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Graphic novelist and comic artist Miriam Libicki has been named Vancouver Public Library's 2017 writer in residence. "I'm thrilled to be taking on this new role and creating opportunities for more people to discover the world of graphic novels," says Libicki. "This is a great way to mentor writers who may not currently be part of the comics community, and encourage those who have family stories or burning passions to share - to tell those stories through images."
Miriam Libicki was born in Columbus, Ohio. After living in Jerusalem and Seattle, Washington, she is now based in Vancouver. She completed her Bachelor's of Fine Arts from Emily Carr Institute in 2006.
She has been cartooning since 2003, and screenprinting since 2005. Her primary themes are culture clash and the construction of identity, usually through the prism of her Jewishness and dual American-Israeli citizenship.
Libicki illustrates her real life experiences and incorporates documentary techniques such as interviews and photo references. She also does cartooning workshops and works as a teacher at Emily Carr University.
Libicki is the creator of the autobiographical comic series, jobnik!, which has run from 2005 to the present, and recounts her service in the Israeli army during the second Intifada. Her other nonfiction comics have been published by Rutgers University Press, Alternate History Comics, the Ilanot Review, and Cleaver Magazine.
Toward a Hot Jew her collection of graphic essays exploring what it means to be Jewish was named one of 2016's top 10 graphic novels by Forbes. The book investigates what it means globally and culturally to be Jewish, dating from her time in the Israeli military to her tenure as an art professor. Toward a Hot Jew shows Miriam Libicki as a powerful witness to history in the tradition of Martjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco.
Vine Award for Jewish Literature: 2017
Miriam Libicki, the Vancouver Public Library's new Writer In Residence has won a $10,000 Vine Award for Jewish Literature for her non-fiction graphic novel, Toward a Hot Jew (Fantagraphics Books, 2016).
Books:
Toward a Hot Jew (Fantagrapghics 2016)
Jobnik!
The Jewish Comix Anthology
A Bunch of Jews (and other stuff), anthology
The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, anthology
[BCBW 2017]
But I Live:
Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust
Edited by Charlotte Schallié. Art by Barbara Yelin, Gilad Seliktar and Miriam Libicki
(UTP/New Jewish Press $29.95)
Review by Beverly Cramp
The troubles for David Schaffer and his family began in 1939 when he’d barely started grade two. His teacher came to the Schaffer home to tell them that David, a prize-winning student, could not go back to school. As an ally of Nazi Germany, the Romanian government was expelling Jewish children from state-run classrooms.
Less than a year later, Schaffer’s family and great-grandmother were ordered to leave their comfortable house because Jews were no longer allowed to live in rural areas. “In the morning we had a home and a nice garden,” says Schaffer. “By that night, we owned only what we could carry on a horse cart.”
The horrors grew. Forced into a ghetto, the family was ordered to board a train by soldiers with bayonets. “Sick people on stretchers had to be dragged there,” says Schaffer who remembers his frail and confused great grandmother, on a makeshift rickshaw, asking, “Why did you bring me here?” She couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
At their first stop in the town of Atari, Schaffer’s family was put in a room of a looted house with smashed windows. A previous occupant, who had clearly been wounded, had written “They are killing us” in Hebrew on the wall in his blood.
Later, a forced march. David Schaffer’s great grandmother had to be left behind as she could not walk. Even though soldiers said his great grandmother would be taken to a nearby asylum, Schaffer knew what it meant. “The reality is we left her in the ditch near the road. She knew. That was the end of a life. One of the six million.”
Schaffer’s father realized they had to get away, and the family snuck into the forest that night, wandering lost. They united with another Jewish family on the run and eventually found a farmer’s summer kitchen, where they were allowed to stay. But with little food or warmth, they grew weak. David gathered wood sticks to barter for milk and bread in the nearby village.
Foraging was dangerous as many areas were out of bounds to Jews; they could be beaten, even killed, if caught. David’s father was once bashed in the head with a rifle butt, splitting his ear down the middle. But they continued to resist and break rules to get food.
“I have a problem with the word resistance,” says Schaffer years later. “The sad truth is that whoever stood up or actively resisted was immediately killed. Instead, many people resisted by transgressing the rules … we resisted because we wanted to survive … living through the horror was resistance.”
Eventually, Russian soldiers freed Romania from the German army. A relative gave the Schaffer family shelter until they found an empty house to stay in as it still wasn’t safe to return to the house they were forced to leave in 1940.
David Schaffer’s harrowing story, titled “A kind of resistance” and illustrated by Vancouver-based Miriam Limbicki, is one of three graphic stories in But I Live. The other illustrated stories concern two Jewish boys, Nico and Rolf Kamp, who were hidden from German soldiers in thirteen different Amsterdam homes, titled “Thirteen Secrets” and illustrated by Gilad Seliktar of Israel; and Emmie Arbel, who survived in not one but two concentration camps in the title story, illustrated by Barbara Yelin, who lives in Munich, Germany.
