Hey readers, I’m back and I’m really excited to share my thoughts with you all. This week we’ve covered a lot of material, we’ve begun talking about Obasan and just finished up reading Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde. This entire book was really interesting, it gave me unique perspectives on the conflict during that time, made me think critically about what it means to be the enemy, what it means to be a victim of war, and what it means to be human, as well as the book being written in a non-conventional genre. What really caught my interest though was the motif, the “Real Truth”, and what that concept means.

What made Safe Area Gorazde such an enlightening book was the fact the Joe Sacco didn’t just write about whatever the common narrative during that time was, but instead immerged himself as best he could into a culture and society, and then wrote about his experience. Sacco himself deals with the question as to what truth is and how he can best show the world the “Real Truth”. I think though in Sacco’s mind, or at least mine for sure, the “Real Truth”, in terms of political culture is very difficult to define as there are always thousands if not millions of individuals within a political culture who are being affected in different ways. I guess you can say that the “truth” is what happened, thousands of Bosnians died during their civil war, that is the truth. How that differs from the “Real Truth” though is something I found very difficult to think about.

What I understood “Real Truth” to mean (in context of the book) is that the “Real Truth” is a bunch of different perspectives, ideally all, but in Sacco’s case as many as he could, and mashing those different perspectives, backgrounds, trails and tribulations into the story. The story wouldn’t be the “Real Truth” had it been from one perspective because the way the world unfolds isn’t from one person’s view.  My understanding of what Sacco meant with the term “Real Truth” is that truth isn’t this one concrete fact, the “Real Truth” isn’t that all these people trapped in Gorzade aren’t still people, and he tried his best to illuminate that for us.

The “Real Truth” is something that I think will stick with me for a while if not the rest of my life. It’s something that I’ve always been excited about, learning about the world, different people, their lives and their culture, it doesn’t get much more interesting than that. After reading this book I think it’s important to keep asking yourself, “Is what I’m hearing the Real Truth?” and always always listen to other people’s stories, because everybody has a story, it’s what makes us human and we need to remember that at the end of the day we are all human, and we need to start acting like it. Thank you for reading this, I’ll be back next week, sorry this is late for all of you faithful readers, I was bed ridden last week, but no worries as I’m better now and am finally able to enjoy that beautiful Vancouver rain. Until next time!

-Kennedy