble. In the modern context there is potentially less discrimination of sex workers and so the reported words from this past era could be understood as harsh judgment and the reader is positioned to feel empathy for Una’s silence. In Fun Home (2006) and Are You My Mother?
(2012) the graphic novelist Alison Bechdel uses an inventive methodology to reanimate evidence (Rüggemeier, 2016). For instance, in the production of Fun
188 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration
Home (2006) Bechdel retraced her father’s handwriting as a way of understanding another’s subjectivity. In trying to understand the printed Nazi propaganda and the “promises, hate and fear” (TWoS, p. 36, see Figure 4.24) that
Hitler shouts out to the listening crowd, I too retraced the Nazi propaganda posters that are collaged into the image. In so doing, I am asserting that these artifacts are not inserted just as a “passive collect[ion]”, but in the new context are “fill[ed] …with new life” (Rüggemeier, 2016, p.264) and so become changed, as a mediated form of historical evidence.
Figure 4.24: A mediated form of historical evidence (TWoS, p. 152).
Alternatively, I contend that the act of strategically re-using and placing evidence used in the original form into a new text helps to strengthen historical authenticity. I carefully incorporated photographs into The Wounds of Separation to visually emphasise the reality of the story. As a “postmemorial artist” (Hirsch,
1999, p. 10), I considered this to be the best way to harness the potential power the image can deliver. In this respect, I restricted my selection to three
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photographs in the complete narrative, to avoid oversaturation and to maintain the consistency and dominance of the drawn graphic form. Furthermore, as a contrasted representation in my story world, the photograph has the potential to communicate other levels of denoted and connoted meaning. For instance, the first photograph appears after a cartoon drawing of the family photograph (see
Figure 4.25). As the page is turned the cartoon transforms into the original 1939 photograph, underlining that the graphic memoir is “an act of truth telling”
(Gilmore & Marshall, 2013, p. 26). The repetition and juxtaposition of the drawn image with the photograph create an impact and tension that highlight a true connection to the past. By inserting this photographic image into the graphic sequence and building a story around the moment the photo was taken, I am emphasising the dislocation of the evidence from the original context. In this way
I highlight the discontinuity of history but also create a connection to the past
(Hirsch, 2001). In this respect I have used the photograph beyond “a documentary function” (Pedri, 2015b, p. 1): the image becomes involved in the story, to achieve what Pedri sees as blurring the “boundaries separating the documentary and the aesthetic” (p. 8).
Later in the story, a photograph of Ella’s parents is combined with a drawing of
Ella’s hand stroking the image. The real image is shown in response to my commentary, “from the day of the train trip Sidonia and Salamon became Ella’s paper parents” (TWoS, p. 116, see Figure 4.26), and the photograph translates these words into an evidential reality. The drawing of Ella’s stroking hand
190 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration highlights the disrupted relationship between child and parents and continues the representative form of the narrative. Finally, the last image in the book is a photograph of Sidonia and Salamon, as a concluding statement. The placement underlines the reality of their past existence (TWoS, p. 219).
Figure 4.25: The photograph highlights a true connection to the past (TWoS, pp. 93-94).
Figure 4.26: Mixing representational forms to show disrupted relationships (TWoS, p. 116).
It is important to consider how the possibilities of digital manipulation raise questions about the type of truth contained in photographic and documentary
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evidence. El Refaie (among others) considers primary source material to have greater substantive power because memories are changing and fragile (2012b); consequently, there is an implied hierarchy of evidential truth. Byrant and
Pollock, however, make the point: “in digital photography there is no longer a question of truth per se; rather its capacities problematize trust” (2010, p. 10). In the creation of The Wounds of Separation I felt it important to incorporate a foster report from my mother’s childhood that described her behaviour as inappropriate. I read this report a number of years earlier and the document left a lasting impression on me. To me it represented how my mother essentially lost her childhood in the process of being forced to leave her home (McDonald,
2018). Unfortunately, I could not locate the report so I relied on my memory of the document in my recreation of it. I sourced a digital photograph of a school report from the era and modified the image (TWoS, p. 175, see Figure 4.27).
