On sale date: October 23, 2018
Fitzgerald’s graphic memoir entwines political and personal displacement.
Ali Fitzgerald is an artist trying to find herself in a rapidly changing city facing an influx of asylum seekers. In Berlin, she teaches an art class to displaced people who have traveled from war-torn countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. Given Fitzgerald’s encouragement, her students take pen in hand and express their painful memories of home and cautious optimism about their new life. Revealing the humanity behind the politics of immigration, Drawn to Berlin is about loss, community, and the art that binds people together.
Praise
"One of the finest pieces of comics nonfiction I've read in years." — New York Magazine: Vulture
"Fitzgerald celebrates the cathartic powers of art in her memoir recalling comic workshops she led in Berlin's refugee shelters. This ode to her students isn't just a portrayal of a city in flux or a people displaced—it is a portrait of the power of art." — Publishers Weekly
"Fitzgerald uses art to illuminate the human dimensions of [the refugee crisis], a situation often sketched in statistics." — The Atlantic
"Beautiful, sensitive, illuminating, and at times quite funny. ... every page is a gem." — LA Review of Books
"It's quite an extraordinary book—a thoughtful and deeply empathetic examination of displacement and hope, focusing on the situation of immigrants in Berlin, past and present." — The Rumpus
Specs
- Pages
- 196
- Format
- Hardback
- Color
- Black and white
- Dimensions
- 7.6" × 9.1"
- ISBN-13
- 9781683961321