Yellow Negroes And Other Imaginary Creatures

Description

Yvan Alagbe is one of the most innovative and provocative artists in the world of comics. In the stories gathered in Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures - drawn between 1994 and 2011, and never before available in English - he uses stark, endlessly inventive black-and-white brushwork to explore love and race, oppression and escape. It is both an extraordinary experiment in visual storytelling and an essential, deeply personal political statement. The title story depicts the lives of undocumented migrant workers in Paris with unsettling power. Alain, a Balinese immigrant, struggles to protect his family and his white girlfriend, Claire, while engaged in a strange, tragic dance of obsession and repulsion with Mario, a retired French-Algerian policeman. It is already a classic of alternative comics, and, like the other stories here, becomes more urgent every day.

Yvan Alagbe was born in Paris and spent three years of his youth in West Africa. He returned to study at the Universite de Paris Sud, where he met Olivier Marboeuf and cofounded a contemporary visual arts review called L'oeil carnivore, and a magazine Le Cheval sans tete ("The Headless Horse"), that gained a cult following for its publication of innovative graphic art and comics. Alagbe and Marboeuf soon founded their own publishing house, Amok, drawing from the material serialized in Le Cheval, including the first version of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. In 2001, Amok partnered with the publishing group Freon to establish the Franco-Belgian collaboration, Fremok, now a major player in the European graphic novels scene. Alagbe lives in Paris. Donald Nicholson-Smith is an award-winning translator of French literature.

"Alagbe's sharp, mesmerizing images catch the eye, and they compel you to continue reading. These difficult stories stick with you, continuing to turn over and over in your head." -Shea Hennum, The AV Club's '25 Best Comics of the 2010s' "With poetic, elliptical text and stark, impressionistic black-and-white art, French cartoonist Alagbe reveals the toxic legacy of European colonialism upon individuals and families." -Library Journal "A timely collection about race and immigration in Paris by one of France's most revered cult comic book artists. Alagbe uses stark, endlessly inventive black-and-white brushwork to explore love and race, oppression and escape." -Publishers Weekly "One of the most arresting comics works to hit stands in a good long while." -Abraham Riesman, Vulture "Negres is one of those works that becomes emblematic not just of its publisher, but of a particular moment in comics. Where the individual parts just click, where every creative decision feels right and supports the author's intent, while retaining the spark of youthful ambition. . . . The book . . . deserves attention. It is a bold and nakedly intense effort to represent the way bereavement may trigger memories, dreams, and rationalization, as well as to describe how, like it or not, family dictates our lives." -The Comics Journal