Photoshop enabled me to recreate my memory and in the merging of the digital layers in my fabrication I transformed the original document. As Baudrillard
(1981) highlights, in the postmodern world we can no longer differentiate between what is real and what is simulation. Nonetheless, the inclusion of this digital creation raises questions about whether a digital manipulation of a photographic image as a representation of memory contains the ‘truth’ of an evidential document or becomes a fake in pretending to be original evidence.
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Figure 4.27: Digital manipulation raises questions about evidential truth (TWoS, p. 175).
The narrative needs to capture the horrors that my grandparents experienced as an authentic and accurate representation. The challenge of writing about the
Holocaust for children and young adults is to find appropriate representations of what Kokkola terms the “unrepresentable” (2003, p. 1). Additionally, Kokkola considers historic truth to be a "moral obligation" (p. 3) in describing this unique and catastrophic genocide. Acknowledging that I could not imagine or adequately represent the horrific last three years of my grandparents’ lives, I chose a visual approach that connotes their struggle. In Becoming Unbecoming the sexual attacks that Una experienced are visually implied in subtle representations. For instance, in the gang rape scene (p. 88) grimaced faces fill each of the spaces in a series of 12 panels. As if looking through a car window, where nothing is very clear, the faces of three men are obscured but identifiable and a hand can be seen pushing them away. In only one panel Una appears as if
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she were being pushed down, her eyes are firmly shut and the whiteness of her bare shoulder stands out in its strangeness.
In The Wounds of Separation I take a similar approach by suggesting a struggle in a series of representations. Balanced on top of a Star of David with segments labelled with basic human rights, such as “dignity, freedom, assets, nationhood, liberty, respect and life” (TWoS, pp. 120-121, see Figure 4.28), Sidonia and
Salamon support each other in a dance of survival. Over five panels they try to keep their balance on an unstable base as the segments of the Star, the symbol of
Judaism on which their life is structured, float away. This abstract sequence expresses the hardship they endured, and the textual information elucidates the nature of their struggle. Each panel is labelled with the year and contains a short factual statement summarising the main racial policy implemented at that time.
Using an extract from Sidonia’s letters, I found sentences that correspond with the year that succinctly relate to the policy and describe the impact on my grandparents’ lives. The sequence ends with a dramatic image showing them being tossed off their Star of David support, and the accompanying text describes the factual details of their fate. The juxtaposition of short factual details with sentences from family letters invigorates historical evidence in a powerful way.
The visual expression in the dance of survival further enhances the drama of this symbolic representation. In so doing, I acknowledge that a recreation of the actual trauma would be inaccurate and impossible to visually describe.
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Figure 4.28: A symbolic representation to communicate struggle (TWoS, pp. 120-121).
To foreground the historical authencity in my memoir, I step forward as a narrator in the act of metalepsis; in so doing I become a figurative interpreter of factual research. In Chapter 6, ‘Bridging the distance’, I use a map on which I follow the path taken by the train that transported my mother from her country
(see Figure 4.29). I visually show how I understand the events and that the story is my construction from the evidence. The journey is described in three parts, each beginning with a panel showing me on a map stepping out the path of the journey followed by a scene on the train that could have happened. The close proximity of this scene to me as narrating-I makes clear where the interpretation originates. By physically positioning myself in the map, I am metaphorically representing a process used to write the story by “step[ping] closer to a realism of storytelling” (Kukkonen, 2013 p. 69) - in trying to retrace my mother’s experience.
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Figure 4.29: A figurative interpreter of factual research (TWoS, pp. 26-27).
Containing Time in the Movement Through Space
The Wounds of Separation
The Wounds of Separation follows the timeframe of a life, from childhood to post- death. Working within the constraints of a narrative space, since time is space in the graphic sequence, time has been compressed in the reconstruction of history.
As in all literature, a number of strategies are used to creatively manipulate the expansion and contraction of time, describing content and building suspense as the narrative unfolds. In the compression of time the panels can be “a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments” (McCloud, 1993, p. 67), but links can draw out the relationships between the images, making the sequence connect together. I used the practice of “rhythmic scansion” (Groensteen, 2013, p. 133) to
196 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration give the illusion of time speeding up or slowing down in a movement through narrative time according to the action in the story.
