>> Deborah Thomas:
I'm pleased to join you today
in celebrating our
comic book collection,
which is one of the largest
in the world
in a public institution,
and in particular, one part of
that collection,
the SPX Collection.
In August of 2011, the Library
and the Small Press Expo or SPX
joined together to facilitate
and develop the library's SPX
collection of sequential
art, mini-comics,
graphic novels and more.
In person for the
first time since 2019.
The Small Press Expo is an
annual festival in Bethesda,
Maryland, that gives artists,
writers and publishers
of comic art in all
its various forms
the opportunity to meet
and exhibit their creations.
Under our partnership with SPX,
the library acquires independent
comics and cartoon art from
creators and publishers
appearing at the Expo, as well
as the submissions from the
SPX Ignatz Award announced
during the festival.
Through today's talk,
we recognize
the rewards of this agreement.
Over 5000 items have come
to the library from SPX to date,
and celebrate the comic
book art form.
We're also fortunate today to
have--to have with us acclaimed
cartoonist, animator, writer
and educator Aimée de Jongh.
As this year's speaker to share
her work and creative process,
particularly for her award
winning graphic novel
"Days of Sand" 'ZON' (=SUN),
about the American Dust Bowl
of the 1930s
inspired and researched
using the Library of
Congress collections.
The Eisner nominated
book is a best seller
in both her native
Netherlands and France.
Her first graphic novel,
"Return of the Honey Buzzard",
won the Prix Saint-Michel
for Best Dutch Graphic Novel
and was made
into a film in 2017.
Her graphic novels have received
various international awards,
including in France, Germany,
the United States and Japan.
Her latest work with
centrist Ingrid Chabbert
is the comic book
"Soixante Printemps En Hiver"
released by Dupuis.
Today, Miss. de Jongh
has offered to share
her insights into her research
and creation process
for" Days of Sand", including
her inspiration from the
library's Farm
Services Administration
photograph collection
held by the Prints
and Photographs Division.
And now I'd like to introduce
our partner in the program,
Mr. Warren Bernard,
Executive Director
of the Small Press Expo,
who would like to say
a few words, Warren.
[audience clapping]
>> Warren Bernard:
Well, as is my want, I'm
remarkably unprepared
for anything formal,
so I just want to say
what an honor it is to be
a partner with the Library of
Congress. And to really show my
appreciation for them, for the
resources and the efforts,
and the enthusiasm
that they've got
for accumulating the culture of
the indie comics world at SPX.
We've got, as
Deb said, 5000 items.
We've got another 1000 items up
in prints and photographs,
original art, posters, prints,
just all kinds of ephemera.
And of course, the most
interesting of the bunch,
at least to me, are the mini
comics. And one of the focuses
that we do have is that there's
a lot of stuff that comes up
at SPX that is not submitted
for copyright,
so it does not come here
to the Library of Congress.
And the focus we have
on this collection
is to gather that material up.
So that it's one it's somewhere.
And two because it's not
submitted for copyright
that some institution has
all of that really cool stuff.
It's this is a double
honor for me.
A triple honor, actually,
because I'm also honored to.
This is the first one of these
since 2019.
I think this is the eighth one
that we've done.
Yeah. Going back to 2012.
So every year since then,
we've been honored to have
the SPX lecture in the
Library of Congress
and the Friday before SPX.
And then, of course, super
honored that it's Aimee
who's doing this. I remember
when she was starting
just the thinking
process, you know,
"Warren I'm thinking
about doing this thing
about the Dust Bowl.
What do you think?"
And, you know of
course, you know, we--
we talked and I kind of followed
her on that journey, you know?
"Warren Yeah, I'm going to come
in. I'm going to go out to,
I'm going to go out to Oklahoma,
and I'm going to go here
and I'm going to go there."
And it was just a blast
listening to her.
So I you know, this is
especially heartwarming for me
because now I get to introduce
my good friend, Aimee.
[audience clapping]
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Hi, everyone.
Wow, Warren, thanks for that.
That's beautiful.
So, hi, everyone. I'm Aimée
de Jongh from the Netherlands.
And welcome. Thank you
all for coming here today.
I really appreciate that.
And I also need to say thanks,
of course,
to the Library of Congress
for having me today
because it's such
a special place here.
As Deb mentioned, a part of the
book was researched
here in the library. So it's
kind of a full circle thing
to be here and
talk about the book.
Same thing with SPX
Warren, because yeah,
we talked about the book
in a very early stage.
And so yeah, it really feels
like a full circle.
And I also want to thank the a
Dutch foundation of Literature
who funded my trip here, but
also a travel, gave me a travel
fund to do research
for this book.
So I'm just going to see if
this works.
