#aya de yopougon

[gregor-samsung]

Aya de Yopougon [Aya of Yop City] (Marguerite Abouet, Clément Oubrerie - 2013)

[fortressofserenity]

Racist geeks and writers

As I said before about X-Men, even if X-Men may preach against prejudice such a story still has very prejudiced fans. I actually know one who related to the X-Men but is kind of anti-black in some regards, making fun of black people and stuff. They might not even be an isolated example, there could be more of them in the X-Men fandom than one realises. 

It doesn’t help when so many popular X-Men tend to be white, that it sets the tone for how these people see themselves in. Many popular X-Men characters tend to be white and western, so for every Jubilee and Storm there’s a Kate Pryde, Rogue, Emma Frost, Jean Grey and Mystique. For every Bishop, there’s a Scott Summers, Wolverine, Charles Xavier and Nightcrawler.

Did you see a pattern that some of the more popular X-Men tend to be white? To make matters worse, as pointed out by Cheryl Lynn Eaton Storm is divorced from any black culture. She’s even worse than Black Panther because she’s divorced from an actual African culture, especially Kenyan culture at that. Kenya is a real country, you could really go there if you wanted to.

I feel when it comes to a country like Kenya, you should really get the details right to make her better represent herself as such. There are even comic book fans in African countries, so Africans aren’t that ignorant of US superheroes really. But when Storm doesn’t celebrate Boxing Day, that is the day after Christmas in both Britain and former British African colonies like Kenya, this says a lot about how little they know about Kenya.

They don’t even have actual experience with Kenyans to better know what they celebrate, do and practise, to the point where Storm is pretty much a white person’s idea of an African. Not so much Africans as they see themselves as, if you go by comics like Aya de Yopougon though it’s set in Cote D’Ivoire. Even then, I get the impression most X-Men writers aren’t black and African.

Neither are they interested in any real African country and culture, which has the effect of whitewashing Storm a lot arguably until recently. It doesn’t help when Wolverine is X-Men’s biggest breakout character, that it seems easier to bank on the more popular characters (most of them being white) than to take advantage of mutants who come from nonwestern, nonwhite countries like Nigeria and Vietnam.

When it comes to most of the X-Men, especially most popular X-Men members being white and that most X-Men writers tend to be white as well, it makes any attempts at addressing racism and exploring nonwhite cultures really awkward at times. When Kwannon was in Betsy’s body, she wanted somebody to kill her but since she’s Japanese she should’ve killed herself out of dishonour.

Xian Coy Manh might have the potential to have her nation and culture be explored more deeply, though some of the biggest problems behind her is that the writers who portray her neither have experience with Vietnam in any way nor are they interested in Vietnam. Maybe that’s why she comes off as something of an afterthought, though one who really needs a writer of Vietnamese descent to do her right.

As far as I know about Vietnam, it doesn’t use Chinese characters that much anymore. In fact, at this point more Vietnamese people use Latin orthography these days instead, they also celebrate Year of the Cat instead of Year of the Rabbit. Since 2023 is Year of the Cat, I feel Marvel missed an opportunity to showcase covers with Xian hanging out with cats to celebrate that occasion.

The fact that Vietnamese farmers still use cats for pest control could’ve coloured many Vietnamese people’s decision to have cats instead of rabbits in their version of the Chinese zodiac is a real missed opportunity, even if this gives a glimpse into Xian’s culture better. You could say that Vietnam’s not that well known as China is.

But even then, it’s interesting in its own right and something that has to be explored more in light of Xian’s heritage and upbringing. When it comes to these two mutants whose cultures are misrepresented or underrepresented in some way or another, I feel they come off as missed opportunities when it comes to exploring their cultures and countries.

I feel these portrayals could’ve further coloured some X-Men fans’ racism, in the sense that if they do get represented at all they’re either afterthoughts (Karma) or made more exotic than they really are (Storm). Whatever their portrayals, they get othered in ways most X-Men writers wouldn’t do with American and to some extent, British cultures.

Well X-Men’s no stranger to having white British writers like Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis, both of whom wrote X-Men and X-Men related stories themselves. But when it comes to nonwhite, nonwestern X-Men writers Vita Ayala’s the only example to come to mind who writes or wrote a serialised story. I can’t think of any African or Asian writer who wrote X-Men stories.

