Baddawi

In her debut, cartoonist Abdelrazaq tells the story of her father, Ahmad, a Palestinian baddawi (derived from the word bedouin, meaning a nomad). Displaced after the establishment of Israel, he grows up in refugee camps in the 1960s and ’70s, attempting to live a normal life in a world where death is a daily reality. Comparisons to Persepolis are inevitable—both books employ a childlike black-and-white style to depict coming of age against the backdrop of war. Abdelrazaq never achieves the cohesion of Satrapi’s work, owing partly to the story’s origin as an online serial and partly to the secondhand nature of the storytelling. But it’s an important story, presenting a personal account of a seemingly endless conflict that is far too often contextualized in terms of ideology, rather than human life. Historical context—the sectarian violence of Lebanon in the ’70s—sheds light on key events often lost in the rhetoric, for a welcome look at the people caught up in endless political strife. (Apr.)