Using a variety of medium-specific strategies, the rhythmic quality of Stitches contributes greatly to this compelling story: a feature that I have tried to emulate in my graphic memoir. The rhythmic undulations add expressive tensions and, as previously discussed (see Chapter 1, ‘Graphic Expressions of Emotion’), this works in combination with the character focalisation to help direct story meaning. Stitches is divided into time periods that build up the story of David’s challenging early life. After the therapist presents David with the shocking truth that his mother doesn’t love him (Small, 2009, p. 255), the emotional distress of his new reality is represented as a wordless sequence of images. Nested in between pictures of David’s closed eyes, the sequence appears to be the cognitive focalisation of David’s tormented mind. Eight pages (pp. 259-266) are filled with a confused series of images of varying sizes interspersed with falling rain: rain in puddles, full-page representations of falling rain and raindrops against the inside and outside of windows, looking at urban or domestic scenes. With no words to locate place or time, and understanding that “[p]ictorial art, being the art of space, is co-existent” (Kukkonen, 2011, p. 36), it is hard to make sense of a past, present or future. However, rhythm is present in the collection of consecutive images with size variations, suggesting that these are mixed up memories from
David’s past and present.
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As a subjective representation of time, the ‘implied’ rhythm in The Wounds of
Separation contributes to the expressive quality in telling the story, and also helps to identify the narrative focus. The overall narrative pacing begins with a slow sequential vision of a happy family life, bringing in a simplified historical background. Time is slowed down, using a greater number of panels to describe the difficult decision to send the children away and the climactic separation of the family. The description of Ella’s school years as an isolated foster child descriptively involves a rhythmic tension in communicating the challenges she faces within a restricted amount of narrative space.
Finding an appropriate transition between Ella’s childhood and later motherhood presented the biggest problem. Many attempts were needed to find an appropriate way of summarising the intervening decades, which were peripheral to the main thrust of the story but an important bridge across the two halves of the book. The motherhood aspect of the story needed enough description to show Ella’s challenges of being a single mother as well as her struggles with unresolved traumas. Her energetic quest for external beauty is contrasted with the embodied images of her haunted inner world.
The final chapter again sets up a contrast in rhythmic variation between her enjoyment of life and the struggles with illness leading to death. As a final statement, I list my confusion with my “inheritance” graphically (TWoS, pp. 211-
212), contrasting with the slower pace to reach the concluding resolution (TWoS p. 219). Each chapter functions as a unit, containing rhythmic variations in
198 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration communicating the conflicts and the content of the total story. Rather than the regular “waffle-iron” (Groensteen, 2013, p. 135) arrangement of uniform sized and spaced panels, a range of layout strategies creates rhythmical variation. The
‘waffle-iron’ regularity limits the range of medium-specific options that can be utilised and lacks the dynamics of a more varied approach.
A slow pace not only introduces the place and characters in the story, but also builds an understanding of their happy family life. Using a number of panels over a few pages, time is less compressed. The first scene begins with six regularly- sized panels describing the visit of the children’s special uncle and continues over six pages (TWoS, pp. 19-24). In this sequence, a few larger panels punctuate the phrasing, functioning as visual emphasis, like a full stop at the end of the sentence. For instance, the sequence of Uncle Heino bouncing Ella on his knees ends with a wide panel that spreads across the width of the page to contain the wild action and expressive typography. In contrast, a rhythmic pause is created using a zoomed-in image into the profile of Ella looking into the eyes of her uncle
(see Figure 4.30): the close-up image draws in the reader in order to extend the moment. An alternative interruption to the regularity of the beat is achieved by filling a panel with detailed imagery and/or lots of dialogue. Crammed into a wide rectangular panel, the “Girls’ World” bathroom scene, for example, (TWoS, p. 171, see Figure 4.31) contains three girls and large speech balloons squashed into all existing space. Compared to the preceding panels, the lack of space communicates the intimacy of the setting and changes the implied rhythm of the sequence. In contrast, another type of temporal pause is created using empty
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space, such as the panel in which Ella appears alone in the large space wrapped in her blanket (see Figure 4.31). Meaning is suggested in the emptiness in which she sits with her sad facial expression. The visual pause in this example demonstrates that rhythm is involved in highlighting the interactive gap that the reader is directed to fill.
