It’s been more than ten years since terrorists forced their way into the offices of the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 of its staff members. Two of Charlie’s female contributors, Corinne Rey and Catherine Meurisse, survived the horrific onslaught. Yet, both women continue to ply their craft as…
Journaling… like every other human endeavor, there exists a narrow sliver of people who raise this seemingly simple practice to the level of a refined and illuminating art. Such is the case with graphic novelist Craig Thompson’s Carnet de Voyage. In the spring of 2004, Thompson traveled to Europe to…
Many of us are familiar with the delightful illustrations of Jean-Jacques Sempé, who inadvertently described himself by saying « Il m’est arrivé de devenir, par moments, raisonnable, mais jamais adulte », “It occurred to me, every now and then, to be sensible, but never adult.” Sempé became widely known in France after…
If you’ve ever taken a course in French literature, you probably had to read at least one work by a Francophone author with African origins. France’s colonial empire once controlled a significant portion of Africa, and while nearly all of these areas gained independence by 1960, French is widely spoken…
Have you ever wondered what you might do if asked to write your autobiography? Where does one even begin? These were questions that confounded color artist Brigitte Findakly when friends and colleagues urged her to share her life story. Born in Iraq in 1959, Findakly immigrated to France with her…
One of the contenders for this year’s Oscar for Best International Film is The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Secretly filmed in Tehran, the fictional screenplay takes place during the weeks of protest that followed the nonfictional death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died in police custody…
Two years ago, when comics author Riad Sattouf released the sixth and final edition of his 6-part autobiography, L’Arabe du Futur, I was sad to be at the end of a fascinating saga, each book of which I’d eagerly devoured. Sattouf, whose mother is French and father is Syrian, had…
I have a small stack of French-related coffee table books that I’ve wanted to review for months but waited until December since I think they’d make great gifts. Today’s post was intended to supplement a previous piece, 35 Sensational Reads for the Francophiles on your Gift List. When I sat…