The use of graphic narratives allows the survivors’ stories to seamlessly shift from an elder relating their story where it is plain to see how the Holocaust has impacted them all their life — to when they were a wide-eyed child faced with unspeakable terror, as reflected in Emmie Arbel’s story. At one point, illustrations show the artist, Yelin walking with Arbel to find a coffee shop where they could sit down and talk. Arbel’s favourite café is closed, and it’s hard to find another one she likes. As Arbel tells Yelin, “that’s too crowded for me. … I told you, I don’t like to be among many people... And I need to sit near the door with my back to the wall.”
Then the next panel depicts decades earlier as women and children are lined up at a concentration camp. “I remember us standing for hours,” says Arbel, now drawn as a little girl with shorn hair, “… and mother fainted.”
Arbel continues: “You know, even as a child, you learn quickly how to survive. I knew I must stay standing. I should not do anything. Because I knew if I’d go to her they would shoot me. And I was afraid. I was so afraid she was dying.”
Here the art shifts back to Arbel as an older woman sitting at her desk, playing solitaire on her computer. But she is still remembering that horrible day. “So I stayed standing, she says to herself.”
The graphic narratives in But I Live are powerful and relate the Holocaust stories in profound and intense ways that words alone cannot. Created for middle readers, this book is suitable for adults too.
The combination of child Holocaust survivor stories as told to illustrators and completed as graphic narratives was the brainchild of UVic professor Charlotte Schallié. She noticed that her thirteen-year-old son, who was resistant to reading, was taking an active interest in graphic novels. And Schallié was also interested in telling Holocaust survivor stories in new ways. “I felt we need to find some new approaches to testimony collections, telling the story of the Holocaust in a richer, deeper way,” she says.
“It is very important for us that graphic novelists are not just illustrators but are actively co-creating the history with the survivors. Visual storytelling in graphic narratives is especially effective for life stories of survivors who were children during the Holocaust, as images often tend to be deeply imprinted in a child survivor’s memory.
“The multiplicity of experiences is expressed through graphic style, color, and even the individual accents of the speakers. Each unique voice and experience is framed and represents one less voice lost to time.”
Many others participated in this collaborative book project over a three-year period, such as Holocaust and human rights education professionals, historians, student teachers, high school teachers, librarians and archivists.
In addition to the book, all the work from the project, such as drafts of drawings, and film and audiotapes of interviews, is preserved at UVic’s libraries “for future researchers to consult,” says Schallié. “The stories of the survivors, however, live on through this publication.” 9781487526849
Beverly Cramp is publisher of BC BookWorld.
[BCBW 2022]
Miriam Libicki was born in Columbus, Ohio. After living in Jerusalem and Seattle, Washington, she is now based in Vancouver. She completed her Bachelor's of Fine Arts from Emily Carr Institute in 2006.
She has been cartooning since 2003, and screenprinting since 2005. Her primary themes are culture clash and the construction of identity, usually through the prism of her Jewishness and dual American-Israeli citizenship.
Libicki illustrates her real life experiences and incorporates documentary techniques such as interviews and photo references. She also does cartooning workshops and works as a teacher at Emily Carr University.
Libicki is the creator of the autobiographical comic series, jobnik!, which has run from 2005 to the present, and recounts her service in the Israeli army during the second Intifada. Her other nonfiction comics have been published by Rutgers University Press, Alternate History Comics, the Ilanot Review, and Cleaver Magazine.
Toward a Hot Jew her collection of graphic essays exploring what it means to be Jewish was named one of 2016's top 10 graphic novels by Forbes. The book investigates what it means globally and culturally to be Jewish, dating from her time in the Israeli military to her tenure as an art professor. Toward a Hot Jew shows Miriam Libicki as a powerful witness to history in the tradition of Martjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco.
Vine Award for Jewish Literature: 2017
Miriam Libicki, the Vancouver Public Library's new Writer In Residence has won a $10,000 Vine Award for Jewish Literature for her non-fiction graphic novel, Toward a Hot Jew (Fantagraphics Books, 2016).
Books:
Toward a Hot Jew (Fantagrapghics 2016)
Jobnik!
The Jewish Comix Anthology
A Bunch of Jews (and other stuff), anthology
The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, anthology
[BCBW 2017]
But I Live:
Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust
Edited by Charlotte Schallié. Art by Barbara Yelin, Gilad Seliktar and Miriam Libicki
(UTP/New Jewish Press $29.95)
Review by Beverly Cramp
The troubles for David Schaffer and his family began in 1939 when he’d barely started grade two. His teacher came to the Schaffer home to tell them that David, a prize-winning student, could not go back to school. As an ally of Nazi Germany, the Romanian government was expelling Jewish children from state-run classrooms.
Less than a year later, Schaffer’s family and great-grandmother were ordered to leave their comfortable house because Jews were no longer allowed to live in rural areas. “In the morning we had a home and a nice garden,” says Schaffer. “By that night, we owned only what we could carry on a horse cart.”