Figure 4.30: A rhythmic pause is created using a zoomed image (TWoS, p. 24).
Figure 4.31: The different panel compositions vary the rhythm of the story (TWoS, p. 171 and TWoS, p. 89).
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Other framing methods create different types of story emphasis. A cinematic approach is used as a different type of emphasis: “[b]y repeating the same framing over and over again, the artist emphasizes a key moment within the narrative and prolongs it not on the mode of “’and then’ but rather ‘and still…and still…” (Groensteen, 2013, p. 144). The moment when Sidonia finds
Salamon in the paddock and reads him the letter from her brother is framed from a distant, static position over three panels (see Figure 4.32). The movement between the figures is enough to direct the meaning. However, the distance and lack of dialogue position the reader to be a voyeur of a private, intimate moment between the couple as they make an important decision. This short sequence stands out in the story, being visually different, which increases its dramatic significance. It concludes with an expanded moment where time seems to stand still - implied by the unframed panel.
Figure 4.32: The repetition of the same panel framing emphasises a key moment (TWoS, pp. 74-75).
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When time needs to be anchored, dates have been given. Another approach is to include an element in the imagery that locates a temporal measure. “The morning arrived…” (TWoS, p. 95, see Figure 4.33) depicts my grandfather in the quiet house contemplating the departure of his daughters. The static composition is repeated over four panels, showing his emotional distress in front of the fire he is trying to stoke; a moment that lasts as long as it would take for such a fire to finish burning. Another example locates time using alternating imagery (see Figure 4.34); panels that show the stages of my pregnancy are interwoven with panels that show the development of my mother’s illness and so show the duration of her illness.
Figure 4.33: A static composition is repeated over four panels to locate time (TWoS, p. 95).
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Figure 4.34: Time is located using alternating imagery (TWoS, pp. 194-195).
Summary pages have the potential to slow down the rhythm because of the visual complexity in the arrangement of elements and the fact that they “call upon different reading strategies, or interpretive schema” (Hatfield, 2009 p.
132). A variety of compression strategies is used to summarise ideas and time.
As previously mentioned, the transition between childhood and motherhood needed to effectively compress time as well as communicate some key narrative information. In the first double spread, Ella is depicted in a circular frame which is overlaid on a collage of images representing the turbulent war years leading to the end of the war and “revelations too horrible to think about” (TWoS, p. 157, see Figure 4.35). There is a paradoxical scene where the bubble of Ella’s teenage existence has a thick black frame to highlight her separation from the chaos, but she is surrounded by the devastation to show her entanglement in disturbing world events. Another page requires a different comparative reading strategy to understand “[t]hat life became a balance between opposing forces” (TWoS, p.
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160, see Figure 4.36). Three panels present the opposing conflicts in Ella’s life, all balanced on a fulcrum that tilts towards the weight of the problematic dilemma. The transition section ends with another graphic arrangement presented like a text and image poem about the eras in Ella’s life. Overall such pages require a longer time to decode, affecting the rhythm in interpreting the sequence and linking the meaning to the story content.
Figure 4.35: Summary pages show a visual complexity in the arrangement of elements (TWoS, pp. 156-157).
Figure 4.36: A different comparative reading strategy for the summary page (TWoS, pp. 160-161).
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In The Wounds of Separation I have exploited the contrasts in layout and panel composition to vary the rhythmic quality in graphic storytelling. Rhythmic variations highlight the dramatic tensions that help elucidate the narrative meaning, which consequently helps build the links between the history and the present and ultimately connects the reader to the narrative.
Concluding Comments
As models to inform my creative piece the three key graphic memoirs were chosen both for their relevance and quality of form. Indeed all the examples have achieved significant critical success and consequentially have had widespread readership37. It is interesting to note that in three separate interviews each of the authors state that their memoir was the first graphic novel they had written38.
Further to that, the publication dates for each narrative follow in a consecutive order, starting in 2003 with Persepolis39, 2009 for Stitches and more recently
2015 Becoming Unbecoming. It is not that each narrative had direct influence on the next. Rather, what these graphic memoirs display is a development of form for traumatic graphic memoirs, and together they present a wide range of representational approaches.
