Hey Jaqueline, I really enjoyed reading your blog, and thought you brought some great points to the table in the way that we read Sacco’s graphic novel. While your ideas of Sacco’s attempt to humanize the people of Gorazde through US cultural hegemony really resonated with me, I disagree that he chose this in a stylistic sense in order to humanize them. I think that the problem of looking at the Gorazdian situation through a cultural relativist perspective, while ideal, is not realistic. I understand that your argument here is purely theoretical and does not say that Sacco should or shouldn’t have written his book the way that he did. I also don’t want people to think that I support a US or Eurocentric hegemonic view of other cultures or nation to nation conflicts, but I think that for the Gorazdians, it is sometimes not possible to view them from a subaltern viewpoint. Their culture is being attacked and persecuted with hatred, and it can be hard for them to associate pride with their culture because of that. While I don’t doubt that they have pride for their religion and culture (and this is shown in his book), it is not hard to see why they attach themselves so closely to the American values and forces that are their only lifeline for support, and the only thing that is keeping themselves, and their culture alive. I think that while you are right in saying that Sacco’s portrayal of this leads to interesting and troublesome effects of cultural hegemony, he also cannot portray them as human without insinuating the profound effect that the west has on these people, even if it does take away somewhat from the sense of their individuality that you get from the graphic novel.