This could’ve not only coloured why Xian and Storm are written the way they are, but also how this would’ve fed into some X-Men fans’ racism in the form of ignorance. When it comes to some X-Men fans being racist, it doesn’t help when some X-Men writers are racist themselves that it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

It is getting better these days, but much work needs to be done when it comes to representing nonwestern cultures better as well as combatting fandom racism.

[grandhotelabyss]

Have you read much African literature (apart from Coetzee?)

I confess (if this is a topic requiring confessions) that it hasn't been an area of focus for me. I've one read novel each by Achebe (Things Fall Apart), Salih (Season of Migration to the North), and Gordimer (The Pickup). I've read Soyinka's most famous play, Death and the King's Horseman, his state-of-the-world Reith Lectures (Climate of Fear), and a handful of his other essays on art, culture, and politics. I read Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc., and then went to hear the author speak down the street at the Soap Factory, when it still existed; he and his book are very funny. I've read (I even taught) Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow; my friend from South Africa, Maurits, now a professor at the University of the Western Cape, pressed it upon me in graduate school after I conceded I'd only read Gordimer and Coetzee. And Alan Paton. We read Cry, the Beloved Country in high school; I think it counted as the non-European selection in 12th-grade world literature. If the colonial diaspora in Africa counts, I've read Olive Schreiner (Woman and Labour) and Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook); if the postcolonial diaspora in America and Europe counts, I've read Chris Abani (The Virgin of Flames), Teju Cole (Open City), and Marguerite Abouet (Aya de Yopougon). To what continent of the mind does Cavafy's Alexandria belong? Perhaps neither to Africa nor to Europe, to no land at all, but to the Mediterranean Sea. Nevertheless, I have read Cavafy's Collected Poems. Some of Senghor's poetry, too, and his "Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century." Some of Ngũgĩ's polemics also, e.g., Decolonising the Mind, but not yet one of his novels: illustrating the geographic inequality still obtaining in what our Marxist friends call the "system" of world literature, I keep waiting for the call from Stockholm to impel me, though I do suspect the Swedes gave his prize away to his lesser-known exegete, Abdulrazak Gurnah. I want to read Gurnah's Paradise along with Ngũgĩ's Devil on the Cross. If only for a final reckoning with Marxism, I want to read Burger's Daughter by Gordimer. I know I have to read Bessie Head someday. Soyinka's seems a sensibility as bottomless as that of Joyce or Borges, so I know I have to go back to him, to all the plays and to The Interpreters and Aké and Art, Dialogue, and Outrage. I must return to Egypt—not to Cavafy's Alexandria next time, but to Mahfouz's Cairo, where I fear I've never been. Nuruddin Farah and I used to shop at the same grocery store, but I still need to read him. The to-read list goes on: Mia Couto, Christopher Okigbo, and especially Dambudzo Marechera, whose experimental and anarchic works I've only browsed, but whose cosmopolitan motto I admire: "If you are a writer for a specific nation or a specific race, then fuck you." And a book I should have read 20 years ago, 25 years ago—they should have just made us read it in Catholic school—which I still keep meaning to get to: the Confessions of St. Augustine.

[pgabachelorarfa2023caramel]

Post 84 : essai de charadesigne inspiré du film "Aya de Yopougon" (stylo plume et crayon de couleur)

[partenaires-coupdecoeur]

AYA DE YOPOUGON, TOME VIII

De Marguerite Abouet et Clément Oubrerie chez Gallimard

Pas de repos pour les braves ! Albert se réveille dans un village perdu, séquestré par un charlatan censé guérir son homosexualité. À Yopougon, il n'est pas le seul à s'être volatilisé: on recherche Moussa, disparu en eaux troubles, et Cyprien, qui moisit au CHU de Treichville... Pas mieux pour Bintou, sans domicile fixe après l'incendie de sa villa! Tous auraient bien besoin d'Aya... mais, depuis sa sortie de prison, elle aussi reste introuvable !

[christophe76460]

La fidélité de l'Éternel ,fort et puissant dans mes combats visibles et invisibles est ma force.

Il me feront la guerre mais il ne me vaincront pas au nom puissant de Jésus Christ de Nazareth !!!

Ma vie est une histoire,un témoignage vivant dans la lignée des élu de Dieu...

Quand tu sors d'une guerre, tu gardes toujours une marque ou une cicatrice pour confirmer ta victoire .

La mienne c'est le nom de JÉSUS au dessus de toutes puissances .

Quand Dieu approuve,la voie, d'une personne, il utilise même ses ennemis en sa faveur.

Honore l'' Éternel ton Dieu et tu seras honoré.