37 For example each author was an American Library Association award winner. Persepolis won the ALA Alex Award in 2004, Stitches won the ALA Alex Award in 2010 and Becoming Unbecoming won the Amelia Bloomer Book List Award 2017. 38 See: Ohlsen, B. (2009); Root, R. (2007); Unsworth, E., J. (no date). 39 Chute (2008b) discusses how Persepolis was first published in France in two volumes in 2000 and 2001. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 205
The success of each of the graphic narratives is due to the techniques that encourage a connection to the implied readership. Using relevant themes and maintaining a compelling momentum in telling the sequential story, the memoirs capture a potentially relatable expression of drama and emotion. Each uses particular strategies to show the mix of individual subjectivity embroiled within the political and social context, which had direct relevance to my story.
Another important part of the success of these graphic novels is the authenticity each achieves in finding their unique storytelling voices. The formalised conventional structure of the paneled sequence in Persepolis is mixed with
Satrapi’s very distinctive primitive graphic style. The visual and textual voice is humorous but mixed with the traumatic themes addressed; the story could be viewed as a black comedy. In Stitches, a cinematic vision infuses the sequences, capturing a visual strength that clearly communicates the story with a minimum of words. The bleak, tonal images and the retro visual style contextualise the social era and act as an important backdrop for a story about a repressed, emotionally damaged family. In Becoming Unbecoming the varied but pared down visual style and fragmented sequences, combined with the multi layers of information, emotion and experience, work together in complexifying the text.
The bleak, grey landscapes and the distant vision of the protagonist infuse the narrative with a melancholic voice appropriate for this type of storytelling.
Overall, the many different theoretical perspectives helped me develop an understanding of the artistic and storytelling merits of these graphic narratives.
Additionally, with a grounding of conceptual possibilities, I was able to create my
206 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration graphic memoir using an informed approach in dealing with complexities of history, memory, trauma and personal experience. However, at the initial creative stages, in order to keep the integrity of my own work, I found it important to mentally separate myself from the key texts and my conceptual research in order to foster the pathways to intuitive, subconscious thinking required for creativity.
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CHAPTER 4
Conclusion
Throughout the world, traumatic situations are repeated and inflicted on populations with a disregard for historical experience. People suffer horrific ordeals that destroy their sense of self, rendering them stateless, unwanted, and abused. Consequently, there is a need to tell stories about the past and the present in an attempt to find better solutions for ongoing social challenges. The aim of my study was to reframe the history of the Kindertransport as a graphic memoir. Guided by my first research question, I have looked at the way such traumas are remembered by combining personal memory, historical fact and the consequential effect on identities. My research builds understandings about telling personal histories so that experience can be more clearly imagined, helping to shape better futures. In so doing, I have contributed literature and research material about a forced migration event and a migrant experience that has contemporary relevance.
Though clear evidence exists of the psychological and physiological long-term damage caused by the separation of children from their parents, these practices continue (Barnett, 2012). One example of many is the recent immigration action taken by the United States of America, separating thousands of children from their desperate parents after crossing the Mexico-United States border into the
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United States40. Furthermore, the British government recently considered repeating the Kindertransport approach in dealing with the Middle Eastern refugee crisis. In the end, the solution was abandoned after deliberating the
“inconvenient truth of the Kindertransport” (Craig-Norton, 2017, p. 31). Craig-
Norton condemns the reconsideration of a “programme of selective rescue”
(2017, p. 32) that resulted in a “lifetime of grief and guilt” (p. 31) for the majority of the children who ended up orphaned as a result of this action. Though an individual’s experience of trauma cannot be fully known, representation can play a part in describing a notion of such experience. As a response to my second research question, this study demonstrates how the graphic novel format offers multimodal features that have the potential to express subjective, empathetic experience and make it meaningful to a wide audience.
In The Wounds of Separation I have found ways to express the long-term impact caused by the separation of children from their parents, capturing the drama of a challenged life in a graphic form. Life writing told through the graphic memoir is an emerging medium to describe traumatic experience, particularly for young adult readers. My graphic memoir was created with the aim of directing the story to a young adult audience; however, on reflection, acknowledging the “blurred borderlines between adults and young people in contemporary society” (Beckett,
2009, book jacket), the readership extends beyond the arbitrary young adult limit. The category distinctions between young adult and adult reading groups had been blurred well before the term ‘crossover’ texts had come into common
40 For instance an article in the Guardian discusses the US child separation policy; see, Timmons, P., (2018). The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 209
use. Even though a number of graphic novels (including Stitches: A Memoir) have been criticised for being unsuitable for young audiences, I would argue that the layering and networking of story content in the graphic memoir allows for different ways to comprehend the text by readers of varying ages. Furthermore, with the emotional, historical and intergenerational aspect of this story, the content could appeal to a wider, crossover audience.
