Stassen, Jean-Philippe. Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda. New York: First Second, 2006.
Annotation:
Deogratias and Benina are in love, but he is a Hutu and she is a Tutsi in Rwanda where genocide threatens the very existence of the Tutsi people.
Nomination for Rejection:
First off I want to start out by saying that although I may have had a prejudice against comic books (graphic novels) before reading this book, in no way did that affect my judgement or have anything to do with my nomination of rejection for this particular novel. I liked that Stassen started out with an introduction about the genocide that happened in Rwanda in 1994. Not many people knew the whole story so informing readers about what happened in Rwanda before they read the novel was brilliant. The second thing that I enjoyed about the novel, was the use of color and details in the illustrations. The author knew how to use light and contrast in order for the illustrations to look realistic. I also like that the author went back and fourth (past and present). Although I enjoyed the author's introduction and his illustrations, I did not enjoy the language. Sure it was clear and fit with the novel itself, but I didn't enjoy some of the derogatory words used. I think that you can write a novel about true events without using derogatory names and language (mostly geared towards women, which also upset me). What I also didn't like was that it didn't talk about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda until pretty much close to the end of the novel. I think that if an author is going to write about a certain topic, he/she needs to be consistent with that topic throughout the whole book. With the introduction at the beginning of the novel, I thought that there was going to be a set topic. The author doesn't need to talk about it on every page, but returning to the topic once in a while is always a good idea. I didn't think that this novel was completely horrible and a waist of time, but it still gets my nomination for rejection.
Genre Category: Graphic Novel
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