An Interview with Comics Journalist Joe Sacco
For more than ten years, journalist and comics artist Joe Sacco has been proving that sharing newspaper stock need not be the only relationship between comics and journalism. In expertly researched and stunningly illustrated works of non-fiction, Sacco displays an unmatched ability to draw readers into the harsh environs he reports from. Sacco tells in jarring detail stories that may have otherwise fallen between the cracks. In advance of his appearance at Seattle Town Hall tomorrow, Sacco sat down for a few questions with Seattlest. Read on after the jump.
You’ve recently published a new book, Footnotes in Gaza, and it’s significantly longer than much of your previous body of work. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and how it relates to your past work, particularly Palestine?
Yes, it's a long, involved work, which weaves between events that took place some 50 years ago and the time I was in Gaza researching the book, which was in 2002 and 2003. It's not really a sequel to Palestine, my first attempt at examining the occupation, though obviously the first book paved the way for the second.
Why is now the right time to tell the story related in Footnotes in Gaza?
There is no particularly right time to tell a story like this. The impetus to write this book relates to a magazine assignment in 2001 to see how one Gazan town, Khan Younis, was faring at the start of the Second Intifada. I was working as an illustrator with the journalist Chris Hedges, who was writing the story. Before we went, I recalled something I read in a book by Noam Chomsky about a large-scale killing in Khan Younis in the '50s, and I looked up whatever material I could find about it. When we were in Gaza, we talked to a number of older people who recalled the shootings of men by the Israeli army during the Suez Crisis. Unfortunately, the magazine dropped the historical account from Chris's larger story about Khan Younis. I decided to go back to Gaza to correct what I thought was a blunder -- we are always sweeping history under the rug. In the case of what happened in Khan Younis and Rafah in 1956, very little had been written in English.
How would you respond to some critics who have leveled charges of anti-semitism against your work, especially Footnotes in Gaza?
I reject any charges of anti-semitism. This book is based on careful research and interviews with scores of people who were there. The figures of 275 killed in Khan Younis and 111 killed in Rafah are not mine, they are alleged in a United Nations report. Recording history fairly, trying to find out exactly what happened, is not anti-anything. History is history. Of course, history can be used to disparage a group or nation, and I am opposed to that.
There was quite a lag between this book and your last full length work, But I Like It. Are you working on another project yet, or taking a moment to catch your breath following Footnotes?
I wish I had taken more than a week off in Mexico to catch my breath, but I've already finished a 48-page story for the Virginia Quarterly Review since the book was finished. It's about African migrants trying to get to Europe. I've got other plans in the works, but let's not spread rumors.
What are some stories you’d like to cover but haven’t had the opportunity to, or just some stories you think deserve more in-depth coverage than they’re getting right now?
There are so many stories deserving attention, so many forgotten places and peoples, it's hard to know where to start. I think there are some committed journalists out there trying to look into these things. I'd say the big story of this century will be the migrations of people caused by things like climate change and poverty.
Joe Sacco speaks at Seattle's Town Hall tomorrow night, January 13th, at 7:30. Tickets are $5 in advance, and are available through Brown Paper Tickets.