To tell a story about the subjective experience of forced migration needed an understanding of the impacts that historical situations have on a person’s sense of self and formation of identity. With these foundational understandings, the story content was built into a representational framework (see Figure 1.1, p. 41), which illustrates how the temporal moment, cultural context, and personal experience influence a representational approach. A bi-directional investigation, with theory feeding into practice and vice versa, informed the creation of The
Wounds of Separation. One important reflexive observation in this process was the significance of using the analysis of three key texts – Persepolis; Stitches;
Becoming Unbecoming – to identify and elucidate the concepts that are pertinent to these types of multimodal narratives. The articulation of these analytical observations in the exegesis contributes further understandings of the multi- faceted options available in this form of storytelling.
The choices I made in writing The Wounds of Separation make clear why this story was developed as a graphic memoir with the possibilities this format offers in creating pathways of connection. I considered such pathways as important features that would assist the YA audience to relate to, and potentially empathise
210 The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration with, unfamiliar experience. I aimed to draw the reader into the story by using textual and pictorial voices to narrate the content and focalise different character perspectives. Additionally, the inclusion of family stories and ephemera, both directly and indirectly, serves to personalise the narrative for readers. I demonstrated how the struggle of emotional experience can be graphically networked through the sequence of panels showing a process of change with which a reader could potentially connect and empathise. Filling in the gaps between the panels, often with unrelated captions, encourages an interactive collaboration that invites the reader to fill in the missing pieces to uncover the story.
For a relational memoir, the intergenerational connections are important to describe in a story that addresses the trauma of separation and its effects on successive generations, which consequentially helps to link the historical past to the reader’s present. The mixture of fact and fiction in the construction of a narrative also bridges the temporal divide. Building the factual content into the framework of the story brings facts to life, particularly if the historical fact is tailored appropriately for the implied reader. The mix of embodied subjective experience and evidential truth is a powerful way of reimagining the past.
In literary and conceptual terms, my research contributes to the widening appreciation and understanding of the graphic memoir, especially for the YA audience, and as such points to a number of future directions. While outside the scope of this study, the following possibilities are presented as ideas for further lines of scholarly and creative endeavour. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 211
In terms of the graphic memoir, one way to realise potential pathways of connection would be to undertake an investigation into the reception and interpretation of The Wounds of Separation with ‘real’ readers. Observation of interactions with the text by readers of different ages and backgrounds could shed light on the comprehension of multimodal texts, and help clarify their perceived appeal to a crossover audience. Specific aspects of my memoir could also be explored using this approach to understand readers’ attitudes to certain representational techniques (such as metaphor, point of view, collage) in terms of their effectiveness in creating access to the world of the text and the readers’ knowledge about their own world, or at least about its conventional media representation.
My graphic memoir could be used as a resource in classrooms, especially in courses in Literature, History, Creative Writing and Digital Technologies. For instance, the story could be used as a base from which students build increasingly complex layers of understanding about trauma, history and identity, or explore further creative pathways. The Wounds of Separation could serve as stimulus for further research and for sharing of other marginalised, refugee stories. Additionally, the content of my story is, in part, culturally permeable, as it deals with social and cultural issues that many young people commonly face. In this way, the graphic memoir could be a useful talking point for related topics about discrimination, family, and immigration.
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The printed book format for The Wounds of Separation is suited to the nonlinear meandering reading style of the graphic memoir. However, further experimentation with available apps and software could be used in moving from print to digital format. Despite the burgeoning digital technologies, more research is needed into how best to adapt digital sequences to the screen41.
Presently there are emerging digital forms that offer extra amplification of stories that insert the reader into the story world (such as Telltale games).
