Embodiment and transmission: an interview with franco-cambodian cartoonist Tian Veasna. Issue 3 (4th May 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: P. So, Angelica; Laurent, Caroline D.
• Is Part Of: Journal of graphic novels & comics. Volume 13:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 486
• Page End: 498
• Publication Date: 2022-05-04
• Subjects: Cambodia -- Tian Veasna -- Khmer Rouge -- Year of the Rabbit -- generation -- transmission -- genocide; Graphic novels -- Periodicals; Comic books, strips, etc -- Periodicals; Popular culture -- Periodicals; Art, Modern -- 21st century -- Periodicals; Art, Modern; Comic books, strips, etc; Graphic novels; Popular culture; Comicroman; Comic; Periodicals; 741.5
• DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2021.1934054
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2150-4857

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Conducted virtually during the Covid-19 lockdown in mid-2020, this interview of Franco-Cambodian cartoonist Tian Veasna illuminates the mechanisms at work in drawing his three-volume graphic narrative L'Année du Lièvre in the original French, and which has just been translated into English by Drawn & Quarterly as a single comic book entitled Year of the Rabbit . The way Tian Veasna has decided to recount his story is unique: being too young to fully understand or even remember the 1975–1979 events, he has made his father, Khim, the main character of his trilogy. This entails that he has listened to and recorded his father's testimony in order to fully 'embody' him, as the cartoonist himself says. It also implies that he has broken the silence so characteristic of the aftermath of historical violence. Year of the Rabbit not only exposes the little-known history of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge regime, but it also discloses to children of the Cambodian diaspora a subject that is seldom discussed but integral to their identity: the Cambodian exodus (the Indochina Refugee Crisis and Cambodian humanitarian crisis of the 1970s through the 1990s).