Aya: Life in Yop City
Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie’s Aya series starts in the Ivory Coast 1978. Aya is a young woman with dreams of becoming a medical doctor. The episodic story moves through her and her friends lives as they experience setbacks, love, and ambitions as they grow into adults. Through the three main women in the story, the tales branch out from the wealthy cities to traditional villages and everywhere in between. The second book, Love in Yop City, even takes readers to France as Innocent has immigrated there and looks to find his place in Paris. He reacts to negative representations of Africa, falls in love with his roommate, and helps Seb come out to his parents.
The artwork is bright and often joyful. Rich colors and shadow are used to place readers in the setting and tone of the text. The careful drawing of each person gives a clear sense of each one’s character through the way they stand and react to others. From Moussa who frequently feigns confidence and conviction through his exaggerated puffed up chest to Hervé whose head is always angled forward in a slouch, you see the young men of the text displaying their sensibilities through their bodies more than their language.
The books function like a coming of age narrative in the style of a soap opera. Switching back and forth between story lines allows readers to see the many difficulties each character is up against. Adjoua becomes pregnant unexpectedly, having to tell her parents and then learning to be a young single mother. Because the books move between different character’s story lines, some may find the narrative fragmented. However, the variety of perspectives included in the books gives readers a sense of the diversity of experiences in the Ivory Coast and how despite their differences, characters find places of interaction regardless of their economic status or the boundaries of their neighborhoods.
Teenage pregnancy, being gay, religious scams, prostitution, and sexual coercion, the books don’t shy away from the difficulties of life in the Ivory Coast. But these issues aren’t presented to make the country seem uncivilized or desperate for outside help. The second book has Aya take on a biology professor who pressures his female students into sexual relationships by threatening their grades. Even Mamadou who is caught up in prostitution to support his baby is helped out of the situation by his friend Hervé. The characters are far from helpless here. They fight for themselves and their communities with the conviction that they are responsible and capable of making their country better.