However, such gamifying narratives have limited layers of interactivity and only give the illusion that the reader is influencing the story arc. With the possibilities that digital spaces offer, further research could expand such storytelling approaches, potentially leading to new ways of increasing reader experience.
Ultimately, the nature of graphic memoirs, print or digital, means that writers need to be sensitive to the ethical treatment of personal histories, testimonies, and traumatic memories; and be aware of how literary and artistic conventions can both illuminate and distort.
Throughout the development of this thesis – the exegesis and the creative work –
I was mindful of two purposes: to gain more personal understanding of the traumas that overwhelmed my mother and family; and to create awareness of how circumstances that take away an individual’s power and control can have devastating effects that resonate throughout generations. Ultimately, this is a
41 Orbán (2014) discusses the “importance of the haptic modalities of reading graphic narrative[s] in print [which have been] confirmed by neuroscience research” (p. 171). Also Gabaron (2017) identifies a number of reasons why students find it difficult to engage with graphic narratives on screen, one being because they are unable to “spatially position themselves within the story” (p. 289). The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 213
story of compassion, hope, and renewal; qualities that are important to take with us as we move into the future.
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APPENDIX A
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Interview – Josephine Knight (sister) and Alice Masters (sister)
Why The Interview
I want to understand parts of my mother’s life through the eyes of an adult to get another perspective. I have my vague memory and understanding of what happened but want to enlarge from that. I am asking very detailed questions to try and help your memories, however I will use these to guide our conversation.
School
Can you tell me about your first school? Did your sisters go to that school? What was your favourite subject? Do you remember your friends? Did you only have Jewish friends? Did you like your teachers? Did they live in your village? What language did you speak at school? Can you think of some memories of being a child in Trstená? Can you describe something that sticks in your memory about school?
Religion
How many synagogues were there in Trstená and surrounds? I understand that at Christmas the Jews would visit the church and then everyone would go to the synagogue? Is that correct? Can you describe the preparations for the Shabbat meal? The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 231
Did you help cook some of the meal? Did you like going to synagogue? Could you read Hebrew? Did you have a Batmitzvah? What was your first experience of anti Semitism? When did things start changing for the Jews? Your father was an important person in the village. When did he get his car? Do you remember him climbing on the church steeple to fix it after the storm? Did you notice that things began to get difficult for him? Can you describe something that sticks in your memory about being Jewish?
Home
Did you sleep in your own room? Did your mother talk to you much about things that were happening to her? Were you closer to Alice or your mother? What about my mother, I understand that she was treated like a baby. Did you help look after her? Did your father talk to you? Do you remember it being cold in your home? Do you remember snow in Trstená? Can you describe something that you loved about your home? What made your home, home? Is there any object that embodied that feeling of home for you? All three of you sisters are very interested in art and culture - did you learn from your parents? When you were in England what was it that you wished for the most?
Your Departure
You said that they started talking about you going three months before you went. Who told you you were going? How were you told?
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Did your parents tell you what Hieno wrote about in his letters? How did you feel about going? When did you know the actual day you were going? Who decided what you were going to take in your bag? Who packed the bag? What did your friends think about you going away? What did the other villagers think about you going? What did your other relatives think about you going? When did you see your father crying? How did you get to the station?
My Mother
How long was my mother in Horsham? How did our grandparents know what was happening in Europe? When did you hear about your parents? What language did you speak when you were together as three girls? When did you stop speaking Czech? When do you think my mum forgot Czech? How often did you see my mum when she was in Horsham? How long did she keep in touch with her foster family? Did you meet them? How did you get your parents’ letters? How did you get them to my mum? When did my mum move to London? How often did you see my mum when she was in Horsham? Were you worried about her? Did she talk about missing your parents? Do you remember when Helen or I turned ten years old did my mum show signs of this being difficult? Do you remember my mum’s nervous breakdowns? How many? Did you notice things that triggered them? Did she have problems earlier before we were born?
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What were the things that triggered her to be depressed and not able to cope? Why was Valium prescribed? Did you notice her behave differently?
Interview – Tom Appleton (ex-husband)
Why The Interview
I want to understand parts of my mother’s life through the eyes of another adult to get another perspective. I have my vague memory and understanding of what happened but want to enlarge from that.
