Alpha

June 1, 2018

"I'm prepared to drink urine, but only my own!" jokes Antoine, who, with Alpha, Abebi, and young Augustin have hired a rickety minibus to sneak them north from the West African country of Côte d'Ivoire (where there's "no work, no hope") toward Algeria, intending to cross the Mediterranean for a better life in Europe. And now they're out of water. But that's only one challenge during the harrowing trip. Border troops must be paid off with bribes known as "tranquilizers." People die from police beatings or drown. Sex worker Abebi gets AIDS and becomes pregnant. Augustin goes missing to seek his mother. Inspired by an undocumented immigrant hanging around Barroux's (Line of Fire: Diary of an Unknown Soldier) studio, fiction writer Bessora (Pick Me, Pretty Sirs) lays forth the many forms of devastation suffered by lives adrift while introducing memorable characters who draw empathy, admiration, and chuckles. Barroux's spare, marker-based style for the captions suggests an immigrant's own graphic diary. VERDICT Winning prizes from PEN and Doctors Without Borders, this uncomfortable chronicle compels readers, tweens through adults, to identify with the world's unwanted while yet savoring a rip-roaring if often futile adventure.--Martha Cornog, Philadelphia

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 2, 2018
A migrant’s harrowing journey to follow his wife and son to Paris from Côte d’Ivoire unfolds in an illustrated narrative that reveals the difficult existences of African migrants. The reason for Alpha’s family’s flight isn’t clear; though he says of Côte d’Ivoire, “if you stay here, you’ll be dead,” he does not explain the danger more specifically. After being denied a French visa, Alpha travels illicitly across desert borders and then earns money for passage across the Mediterranean by working in camps and villages in Mali. Along the way, he collects a makeshift traveling family: a youth who dreams of playing professional soccer, a young sex worker, and a small boy who is on his own. Alpha strives to keep this group together all the way to the Moroccan coast, but the dangers along the way make separation inevitable. The impressionistic watercolor marker renderings of characters and settings convey mood, but the people and places are just as blurry and unsolid as Alpha’s dreamlike narrative. Solidity comes in the end in the form of a third-person epilogue, which abruptly concludes the story. Though the volume doesn’t give easy answers and would have benefitted from a bit more story detail, it nonetheless movingly depicts Alpha’s challenging passage.

Starred review from May 1, 2018

Gr 10 Up-Alpha does not consider himself "illegal"; he thinks of himself as an adventurer. But he's even stronger, or perhaps just luckier, than most wayfarers. He says, "Indiana Jones would have died eight times over" if he'd been faced with the thirst, uncertainty, deception, illness, and death that Alpha experiences on his months-long trek from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, to Paris, France, making the same journey as his wife and child. Yet his legal path to immigration is stymied by an endless loop of required documentation and fees, and he is forced to bribe his way into traffickers' faulty cars. Alpha faces frustration and pain with optimism, accompanied by other dreamers looking for hope in Europe. Barroux's illustrations are spare and imprecise, mirroring the bleak and unsettling odyssey. Sponsored by grants and nonprofit organizations such as Amnesty International, the book breaks from the traditional dynamic graphic novel format of panels and speech bubbles. Rather, Bessora's expressive words serve as captions to the half-page illustrations, making the work feel more like a photo journal at times. Subtle elements of collage are incorporated; small photographs, often of young children, peek into the fore- or background of certain scenes. While the visuals and language are not explicit, they depict gambling, prostitution, AIDS, infant mortality, and murder. A map offers readers context. VERDICT This stark, poetic story personalizes immigration. For all libraries.-Anna Murphy, Berkeley Carroll School, Brooklyn

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2019
This graphic novel from author Bessora, illustrator Barroux (How Many Trees?, 2019, etc.), and translator Ardizzone follows a migrant's arduous journey from West Africa to Europe. Alpha is a cabinetmaker in the Ivory Coast who wants to take his family to visit his sister-in-law in Paris, but he runs into a mountain of red tape when applying for a visa. "When you leave the consulate, one thing's for sure--you understand that Côte d'Ivoire loves France more than France loves Côte d'Ivoire," explains Alpha, before wryly adding, "But, seeing as Côte d'Ivoire doesn't love its own people very much either, Ivorians still flee for Europe." So Alpha goes into debt to pay a smuggler to start his wife and son on their journey to France. Six months later, Alpha sells his cabinet shop to pay yet another smuggler in hopes of following his family's path. The book has the appearance of a photo album, most pages presenting a stack of two equal-sized, rectangular images with a short paragraph of Alpha's deeply human narration beneath each illustration, documenting his journey. As Alpha quickly learns, the road out of Africa is beset with con men, drunken soldiers, endless dusty desert, and death--but also kindred spirits. Barroux's illustrations have a deceptively simple quality, with heavy lines and people with dots for eyes and bulbous, shiny noses; that simplicity makes an ill migrant's hollow stare or the stiff joints of a body left to rot all the more haunting. Bessora is a fiction writer whose work "is underpinned by extensive research," according to the author bio, though the origin of this story is unspecified. It is a compelling tale, though major events transpire in the text-only epilogue, which is delivered by an omniscient narrator rather than Alpha, robbing the conclusion of some of its heft. Heartbreaking and timely.

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July 1, 2018
The plight of the refugee is brought to brutally vivid life in this visual diary of Alpha Coulibaly, who leaves his home in C�te d'Ivoire to follow his wife and son, who left six months ago for Paris. A journey that would take hours with a visa and in a plane becomes a grueling trek by minibus and truck that lasts for 18 months, with stays in squalid refugee camps while awaiting transport. Alpha's harrowing account is so convincing that it comes as a surprise to learn that the work is a fictionalized treatment by writer Bessora and artist Barroux, inspired by an economic migrant whom the latter met at an artists' squat in Paris. The powerful, blocky artwork is drawn by felt-tip markers and washed in limited �colors?the tools Alpha would have access to for his journal. The sheer numbers of people ensnared in this worldwide humanitarian crisis makes it difficult to comprehend its toll. By homing in on the experience of one symbolic individual, Alpha humanizes the too-often faceless tragedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)