Uh, I think so.
I'm going to talk today about
the research for this book,
and it's a graphic novel.
Usually, my work is fiction and
I always use research in some
way. I always use photographs,
for example, to document stuff
like I did a comic about taxis,
and I was just looking up
photographs about taxis to see
how I should draw them.
So there's always a kind of
research process involved.
But with this book it was very
different. Because it is set in
a 1930s in a dustbowl.
And obviously, I wasn't there
to witness it, so I had to
do some digging literally
to find the right atmosphere.
But also to be
historically accurate.
That was very important to me
because as you know,
the Dust Bowl happened
in the 1930s
throughout the forties even.
And there are still
people alive today
who witnessed the Dust Bowl.
So I kind of owe it to them
to be accurate about it.
So I'm going to well, basically
walk you through the process how
it came about and the book as
it is now, how that was created.
First of all, let me just start
with what we're going to talk
about. I'm just going to
introduce myself very quickly as
an author. So you all know what
I do and what I make.
Then I'm going to talk about
"Days of Sand" the graphic novel
and the research I've done.
And I also want to finish this
lecture with some Easter eggs.
So if you have read the book, or
if you're going to read the
book, these are like little
things that I hid inside the
book that you all will see now,
but the rest of the world won't.
So stick around till the end
for the Easter eggs.
Okay? Okay, so about me, I'm
right now, I'm 33 years old.
Oh, my God, I'm old.
And I've been working as a
comic book artist for about
15 years right now.
Professionally, I kind of
started pretty early on doing
newspaper comics for Dutch
newspapers. And I
studied animation.
I have a love for animated
films, and in Holland you have
some very good schools for
animated films.
So I studied there.
So basically the first jobs I
had were a mix of comics for
newspapers, animated films,
and also anything in between.
So for example, I would do
storyboards for films and
series, or I would do short
films where I was a director.
And eventually I would do a mini
comics, a small press comics,
just kind of to try
and experiment.
And I remember I was like 15 or
16 years old when I made my
first mini-comic, and that's
when the love for comics really
started. And actually one of
the people is here, Kenny,
who was one of my friends from
Holland who was with me
throughout this process. And we
did some comics together
way back when.
And so it feels like
to me, it feels like I'm a
dinosaur in a comic book world.
Like I've been doing this
for such a long time.
But, you know, right now I feel
like I'm also only starting
exploring the graphic
novel scene.
So to show you some of the
drawings I made in the past,
these are some stills from
animation projects that I did.
The first one, the blue one is
still from a movie that I made
for the Rijksmuseum, which is
one of the biggest museums in
the Netherlands. And they had
an exhibition about slavery and
the history of slavery and
colonialism.
On the right, you see a still
from a movie about a refugee
from Syria who came to Holland,
and there's this
beautiful documentary about him.
And I was asked to do the
animations where I had to
actually draw him as a cartoon
character and animate him.
And then the other one you see
is a collection of storyboards
that I did for the Amazon
series "Undone",
which you may have seen.
It just came out a couple
of years ago on Amazon Prime.
And for this series, which was
directed by a Dutch director,
Hisko Helsing. I made
some storyboards.
And I guess you can already see
that my work is very different.
It's very varied.
These are illustrations
I made for exhibitions
in the Netherlands to...
The first one is also the cover
of a book about immigration.
So Dutch immigration
into Canada.
The second one is an a, for a
museum, which was a former
concentration camp, actually.
And so every time I have a job,
I try to--to choose a drawing
according to the story
I have to tell.
So obviously, these stories are
very they have to be very
realistic because they are
historical.
So I chose a drawing style
that's quite so realistic.
So you can kind of feel like,
oh, this really happened.
And at the moment that I'm
doing a funny comic, you know,
I would just switch my style
around and draw something
cartoony. So through the years,
I've really changed
my drawing style a lot.
This slide shows two pages from
graphic novels that I did.
The first one was "The
Return of the Honey Buzzard"
which is the black
and white page that you see.
And this one came out
with self-made hero.
The publisher that's
also here at SPX.
And as you can see again,
this is totally different.
This is kind of a, this book was
a kind of a nightmarish scenario
about a bookseller, who is going
through nightmares and memories
from his past that
he's trying to forget.
So obviously, I used a lot of
black in here to make it feel
pretty dark. And the second one
on the right is a page from
"Blossoms in Autumn", which is a
graphic novel about two people
who fall in love at 60, and
they discover love and sex
at old age. And so beautiful,
beautiful book.
And it was written by Zidrou,
who is a Belgian writer.
And I'm very proud still of
these, both these books.
And they're also on display at
the end of the back of the room.
So if you want to take a look
there over there.