Life Before England
What is your understanding of the Kindertransport? What do you know about Trstená and my mother’s parents? Did Ella or her sisters talk about what they had left behind? Did Ella and the sisters talk much about details of the Kindertransport? Did you feel that she had suffered? What was your understanding of her suffering? How long did she live in Horsham and when did she leave? Do you know how long she was with Joy Wellings’ family? What did she do after that time?
Meeting The Refugees And My Mum
Do you remember the war ending? When did you hear about the concentration camps? Researchers have given me the impression that there was a silence about the war in the decades after. Do you think that is correct? Weren’t you intrigued how and why such an atrocity happened? What year did you meet my mother? Did she know what had happened to her parents?
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Josh went back to Trstená after the war, did you talk about that journey to her? Do you think that my mother liked living in England or do you think she would have returned to Trstená had her parents lived? I’m interested in her love of art and culture having come from a little village. Where do you think that came from?
My Mothers Mental Health
My mother had three nervous breakdowns as far as I am aware. How emotionally stable was she in the first few years of your marriage? What was your understanding of why she got sick? What was she like when she took Valium? Did she take any drugs earlier on in your marriage?
Interview -
Helen Stern (daughter), Vera Sklaar (niece)
Michael Knight (nephew) and Anne Masters (niece)
What is your understanding of the kindertransport? How do you think it affects your life? Do you feel that being a second generation survivor is significant to you? Are you involved in any second generation survivor group? What did Josh tell you about the kindertransport and how old were you when you got the story? Do you think you know, or are close to your grandparents? How would you describe your memory of our family as you were growing up? Did you feel Jewish as you were growing up? Did you feel British? Do you feel that Josephine’s (or Alice’s) scars influenced the way she parented you? What did Josephine (or Alice) tell you about going back to Trstená after the war? The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 235
What do you remember about my mother? What do you remember about her being sick? What did you think the reason was for my mother’s nervous breakdowns? Can you describe your most vivid memory of my mum from your childhood? Can you describe a more recent memory of my mother?
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APPENDIX B
Interview information sheet – Ethical Clearance issues
Principal Researcher Catherine Appleton PhD Student – n9350250 Mobile: 0422 516 075 Email: [email protected]
Principal Supervisor Prof Kerry Mallan Phone: +61 7 3138 3463 Email: [email protected] Faculty of Education, Children and Youth Research Centre Queensland University of Technology
Associate Supervisor Mr Craig Bolland Phone: +61 7 3138 9637 Email: [email protected] Creative Industries Faculty, School of Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts, Creative Writing & Literary Studies Queensland University of Technology
A record of your memories
Your permission This is a very formal way of asking you, my family, for the permission to interview you for my PhD study. This is a requirement of the Ethical Clearance procedure to make the interview procedure clear and transparent.
My story I would like to record your memories of the kindertransport and life with my mother. The title of my study is called the “The Wounds of Separation: Remembering a historical forced migration story in a graphic novel”.
I will tell the story of the departure from Trstena and the life my mother lived as an orphaned refugee in another country. The story will follow her life using particular stories that build up a picture of a person and the challenges faced. The story will focus around my mother’s experiences but really she will represent all the kinder children that went through such trauma.
Your experience I want to interview you to document your experience of what happened using particular moments of your lives. I have drawn up an initial outline of stories I might include in my novel. These are ideas. After talking to you I might change this completely. The Wounds of Separation: A Graphic Memoir about Forced Migration 237
How will the interviews be used? The interview session will be stored as digital data as a recording and transcription at Queensland University of Technology. This material will be archived at the university as part of the research material that informs this study but could be used for other research in the future.
The transcription will be accurately written from your recorded words. However the graphic novel will be a fictional story. That means the content of your words will change and could be unrecognisable in the final narrative.
What happens in the interview? I will ask some questions but leave you to talk freely about these memories with few interruptions from me. I will send you a rough idea about what the questions might include.
The interviews will be conducted in your home. I will cut the interview short: 1. if you are too tired to continue, 2. if you find the exploration into some memories too upsetting or 3. if you change your mind about being part of my study.
The stories you contribute are important to my research, being historical recollections that you witnessed, but they are not crucial to the completion of this study. I will be very grateful for your participation but will understand if you would rather not get involved.
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