There’s an undoubtedly nebulous quality to defining what makes a comic a comic that can seem extremely arbitrary on occasion. Writer Angela Pham Krans and artist Thi Bui’s Finding Papa, for example, would no doubt be classified as an illustrated children’s book and yet if we laid out each individual page as consecutive panels it would be impossible to argue that it didn’t qualify as a comic. Finding Papa is based on Krans’ own childhood experiences and fits broadly into the subject area of our Broken Frontier resource list on refugees and immigration.
Finding Papa centres on the experiences of those Vietnamese refugees referred to in the media in the ‘70s/’80s as the “boat people”, with both creators have direct experience of making those fraught journeys. In the wake of the Vietnam war thousands fled the socio-political and economic turmoil that followed, hoping to find new lives in the West. In these pages we follow a similar route as little Mai and her Mama embark on a hazardous attempt to find Mai’s Papa who has gone on ahead to find a new home for them in the US.
Angela Pham Krans pitches her story at a young audience by telling it entirely from the perspective of the young Mai whose confusion at being uprooted, and whose sense of loss, permeate every page. Given its target audience the focus isn’t on the wider horrors the refugees endured but, instead, Finding Papa operates on a more personal level, centring on themes of love and the importance of family.
This emotional underpinning is evidenced throughout in Thi Bui’s stunning visuals which, again, position Mai’s vantage point as the book’s main focus. The argument for Finding Papa legitimately being sequential art is again underscored by the rhythm and pacing of the main characters’ travels. Keep an eye out on body language and visual characterisation in these pages. Both aspects are beautifully portrayed, really drawing the reader into the characters’ struggles. A book full of hope that nonetheless does not ignore the stark realities of the events it depicts.
Angela Pham Krans (W), Thi Bui (A) • HarperCollins, £12.99
Review by Andy Oliver
