Graphic Narratives of Women in War: Identity Construction in the Works of Zeina Abirached, Miriam Katin, and Marjane Satrapi

Eszter Szép

doi:10.2478/ipcj-2014-0002

Authors

Eszter Szép School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/ipcj-2014-0002

Keywords:

gendered violence, graphic narrative, identity, trauma

Abstract

By applying terminology from trauma theory and a methodological approach from comics scholarship, this essay discusses three graphic autobiographies of women. These are A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached (trans. Edward Gauvin, 2012), We are on our Own by Miriam Katin (2006), and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (trans. Anjali Singh, 2004). Two issues are at the centre of the investigation: the strategies by which these works engage in the much-debated issues of representing gendered violence, and the representation of the ways traumatized daughters and their mothers deal with the identity crises caused by war.

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Author Biography

Eszter Szép, School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University

Eszter Szép is a doctoral student at the Modern English and American Literature Doctoral Program at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, where she researches comics journalism and autobiographical comics. Her dissertation, which is called “Representing War, Violence, and Trauma in 21st-century Graphic Narratives,” approaches the medium of comics through trauma theory and W. J. T. Mitchell’s iconology. Eszter is the Hungarian news review correspondent to the Comics Forum, and she is one of the administrators of the Hungarian Comics Association.

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