The horrors grew. Forced into a ghetto, the family was ordered to board a train by soldiers with bayonets. “Sick people on stretchers had to be dragged there,” says Schaffer who remembers his frail and confused great grandmother, on a makeshift rickshaw, asking, “Why did you bring me here?” She couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
At their first stop in the town of Atari, Schaffer’s family was put in a room of a looted house with smashed windows. A previous occupant, who had clearly been wounded, had written “They are killing us” in Hebrew on the wall in his blood.
Later, a forced march. David Schaffer’s great grandmother had to be left behind as she could not walk. Even though soldiers said his great grandmother would be taken to a nearby asylum, Schaffer knew what it meant. “The reality is we left her in the ditch near the road. She knew. That was the end of a life. One of the six million.”
Schaffer’s father realized they had to get away, and the family snuck into the forest that night, wandering lost. They united with another Jewish family on the run and eventually found a farmer’s summer kitchen, where they were allowed to stay. But with little food or warmth, they grew weak. David gathered wood sticks to barter for milk and bread in the nearby village.
Foraging was dangerous as many areas were out of bounds to Jews; they could be beaten, even killed, if caught. David’s father was once bashed in the head with a rifle butt, splitting his ear down the middle. But they continued to resist and break rules to get food.
“I have a problem with the word resistance,” says Schaffer years later. “The sad truth is that whoever stood up or actively resisted was immediately killed. Instead, many people resisted by transgressing the rules … we resisted because we wanted to survive … living through the horror was resistance.”
Eventually, Russian soldiers freed Romania from the German army. A relative gave the Schaffer family shelter until they found an empty house to stay in as it still wasn’t safe to return to the house they were forced to leave in 1940.
David Schaffer’s harrowing story, titled “A kind of resistance” and illustrated by Vancouver-based Miriam Limbicki, is one of three graphic stories in But I Live. The other illustrated stories concern two Jewish boys, Nico and Rolf Kamp, who were hidden from German soldiers in thirteen different Amsterdam homes, titled “Thirteen Secrets” and illustrated by Gilad Seliktar of Israel; and Emmie Arbel, who survived in not one but two concentration camps in the title story, illustrated by Barbara Yelin, who lives in Munich, Germany.
The use of graphic narratives allows the survivors’ stories to seamlessly shift from an elder relating their story where it is plain to see how the Holocaust has impacted them all their life — to when they were a wide-eyed child faced with unspeakable terror, as reflected in Emmie Arbel’s story. At one point, illustrations show the artist, Yelin walking with Arbel to find a coffee shop where they could sit down and talk. Arbel’s favourite café is closed, and it’s hard to find another one she likes. As Arbel tells Yelin, “that’s too crowded for me. … I told you, I don’t like to be among many people... And I need to sit near the door with my back to the wall.”
Then the next panel depicts decades earlier as women and children are lined up at a concentration camp. “I remember us standing for hours,” says Arbel, now drawn as a little girl with shorn hair, “… and mother fainted.”
Arbel continues: “You know, even as a child, you learn quickly how to survive. I knew I must stay standing. I should not do anything. Because I knew if I’d go to her they would shoot me. And I was afraid. I was so afraid she was dying.”
Here the art shifts back to Arbel as an older woman sitting at her desk, playing solitaire on her computer. But she is still remembering that horrible day. “So I stayed standing, she says to herself.”
The graphic narratives in But I Live are powerful and relate the Holocaust stories in profound and intense ways that words alone cannot. Created for middle readers, this book is suitable for adults too.
The combination of child Holocaust survivor stories as told to illustrators and completed as graphic narratives was the brainchild of UVic professor Charlotte Schallié. She noticed that her thirteen-year-old son, who was resistant to reading, was taking an active interest in graphic novels. And Schallié was also interested in telling Holocaust survivor stories in new ways. “I felt we need to find some new approaches to testimony collections, telling the story of the Holocaust in a richer, deeper way,” she says.
“It is very important for us that graphic novelists are not just illustrators but are actively co-creating the history with the survivors. Visual storytelling in graphic narratives is especially effective for life stories of survivors who were children during the Holocaust, as images often tend to be deeply imprinted in a child survivor’s memory.
“The multiplicity of experiences is expressed through graphic style, color, and even the individual accents of the speakers. Each unique voice and experience is framed and represents one less voice lost to time.”
Many others participated in this collaborative book project over a three-year period, such as Holocaust and human rights education professionals, historians, student teachers, high school teachers, librarians and archivists.
In addition to the book, all the work from the project, such as drafts of drawings, and film and audiotapes of interviews, is preserved at UVic’s libraries “for future researchers to consult,” says Schallié. “The stories of the survivors, however, live on through this publication.” 9781487526849
Beverly Cramp is publisher of BC BookWorld.
[BCBW 2022]
