In our ASTU class we have just finished Joe Sacco’s graphic novel on the Bosnian controlled area of Gorazde, cut off from the rest of the Bosnia by the Serb forces. We went through the book in class very quickly, but it is our last graphic novel that we are reading in ASTU and I found it interesting as it related to my last blog topic on the way Maus II and Persepolis differed in the way they portrayed Trauma. The author Joe Sacco, like Speigleman in Maus, is only an observer to the violence post conflict in Bosnia, and specifically Gorazde. He cannot speak directly to the experiences of the people, but as a cartoon journalist he is able to interview and portray through his graphics, what the people who did experience such horrible events saw. This situation leads to complex situations for both the reader and the artist, in the way that Sacco’s graphic novel portrays both his, and the Bosnian witnesses experiences of a global conflict.

Going into this book I had very little knowledge of the Serbian-Bosnian conflict of the 90’s which occured just a couple years before I was born. The graphic novel certainly shocked me and opened my eyes to the seriousness and international importance of such a small area. One frame of the book that stood out to me especially is in the chapter “15 Minutes”, where Sacco is describing the state of Gorazde’s education situation in war time.  Sacco shows Edin grading papers and tells us that even though he’d passed all his classes at university in Sarajevo, he had yet to declare his thesis and had “been 15 minutes from his degree for the past three and a half years.” (Sacco, 98). This frame shocks me as a university student myself. The idea of it takes me away from the safe environment that UBC grants us and put me in the shoes of a county, and a people, who for no reason other than who they were born to means they are in danger of being killed. Directly after this frame is the chapter “Riki part II”, which juxtaposes the Gorazdians awful situation, with their infatuation with the perfect nature of the west. The top frame on p. 99 shows Riki and Edin listening as Sacco’s words form pictures of America. By doing this, I think Sacco is showing the reader his complex situation as a journalist in Gorazde. This contradiction of the Gorazde situation with that of Sacco and the west (like we see in “Riki part 1”, “Silly Girls”, “The Blue Road”)  through Sacco’s dark but poignant graphics, helps people understand and question not only the historical and international ramifications of the Bosnian conflict, but also questions whose story that is to tell.

What is interesting about Sacco’s situation is that he does not write his articles but draws them. By doing this, as well as the content that he portrays, shows the personal narratives of memory and therefore the cultural memory of the Bosnian people. I have discussed in previous blog posts about the different lenses of graphic narrative when it comes to the depiction of trauma, and Sacco’s situation described as a lense seems very interesting to me. The idea of a journalistic lense differs from a personal narrative like in Persepolis, and also from a family connection and bias, in Speigleman’s Maus II. Sacco must balance his portrayal of the citizens personal narratives of trauma, with his own views and depictions of them through the graphic framework, all while surrounding the work with historical context to shed light on a conflict in the shadows. Therefore in his creation of his work Safe Area Gorazde, whose story is he telling? Is it his to tell? On page 126 in the chapter “Total War” Sacco points out that “Gorazde had been cut off from cameras. Its suffering was the sole property of those who had experienced it”. As a journalist and especially one who portrays his stories in graphic form, Sacco has a difficult task in showing the reader the atrocities these people experienced, pulled from his imagination as an artist. The historical and political aspect of the attacks and the conflict come through a lot, but are the personal stories of eye witnesses (such as the old man on p. 109)  that Sacco depicts his to show? A couple pages later on p. 130 Sacco describes how other journalists would arrive in the morning, get a couple shots and quotes and then leave in the afternoon. Is this a better way to tell the story of a conflict, or like Sacco should you share the personal stories of a culture with the whole world?

Because of the difficulty of Sacco’s lense as a journalist I wonder, how should the personal stories of these people be told? Sacco has no fear to portray the stories of violence through his realistic graphic form, but to what end? I suppose to open up the conversation from one stuck inside the boundaries of International Relations and large news companies like he describes on page 130, as well as to show the cultural memory of those who experienced it first-hand. This still does not answer the question of if their personal stories are his to tell. Many journalists are caught up in the historical aspect of a crisis and the debate on international intervention and portrayal of a conflict can go on for days. It is relatively impossible to answer the question of whether the Gorazdian people’s stories are Sacco’s to tell as that asks more significant questions about memory of a culture as well as personal stories. But, I think that Sacco’s narrative helps to show the people of Gorazde as what they are, real people with real stories of conflict and suffering. Sacco’s portrayal of these people through his western journalist lense, and graphic medium gives an international crisis a face by which people can relate and therefore makes it much more real, even if that face or that story is not Sacco’s to show.