Graphic Africa

Set in the Ivory Coast, Aya of Yop City
is the second installment in Maguerite
Abouet’s vivid teen series

by JULIET WATERS

I don’t know what it is about teen soaps, but I just can’t seem to stop at one. I have nothing in common with any of the characters on Gossip Girl, (except maybe theatre critic Christopher Isherwood, who made a cameo appearance a couple of weeks ago), or the small town kids of Friday Night Lights. But, here’s to good friends livin’ large in Texas! I guess there’s something intrinsically universal in the adolescent struggle to negotiate the challenges of whatever society one is born into.

One day, someone will get the brilliant idea to set one of these teen dramas in urban Africa, though probably not anytime soon. In the meantime, we have the second installment of Marguerite Abouet’s dependably charming graphic novel series, Aya of Yop City.

If you didn’t get a chance to read the first installment, Aya, you can buy or browse through it at the cozy Drawn & Quarterly store in Mile-End. Yop City could have used some kind of “scenes from last year” introduction. The story is, however, generic enough to figure out as you read along. More crucial is the illustrated family trees of Aya, her BFFs, Ajoua and Bintou, and the boys on the periphery of their lives.

Aya is set in the Ivory Coast of the ’70s, during a rare period of economic stability (Abouet left when she was 12). It tells the story of a young girl who dreams of becoming a doctor while she navigates the endless drama of her complicated family and community life. Her neighbourhood Youpougon, vividly illustrated by Clément Oubrerie, is a mix of village values with the promise and more often, betrayal of affluence. It’s a rare picture of Africa without depressing squalor and cycles of violence and corruption. This is not to say that ordinary life is rare in Africa, just images of it.

The teens of Yop City hang out at the local outdoor disco, and address most of the adults as Tantie, or Tonton (casual terms for aunt, uncle and pretty much anyone who is middle-aged). Adults spout cryptic but entertaining proverbs like, “Despite its haste, the fly will wait until the crap comes out.” Some girls, like Aya, aspire to careers. Some, like Ajoua, to success in the local beauty pageant and some, like Bintou, to being swept off their feet by one of the young men who have now made it big in Paris. Or at least, claim to have made it big.

The story starts out almost where it left off last time, with Ajoua pregnant from a fling with a local womanizer. Now she has a very cute baby, Bobby, and her family is doing its best to convince her father’s boss that his son is the baby’s father. They will not succeed, and Ajoua will do her best to hand off her responsibilities to the more responsible Aya.

Yop City repeats most of the themes of the first—seduction and betrayal, and the consequences of naiveté and ambition. But even the worst tragedies are cushioned with good humour, as romance turns to healthy cynicism.

Abouet and Oubrerie have a lot of fun casually subverting the Achie-esque comic book norms. Normally melodramatic events, like single motherhood, or the discovery that a father has a second family, are framed in broadly comic plot twists that remind me a little of the good-natured perversity of Quebec’s iconic TV series, Les Bougons.

I particularly liked the Ivorian Bonus section, which includes a handy glossary of terms, like the West African term for dude (Djo); and skanky Grégoire’s recipe for chicken kédjénou. Girls who find themselves knocked up after a chicken kédjénou dinner, particularly if they’re not living in a culture with a lot of tanties, will no doubt appreciate the detailed guide to wrapping your new born baby in a pagne, so that you can carry it on your back while you work.

AYA OF YOP CITY BY MARGUERITE
ABOUET, ILLUS. CLÉMENT OUBRERIE,
DRAWN & QUARTERLY,
HC, 125 PP., $19.95