Je viens de loin , JÉSUS ou rien !!! il m'a ramenée à la vie et il a mi sur moi son embargo , la marque de son sang pour une alliance de victoire .

JÉSUS ou rien !!!

Longue vie à ma mère spirituelle, maman AYA FLORE qui était à mes côtés au CHU de Yopougon.

Je vous aime tous, mais

JÉSUS vous aime plus que tous vos parents et amis..

Que l'Éternel vous bénisse sans fin au nom puissant de Jésus Christ de Nazareth !!!

[oldfilmsflicker]

new-to-me #822 - Aya de Yopougon (Aya of Yop City)

[worldscollide23]

[leer-reading-lire]

Costa de Marfil, finales de 1970. Aya, una joven de diecinueve años, vive en Yopougon, un barrio de Abidjan en el que la mayoría de las jóvenes sueñan con convertirse en peluqueras y encontrar un marido. Mientras Bintou y Adjoua, sus dos mejores amigas, solo piensan en esquivar la vigilancia paterna para pasar las noches bailando o en el “Hotel de las mil estrellas”, Aya quiere estudiar medicina. Las tres pasan los días en Yopougon, entre amistad, enredos y amores, y nos muestran una África bella y vibrante alejada de los clichés de la guerra y el hambre.

Marguerite Abouet y Clément Oubrerie (Pablo, Luces del norte) nos presentan en esta premiada novela gráfica costumbrista el día a día de la gente de África. Un relato, repleto de humor y personalidad, aplaudido por público y crítica.

[afrodinamic]

#novembronegro - Dia 29 - Aya Então...sabe o seu dia a dia? Imagina agora o seu dia a dia se você fosse uma jovem da Costa do Marfim, no final dos anos 70. E é sobre isso Aya de Yopougon, que infelizmente só teve dois volumes publicados no Brasil :(

[fortressofserenity]

Do you even support that?

While complaints about racebending are understandable at first, most critics of racebent media usually don’t go for media featuring original characters of colour as made by people of colour. I don’t think they ever go this far to find works by George Harriman for instance, if they’re so desperate for nonwhite representation (I did this before).

Actually they don’t go this far to seek African comics, such as Bogi Benda, Aya de Yopougon and Supa Strikas, so it seems their talk about advocating original characters of colour seem real bogus. So bogus they never go so far to find such media. If Felicity Smoak were to get racebent as an Indian woman, I guarantee Oliciters will sound exactly like any other contrarian about racebending.

Just like them, they’ll never go so far to find original Indian media if they wanted original Indian characters so badly. I feel deep down inside, they never really liked characters of colour. They never show any real interest in non-western cultures, let alone outside of East Asia which shows in the near paucity of fanworks centred around Bollywood movies.

The idea that Bollywood movies are obscure doesn’t hold water when they’re really popular in the Middle East and Africa to some extent, which means their interest in such cultures if it ever existed would’ve been rather insincere. Same reason why they’d never go deep into finding literature such as the Rig Veda or the Ramayana.

An Oliciter will demand DC to make original Indian characters, not knowing that most Indian DC characters are either really obscure (Celsius, the original Hyena assuming if Felicity becomes the Hyena herself), whitewashed (Jinx of Teen Titans) or stereotypical. This makes Felicity Smoak DC’s best known Desi character should it happen at all.

Same Oliciter never bothers to develop an interest in something like Indian comics, which aren’t even that hard to find online (the inventor Arvind Gupta has a collection of comics online). She never bothers to watch something like General Didi or any one of the Bollywood movies, if she’s so desperate for original Indian characters.

That’s why these people can’t be trusted in their claims, they never go the extra mile to peruse Nigerian and Indian media if they really wanted more original black and Indian characters. To the point where either they really hate characters of colour or that they lack so much self-awareness they’re probably stupider than they’d ever realise.

[animatedfilmoftheday]

Today’s animated film is: “Aya of Yop City” (2013)

“The daily lives of a girl (Aissa Maiga), her friends (Tella Kpomahou, Tatiana Rojo) and her family in 1970s West Africa.”

[cosmicanger]

Aya de Yopougon

[barabansetbabets]

23 book I want to read in 2023

I've seen a few people do these lists, so here's mine

La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas

This one is a little cheating, since it’s on my TBR, but it’s not really a classic that really attracts me, especially with my last experience with a Dumas. (Sorry, when I was 12 I found D’Artagnan so dumb I couldn’t even finish the book, which just didn’t happen at that age)

The Queen’s Thief – Megan Whalen Turner

I heard so much about this serie from Booklr and it’s on Arhive.org, so I’m really excited for this one !