They'll also be for sale
at SPX. I have to say,
just because my publisher
is here, that's fine.
So, okay, "Days of Sand".
So this book, like I told you
before, this is a very different
piece than the ones that I did
before. I was used to doing
fiction and fictional books and
and that was kind of comfortable
for me because I could always
just think of a different ending
or, you know, let something
happen to the main character
or whatever. It was
always rooted in reality,
but it was never bound to like
a historical, realistic story.
I never did a biography, for
example, but "Days of Sand",
I kind of changed that around.
And honestly, I don't think
I want to go back to fiction
anymore. Because it was just
such a wild ride
and so interesting.
The story to briefly
summarize the story is
it's about a photographer who,
at the age of 22, is hired
by the FSA, which is the Farm
Security Administration.
And he's hired to
make photographs
in the Dust Bowl in the center
of the United States
in the 1930s.
And the Dust Bowl was a region
in the Great Plains,
where there were
these huge dust storms
and sandstorms and drought.
And people just fled
away from that area
because they couldn't
live anymore.
The dust was literally
everywhere and people
eventually died
because of the drought.
They didn't have any food or
water, so it was very dramatic.
And there were actually
photographers at that time
who took photos
of these farmers.
That was what the Farm Security
Administration was
set out to do.
So it is a story
that is fictional,
but I would say
it's historical fiction.
So it is set in history.
But the character that you see
here, the photographer
is fictional. He doesn't
really exist.
He's actually based on several
photographers
that worked for the FSA.
And I'm going to talk a little
bit more about that later.
Um, so why would I make
a book about the Dust Bowl?
Because, honestly, I live very
far away from the United States.
I live in the Netherlands, and
although I love coming here
in the United States, I have to
say that where I grew up and
everything that I see around me
is completely different
from the history
of the Dust Bowl.
But maybe it's good to show you
what triggered me into
making this book, into
choosing this subject.
First of all, in Europe.
So I'm not just talking about
the Netherlands, but also about
Belgium and France and all
Western European countries.
In the 1930s, there was a lot
going on, as you all know.
I mean, there was the rise of
the Nazi party in Germany,
the rise of fascism.
And so obviously, when we are
in school and we have
history classes, we hear
nothing about the Dust Bowl.
We just hear about
Europe in the 1930s.
And that--that totally
makes sense, right?
I guess I did hear about the
Great Depression
when I was in school.
That was definitely a chapter
in our book, but only
because it was related to the
Great Depression in Europe
in the thirties.
So the Dust Bowl didn't really
I didn't really hear
about it in school.
And a lot of people
that I spoke to and I talked
about the Dust Bowl
said the same thing.
They never heard about it.
They never saw
any pictures of it.
And so I'm not unique in this.
And this was also one of the
reasons I definitely wanted to
make this book kind of to
introduce this thing to Europe.
So how did I get involved with
the Dust Bowl?
It started with a photograph.
Of course, this was one of the
photographs that I stumbled upon
when I was just browsing
the Internet like we all do.
Just a regular day on the
internet.
And I sometimes I end up at
these historical sites.
I just scroll around and look
at beautiful pictures
from the past. I guess
I'm kind of a history buff.
I really love that stuff.
And this photo just struck me
immediately because what you see
is a huge cloud of dust.
It's like a wall of dust, and
it's like swallowing up
the little town in front of it.
And it's, it's like
a disaster movie.
It looks like this is CGI.
You know, it's it doesn't look
real, but it was real.
This--this actually happened in
1934 in South Dakota, I believe.
And you can imagine that for me
as a visual artist,
a visual thinker,
I had to save this
photo to my hard drive.
I have this little folder on my
computer with like inspiration.
If I ever have a blackout,
I know what to do.
You know, I have projects lined
up for me and this was
definitely in that folder.
So this was I think it was 2016
ish that I stumbled upon this
photo and a couple more.
And this is when I talked to
Warren about it.
And also later I talked to Emma
from Self-made Hero about,
you know, just
is this worthwhile,
you know, to make a graphic
novel about? I wasn't sure.
And then there was a second
moment that I was triggered
and this might seem a bit weird.
This is, these are two paintings
of David Hockney,
the British painter. Maybe
you're familiar with this work.
He's a painter who does mostly
landscapes.
His most famous painting is
actually a bigger splash,
which is a swimming pool.
With Splash, it's really good.
And I'm actually a big fan of
David Hockney, and I was doing
a summer school in Paris in 2017
where of course the big,
And they had a new exhibition
on David Hockney's work.
So I went there like super
excited to see this new
exhibition and new work.
And this is what I saw.
And so it turns out David
Hockney discovered the iPad and
and he started
drawing on his iPad.
