The moment I opened Georgia’s blog post and saw Frida Kahlo’s portrait as one of the images presented in the blog post, “The Self Portrait and Why it Matter”, I knew that I had to read it and I am extremely glad I did. In her post, Georgia shows the importance of the self portrait to famous artists like Kahlo and Van Gogh and then connects this to the works of Sacco and Satrapi. She also talks about how Sacco portrays himself as an outsider through his drawing style. This reminded me of something we have been discussing with my group in ASTU and that is the importance or the symbolic role played by Joe’s glasses in the book. His glasses are always covering his eyes and we never see his eyes. This made us think that maybe its not just to make him seem different but also to show that what we are seeing is more or a reflection of reality, with his glasses playing the role of mirrors, but this reality stands against the perspective of the narrator, who is Joe. As Georgia stated, Joe portrays himself as not belonging in Goražde. He is, and he shows this to us on multiple occasions, an outsider. The point of this book is not for us to see his story but that of the people of Goražde and what he does in the book is serve as the connection between the readers and those who are telling the stories.

Andrea Barraza