Book-It '10! Book #59
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld
Details: Copyright 2009, Pantheon Books
Synopsis (By Way of Font Flap): "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a masterful portrait of a city under siege. Cartoonist Josh Neufeld depicts seven extraordinary true stories of survival in the days leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina.
Here we meet Denise, a counselor and social worker, and a sixth-generation New Orleanian; “The Doctor,” a proud fixture of the French Quarter; Abbas and Darnell, two friends who face the storm from Abbas’s family-run market; Kwame, a pastor's son just entering his senior year of high school; and the young couple Leo and Michelle, who both grew up in the city. Each is forced to confront the same wrenching decision-whether to stay or to flee.
As beautiful as it is poignant, A.D. presents a city in chaos and shines a bright, profoundly human light on the tragedies and triumphs that took place within it."
Why I Wanted to Read It: It got excellent reviews over at The AV Club.
How I Liked It: This should be required reading for anyone studying Katrina. The author captures so vividly the agony and the anguish and transcends the "comic" form. This is Hurricane Katrina's Maus. It's that penetrating.
The author's style, while more "cartoon-y" than one would expect, somehow makes the characters all the more real, and the situations all the more personal. Through his words (taken from survivors), narration, and art, you can feel the heat and panic of the wait, the smell of the toxic rising waters, the fear and displacement of the characters. Without having to be graphic nor gory, the author conveys the horror and tragedy in a manner chillingly close.
I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in Katrina, the medium of art that is graphic novels, or frankly, anyone with an interest in journalism. Somehow, through what is essentially a black and white comic, the author accomplishes what journalism often fails, particularly in this saturated age.
Notable: One of the characters, a devout comic aficionado, takes inventory of his loves as he and his partner prepare to evacuate. He describes how much his comic collections mean to him, how they helped him cope through his childhood. He name-drops two favorites of the indy books, "Stray Bullets" and Strangers in Paradise.
Title: A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld
Details: Copyright 2009, Pantheon Books
Synopsis (By Way of Font Flap): "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge is a masterful portrait of a city under siege. Cartoonist Josh Neufeld depicts seven extraordinary true stories of survival in the days leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina.
Here we meet Denise, a counselor and social worker, and a sixth-generation New Orleanian; “The Doctor,” a proud fixture of the French Quarter; Abbas and Darnell, two friends who face the storm from Abbas’s family-run market; Kwame, a pastor's son just entering his senior year of high school; and the young couple Leo and Michelle, who both grew up in the city. Each is forced to confront the same wrenching decision-whether to stay or to flee.
As beautiful as it is poignant, A.D. presents a city in chaos and shines a bright, profoundly human light on the tragedies and triumphs that took place within it."
Why I Wanted to Read It: It got excellent reviews over at The AV Club.
How I Liked It: This should be required reading for anyone studying Katrina. The author captures so vividly the agony and the anguish and transcends the "comic" form. This is Hurricane Katrina's Maus. It's that penetrating.
The author's style, while more "cartoon-y" than one would expect, somehow makes the characters all the more real, and the situations all the more personal. Through his words (taken from survivors), narration, and art, you can feel the heat and panic of the wait, the smell of the toxic rising waters, the fear and displacement of the characters. Without having to be graphic nor gory, the author conveys the horror and tragedy in a manner chillingly close.
I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in Katrina, the medium of art that is graphic novels, or frankly, anyone with an interest in journalism. Somehow, through what is essentially a black and white comic, the author accomplishes what journalism often fails, particularly in this saturated age.
Notable: One of the characters, a devout comic aficionado, takes inventory of his loves as he and his partner prepare to evacuate. He describes how much his comic collections mean to him, how they helped him cope through his childhood. He name-drops two favorites of the indy books, "Stray Bullets" and Strangers in Paradise.