Diverse reads of the week #6

For this week I only have a comic books series to share but it was actually really good, so! I’m also still more or less in a reading slump :///

Those are the first 3 volumes of the series so I will talk about them as one.

As the author herself says, she wanted to show in those books “an Africa without the… war and famine, an Africa that endures despite everything because, as we say back home, life goes on”. And obviously I’m not the one to judge but it seems like that’s exactly what she managed here.

Aya tells the story of three families living in the same city in Ivory Coast in the late ’70s. We get to meet a myriad of characters, all of them interesting, all of them fleshed out & endearing. They all have their own problems but it’s also very clear the solidarity between friends and neighbours and family is important here – and so a lot of problems are being solved together. It’s an amazing & refreshing thing to see.

The main character, Aya, wants to be a doctor and inspires other girls to stand up for their own & other characters to better themselves. She’s something of a voice of reason in the story & frankly my only wish for this series is that she would get a proper story-line of her own. So much is happening in the lives of everyone around her but three books in and the only thing going for Aya is that she will, in fact, start university. Which is huge actually & I am dying to see how that develops!! I just wish we didn’t have to wait three volumes for that.