Multiperspective War Memory in Contemporary Czech and Russian Graphic Novels for Young People

• In Event: Multiple Perspectives on War Memory in East European Children’s Literature: Victimhood, Justice, Peace

Abstract

Cultural memory studies have revealed that the choice of medium can significantly affect the mediated mode of remembering. This paper focuses on representation forms in young adult literature that encourage the readers’ reflective engagement with different perspectives on past conflicts, thus shaping multiperspective war memory. I will analyze two graphic novels from 2021: the Czech "Expelled Children" ("Odsunuté děti") and the Russian "War vs. Childhood" ("Voina vs. Detstvo"). Both are based on childhood memories of multiple witnesses, transformed into graphic narratives by different visual artists. The Czech book is about five German children who were expelled from Czechoslovakia with their families after WWII; the Russian one is about thirteen people whose childhoods took place on opposite sides of different military conflicts (in Northern Ireland, Caucasus, post-Yugoslav countries, the Middle East, and Eastern Ukraine). Each story is simultaneously represented through multiple media: graphic novel and pure text; first-person fictionalized narrative, quotes from interviews, and third-person documentary narration; photos and drawn images. This composition represents a dialog between verbal and visual narratives, lived-through experience, and (artistic) construction. Based on this material, my paper will introduce the concept of multiperspective war memory, being shaped on several levels of book construction.

Author

• Svetlana Efimova, Ludwig-Maximilians-U Munich (Germany)