A review by sookieskipper
Palestine, Vol. 1: A Nation Occupied, by Joe Sacco
4.0
When you see a city/country/area/geography in conflict, you keep wondering why some of those people just don't move away from the said conflict. You don't understand how people can go out, walk into a small hotel, meet some friends and order some tea while being fully aware that there is a great possibility the hotel might be blown up before the tea is served. Sacco walks among people who lead their everyday life laced with worry and tries to draw them. He succeeds in capturing their everyday terror, depressing endings to days that began like any other, plight at the borders and the uncertainty of life.
Sacco provides the perspective of Palestinians only as the book is his experiences with them. The criticism that the book has received over the years has some credit to it. Sacco addresses this in his forward and in some of the passages in the second of the book. There have been enough material written about Israel and their standing in the conflict. Having been painted in generally negative undertones, Sacco captures the life in this conflicted area and offers a view that isn't generally seen.
My reading experience was similar to that of Sacco's earlier work: Safe area. Sacco spends pages in capturing lingering moments of everyday life - a shot of town square, panoramic view at the border, a zoomed in view of a kitchen, corruption in prison, people crumpled like livestock in a small area, etc. This is most effective as there are no words to accompany these cartoons and its readers prerogative to derive conclusions off them. This way his work is quite effective in offering a perspective without being sanctimonious about it. It is however evident that Sacco is weary of both the sides. His private thoughts seep into few of the pieces that take the form of a magazine article where he criticizes all the parties involved in this conflict, including the US.
Its heartbreaking that even after two decades of being published, this story is still relevant.
Sacco provides the perspective of Palestinians only as the book is his experiences with them. The criticism that the book has received over the years has some credit to it. Sacco addresses this in his forward and in some of the passages in the second of the book. There have been enough material written about Israel and their standing in the conflict. Having been painted in generally negative undertones, Sacco captures the life in this conflicted area and offers a view that isn't generally seen.
My reading experience was similar to that of Sacco's earlier work: Safe area. Sacco spends pages in capturing lingering moments of everyday life - a shot of town square, panoramic view at the border, a zoomed in view of a kitchen, corruption in prison, people crumpled like livestock in a small area, etc. This is most effective as there are no words to accompany these cartoons and its readers prerogative to derive conclusions off them. This way his work is quite effective in offering a perspective without being sanctimonious about it. It is however evident that Sacco is weary of both the sides. His private thoughts seep into few of the pieces that take the form of a magazine article where he criticizes all the parties involved in this conflict, including the US.
Its heartbreaking that even after two decades of being published, this story is still relevant.