I Remember Beirut

by Zeina Abirached, Zeina Abirached (Illustrator)

Overview

Zeina Abirached, author of the award-winning graphic novel A Game for Swallows, returns with a powerful collection of wartime memories.

Abirached was born in Lebanon in 1981. She grew up in Beirut as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. Follow her past cars riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go, and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk.

With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary life inside a war zone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467744584
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2014
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	GN460L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Zeina Abirached was born in Beirut in the middle of the civil war. She studied graphic arts in Lebanon but moved to Paris in 2004, where she attended the National School of Decorative Arts. In 2006, she published her first two graphic novels with publisher Cambourakis, Beyrouth-Catharsis and 38, Rue Youssef Semaani. Her short animated film Mouton was nominated during the fifth international film festival in Tehran. A Game For Swallows (Graphic Universe, 2012) has won numerous awards, including being named an ALA Notable Children's Book and a YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens. Je Me Souviens Beyrouth (I Remember Beirut), the follow-up to A Game For Swallows, was published in French by Cambourakis in 2008.

Zeina Abirached was born in Beirut in the middle of the civil war. She studied graphic arts in Lebanon but moved to Paris in 2004, where she attended the National School of Decorative Arts. In 2006, she published her first two graphic novels with publisher Cambourakis, Beyrouth-Catharsis and 38, Rue Youssef Semaani. Her short animated film Mouton was nominated during the fifth international film festival in Tehran. A Game For Swallows (Graphic Universe, 2012) has won numerous awards, including being named an ALA Notable Children's Book and a YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens. Je Me Souviens Beyrouth (I Remember Beirut), the follow-up to A Game For Swallows, was published in French by Cambourakis in 2008.

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2014
As with Abirached’s debut, A Game for Swallows, this b&w graphic memoir of growing up in Lebanon during that country’s civil war invites comparison to Persepolis. Collecting memories introduced via the recurring phrase “I remember,” Abirached’s prose and artwork convey, with grace and humor, the way her family’s life during the war shifted from mundane to ominous and back again. Her mother tired of getting her windshield replaced every time a shell hit, and she eventually drove without it. There was no water for showers, but an endless supply of cigarettes. Abirached’s younger brother assembled a collection of shrapnel, and the author recalls watching the Olympics (“I remember Florence Griffith Joyner’s nails”). When an attack forced Abirached, her schoolmates, and teachers to stay at school overnight, she realized that “our teachers were as scared as we were.” In the middle of her account, Abirached abandons words and uses scratchy white lines on black pages to draw remembered moments of peace: a jar of olives, a swing, a coop full of chickens. Here—and throughout—Abirached shares (and readers feel) a loss that cannot be named. Ages 13–18. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"This spare memoir humanizes families trapped in war zones, and their experiences should resonate with young adult audiences. Highly Recommended."―starred, Library Media Connection

From the Publisher

08/01/2014
Gr 7 Up—Abirached's companion to A Game for Swallows (Graphic Universe, 2013) reveals numerous details from her childhood in Beirut during the war from 1975 to 1990 war. "I remember" is a recurring phrase and provides a personal frame of reference for the effect of war on kids. Some are simple childhood memories of Kit Kat candy bars, bad haircuts, and her father's obsession with recorded classical music. Many are exquisite visual packages of the trauma experienced by a young girl: documenting the series of bullet holes in her mother's car windshield over time, spending a night at the school when it was unsafe for the students to leave, keeping a backpack of her treasured items next to her bed, and collecting war shrapnel the way some collect rocks or seashells. When teachers discuss the ongoing inner-city tensions, only the lower halves of their bodies are visible, allowing readers to experience the event from the viewpoint of children on the playground. Most evocative are the family images: family members as playing pieces, pawns in a board game of war; holding hands as they cross the street to the "other side" of the city; the gulf between the adult author living in Paris and her family in Beirut. With her signature style of arresting graphic layouts of images in stark white and solid black, Abirached offers a pastiche of poignant memoirs from living in a strife-ridden city. Inclusion of artfully designed maps and diagrams orient the reader and provide additional perspective.—Barbara Moon, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

School Library Journal

2014-07-16
Abirached, who grew up in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, shares childhood memories in this unconventional graphic memoir. Born in 1981, Abirached grew up surrounded by the realities of war: Her family's home was close to the demarcation line between East and West Beirut. In her earlier graphic memoir, A Game for Swallows (2012), she focused on a single evening when she and her brother anxiously awaited their parents' return. In this follow-up, Abirached takes inspiration from French experimental writer and filmmaker Georges Perec and forgoes a traditional narrative structure in favor of a catalog of childhood memories, almost all beginning with "I remember." Her memories juxtapose mundane details, such as the "tchic" sound that cassette tapes made when shaken and the three layers that made up old Kit Kat wrappers, with haunting reminders of wartime, such as her brother's shrapnel collection and the bullet holes in the family car. The black-and-white illustrations and inventive layouts ably convey the contrasts of the text. Abirached does not use tones or shading, but her ornate patterns soften the stark contrasts created by her bold lines and her frequent use of black to fill negative space. Taken together, her many memories create a distinct sense of time, place and emotion. Meandering and experimental but surprisingly evocative. (Graphic memoir. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews