Two women behind graphic novel showing life in Yemen
Nisaa FM: - The editorial director of the Italian publishing house BeccoGiallo, Guido Ostanel, found a book proposal on his office desk two years ago. The proposal was for an unusual graphic novel about an Arab country about which little was known except the violence and suffering caused by the Yemen war. It was the work of two women, cartoonist Paola Cannatella and documentary filmmaker Laura Silvia Battaglia (below right).
'The Yemeni Bride’
It took a year to put everything together. “The Yemeni Bride” came out in 2016 and was reprinted in 2017. It is set to come out in English in 2018.
The book is based on filmmaker Battaglia’s first-person reporting in Sanaa. The stories describe daily life in Yemen at the beginning of the 21st century, with all its contradictions and human suffering.
“We tried to explain Yemen in its entirety, from stories of daily life to bigger socio-political events currently taking place in the country,” Battaglia says.
Weddings are a recurrent theme throughout the novel, presented from different perspectives. In Yemen, weddings last three days, and men and women celebrate separately. While in Sanaa, Battaglia was invited to a ceremony reserved for female guests. Later in the novel, she also gets exclusive access to an all-male celebration.
Each story addresses a new subject, including Islam, terrorism and kidnapping of foreigners. Battaglia says she wanted to touch on all of the topics that readers might expect to find in a book about an Arab country. Other topics include drugs and child trafficking between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, child marriage, drone massacres and the Islamic veil.
Battaglia’s account is based not just on personal impressions, but also thorough research and interviews.
A strong duo behind the novel
Cannatella and Battaglia met in 2010 while working on separate projects on the same topic: the life of Maria Grazia Cutuli, a Middle East reporter killed in a terrorist attack in Afghanistan in 2001. They developed a lasting friendship and collaborated professionally. In 2013, Battaglia asked Cannatella to draw some scenes of her reporting in Yemen for her website.
“Laura wasn’t allowed to take pictures or videos at the wedding, so she told me what she saw in her own words, following her memory, and I recreated the scene with drawings,” cartoonist Cannatella says. The project gave birth to the idea of transforming Battaglia’s many short stories into cartoons. “We chose graphic journalism as we believe it’s the best medium to tell difficult stories of current events with simplicity and can reach a wider audience, from youngsters to adults,” Battaglia says.
The two authors, despite the physical distance that often separates them for work reasons, always keep in touch. Lately they have worked on entering the English-speaking market: They are negotiating a contract with an American publisher, which means their graphic novel will soon have an English version for a wider audience in 2018.
“If the English version will be well-received, we could also consider an Arabic edition as our next step to also reach a new and crucial readership portion: those [affected] by the stories narrated in the book,” Battaglia concludes.
Source: www.al-monitor.com