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Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel by Joe Sacco

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Sacco Brings Forgotten War Alive in Comics

A review by Steve Duin

When Abed El-Aziz El-Rantisi sat quietly and listened to the memories of the massacre at Khan Younis, he could still hear the screaming and wailing over the body of his uncle.

"I couldn't sleep for many months after that," El-Rantisi told Joe Sacco three years before the Hamas official was assassinated by an Israeli missile. "It left a wound in my heart that can never heal.

"They planted hatred in our hearts."

After spending three months examining the roots of that hatred, and more than six years getting his graphic thoughts in order, Sacco doubts that peace will break through the scorched earth of the Gaza Strip.

"I hold out less hope now than ever," the Portland cartoonist said.

Yet as you quietly make your way through Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel, and the murderous echoes of the Israeli purges at Khan Younis and Rafah, what hope and optimism remains for journalism and comics.

Sacco first became curious about the extraordinary events of November 1956...



Previously Reviewed by The Oregonian
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Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Back in the mid-1990s I was a big fan of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, a novel about a young man's devotion to music. My girlfriend questioned my enthusiasm for this book, which she considered "middlebrow" at best, and our disagreement over the quality of the writing resulted in a drawn-out argument....


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The advent of a much-heralded literary comeback is upon us; week after week, in a nearly endless parade of mastery, new work is being trotted out but such luminaries as Philip Roth, A.S. Byatt, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Lorrie Moore, Thomas Pynchon and even Vladimir Nabokov. Even so, Alice...


Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood by Melissa Hart

"What's best for the child." The phrase gets bandied about a lot in divorce proceedings. For a young Melissa Hart, it was a judge's justification for taking her away from her mother, a loving, vibrant woman who happened to be a lesbian. "I must consider what's best for the children," the...


Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict by Irene Vilar

I'll say it now: Irene Vilar had 15 abortions in 15 years. That's the blunt opening one-liner that fails to tell the whole story of this beautiful and brave book. Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict is a memoir less about 15 abortions than it is the story of a young woman who...


The Opposite Field: A Memoir by Jesse Katz

Our language is peppered with baseball metaphors. We could barely communicate without them, especially at work: "She really struck out on that project, but he hit it out of the park." The game is so romanticized we even use those metaphors to describe amorous grappling: "I got to second base, dude."...


The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis

To savor or to gorge? It's a question that's been weighing heavy on Lydia Davis fans all month. Spanning 20 years and four volumes of short fiction, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is here. There are 198 stories, an overwhelming number for any writer. But Davis is a woman of economy, and...


The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest by Jack Nisbet

The man who gave his name to the magnificent Douglas fir was in the second wave of white adventurers in the great Pacific Northwest, and you get the feeling, reading Jack Nisbet's fascinating new biography, The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest, that he regretted his ...


Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich

In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Notion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich reprises her role as Dorothy swishing back the curtain on a great and powerful given: "Americans are a 'positive' people." Sunny, self-confident optimism defines us as individuals and as a...


Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon hates Captain Underpants. That may sound like a piffling, self-evident position for a writer of Chabon's stature and talent -- what serious novelist wouldn't hate the whole silly poo-flinging series? -- but in reality he's setting the stage for "Hypocritical Theory," easily...


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Whenever a writer becomes obsessed with a long-lost or wrongly told story from history he usually ends up spending most of his free time (and money) researching it. At some point in the madness, he knows a book will result come hell, high water or divorce. When he writes the book, he must decide...


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