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House – Cherie Jones

Trying to read books from all over the world, and this title make it very intriguing. Though the summary leads me to think it will be a very though read.

Handicap à vendre – Thibault Petit

A book about disabled’s rights in french worplaces (and the utter shit it is), mostly about Intellectual Disabled I think.

Aya de Yopougon - Marguerite Aboue & Clément Oubrerie

This is a mildly famous Comic Serie in France, and I’ve never read it so I want to finally bridge that gap.

Middlegame - Seanan McGuire

Once again a pretty popular book on booklr, and as I liked Every heart a Doorway I’m very excited for this one !

The Bomb – Alcante, Bollée & Denis Rodier

French Comic about the making of the Atomic Bomb. One again a though read, but it got praised a lot in France.

Les Indes Fourbes - Alain Ayroles & Juanjo Guarnido

Another french comic that got praised a lot. Seems interesting, but since it’s a comedy about the American Conquest, i’m a little wary about representation…. Guess I’ll read and see.

The witcher, Season of Storm – Andrzej Sapkowski

My Witcher period is a little behind me, but it’s the only book i have left to read so it’s worth the shot.

If on a winter’s night a traveler – Italo Calvino

This one get praised a lot for its narration and writing. I wiish I could read it in italian, but french will hae to do.

Quest for Fire - J.H. Rosny Aîné

Fantasy in prehistoric times ? Sign me up. (It’s very old so there’s little chance I will love it, but eh. Sometimes an okay read is all you can ask for.)

Texaco – Patrick Chamoiseau

I liked another novel by the same author, and this one won a big french award back in 1994.

Tè Mawon – Michael Roch

I’ve been meaning to read a Michael Roch’s books for years – and I SWEAR that this year is THE year I finally do ! (Once I get a job)

Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao

This has been recced by everyone and their sisters (my sister at least) so I’ll try to finally read it!

Assassin’s apprentice - Robin Hobb

Never read anything by Robin Hobb. I’m a fake fantasy fan.

The City we became - N.K. Jemisin

Another book loved by a lot of people. I absolutely loved How Long 'til Black Future Month so this is a book i’m sure to love.

In mother’s land - Élisabeth Vonarburg

Once again it’s a book I’ve been meaning to read for years. It’s a SF book, where mens are scarce. and basically describing the new society. Exactly my genre of book!

Postcolonial Love Poem – Natalie Diaz

I want to try to read poetry, and this one seems good.

A doll’s house – Henrik Ibsen

It’s a norwegian play from the 19th century. It was apparently very feminist for its time, so much that it stirred a controversy way beyond the world of theatre so I’m curious to read it.

Therese and Isabelle – Violette Leduc

A lesbian autofiction. Need I say more.

Harrow the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir

I don’t care about my wallet state. I WANT to read this book and the next so much

La Horde du Contrevent – Alain Damasio

A french SF classic. I borrowed this book from my sister about two years ago, so it’s time I read it. Fun fact, this book pages are numbered down instead of up, which probably the most french thing I’ve ever seen. so edgy.

Toward the Terra - Keiko Takemiya

A SF manga drawn by a shojo artist. Looks beautiful and I hope it will be interesting to read!

Here's to hoping I will not be stuck in a reading slump for six months like last year

[mollat-bordeaux]

📣 C’est le grand retour d’Aya ! Aya de Yopougon vol.7 Marguerite Abouet et Clément Oubrerie @gallimardbd disponible au rayon BD de la @librairie_mollat #ayadeyoupougon @abouetmarguerite #clementoubrerie #librairie #mollat #bordeaux (à librairie mollat) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBCkrVDS2z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ysabellis]

Rule : name 10 female characters from different fandoms and tag someone

1 : Arwen, le Seigneur des Anneaux

2 : Angua, Discworld

3 : Okoye, MCU

4 : Hermione Granger, Harry Potter

5 : Bulma, Dragon Ball

6 : Sophie, le Château Ambulant

7 : Aya de Yopougon (y a-t-il seulement un fandom pour Aya ?)

8 : Ochaco, My hero Academia

9 : Aomame, 1Q84

10 : Rei, Star Wars

@deviantchemist @clairedanslalune @randomly-random-stuff @xxsmokbeastxx @an-infinite-understatement