Euro Comics: Reviews of Brazen and Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures

Time Codes: 00:00:28 - Introduction 00:02:47 - Pascal on the podcast, Round 2 00:04:19 - Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World  00:49:37 - Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures 01:31:45 - Wrap up 01:32:39 - Contact us This month Pascal and Derek look at two recent books that, while strikingly different in their storytelling approaches, are both insightful examinations of the socio-historical forces that shape individuals' lives. They begin with Pénélope Bagieu's Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World(First Second), a collection of 29 short biographies profiling women throughout history who have pushed back and defined themselves on their own terms. This book began as a series of webcomics that appeared on Le Monde's blog between January and October 2016. There was actually one original entry, a biographical look at Phulan Devi, that didn't make it into the American text, and the guys speculate as to why this might have been. After that they discuss Yvan Alagbé's Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, just released from New York Review Comics. This is a much less conventional collection, at least in terms of its narrative and visual styles. The book includes seven short pieces that were originally created between 1995 and 2017. The title story is the longest, and most sophisticated, of the bunch, but Pascal and Derek also spend some time focusing on "The Suitcase" and "Postcard from Montreuil."  What almost all of the stories in this book focus on, in one way or another, is France's colonialist past and its ramifications to this day.