So the whole exhibition were
just drawings of things around
his house, like candles and
flowers done on his iPad.
And they were actually
pretty bad.
And, um, this is just an
example, and I have to say
some of them were better,
but as you can see,
I wasn't like
totally blown away.
It was, it was
pretty disappointing.
Sorry, David, if
you're watching.
[all laughing]
Anyway, I was so I was still in
this museum and I thought, okay,
I need something else because
I'm not satisfied yet.
I mean, I paid my money to get
in this museum,
so let's just walk around.
And at the same time and this
is just sheer coincidence.
There was an exhibition
of Walker Evans,
the great photographer
who worked for the FSA.
And I did not know that name.
I didn't, didn't know anything
about this guy.
But my boyfriend
is a photographer.
So I thought, you know, I'm
just going to go in and then say
that I went to this exhibition
of what's his name again?
Walker Evans, and he'll think
that I'm cool or something.
So I went into this exhibition
not knowing what I was going to
find. And it turns out that
Walker Evans was a photographer
during the 1930s, during the
time of those dust storms
that I saved on my hard drive.
And the work in his exhibition
was so beautiful.
Like the photographs.
You see one up here.
What he did was he visited
families of farmers in Alabama,
for example.
He just took photographs of
families living there.
He went inside their houses,
inside their bedrooms,
took photographs,
the children playing,
the people sitting
outside on the porch.
And there was something
so real about it.
It was as if I was there, and I
was just walking in that room
as if these were people I knew.
Like they just felt so personal.
And this whole exhibition
was so beautiful.
I stayed there for a couple of
hours and something inside me
said like, This is a sign I have
to, I have to use this somehow.
And I couldn't stop
thinking about it.
So even after I left Paris, I
was just thinking and thinking
and thinking about this dust
bowl, about this photographer,
about Walker Evans.
And then these images showed up
in the news,
images of dust storms and
sandstorms in the Middle East,
but also in the United States.
The drought, of course,
the climate change.
And again, you know, I was just
thinking about these photographs
that I found online. And I just
thought this is,
this is all too important
not to make.
This is a story
that I have to tell.
And finally, the last thing
that really triggered me
was the same year that I was
in Paris in,
I think, October of that year,
I did something
for the first time.
Graphic journalism.
Graphic journalism is a genre
within comics that is basically
the same as what a photographer
does when he's a journalist,
like photojournalism.
But then you go with a sketchpad
and a pen and a pencil.
And I went to the
refugee camps in Greece,
which were forbidden for press,
forbidden for cameras, forbidden
for journalists. But I had some
contacts there, and I just
basically asked them, can I
enter with my sketchpad and pen?
And they said,
"Yeah, I think so.
I mean, why not?"
So I called up a newspaper in
the Netherlands and said,
"You know, I can go to
the refugee camps in Greece
and draw what I see.
And there's like no pictures
allowed, no photographs allowed.
So this could be something."
And they said immediately,
"Okay, if you do that,
we will publish this."
So I went there
with three other cartoonists,
sorry, two other cartoonists.
There were three of us.
And I just documented
what I saw.
I made a reportage, a drawn
reportage of what I saw.
And I wasn't prepared at all
because this was the first time
I did something like this, but
it made a lasting impact on me.
So the photos that you see
here, the left one is in Greece,
and this is called the life
jacket graveyard.
And this is the place.
It's kind of a dump where they
put all the life jackets of the
people that arrive in boats, and
arrive at the coast of Greece.
And they just dump all the life
vests that they have on this
onthis mountain. And now they're
kind of calling it
the life jacket graveyard.
And it's very
impressive and very sad.
Because it's
literally hundreds of
thousands of life vests.
I mean, you can see
me walking there.
You can see how
big that pile is.
And then on the right, you see a
photo that I took two weeks ago
in a refugee camp
in the Netherlands.
So this whole refugee
crisis is still going on.
Even, you know, nobody's
really talking about it anymore.
In Europe, the refugee crisis
is still going on.
And obviously this really
interests me and
still touches me to this day.
Of course, in the Dust
Bowl when I was reading
more about the background of
the Dust Bowl and the
consequences of the Dust Bowl,
I found out that actually one of
the biggest migrations
in North America happened
after the Dust Bowl, when people
as refugees fled the Dust Bowl
and went to California
to find jobs.
You all know "Grapes of Wrath",
I guess the famous book
of John Steinbeck,
which is about
a family fleeing
from the Dust Bowl.
So this whole refugee
crisis happened, you know,
just after the Dust Bowl. And I
could only see parallel stuff
in the Dust Bowl
and in my own work.
These are some
drawings that I made
in the refugee camps in Greece.
Another thing that
happened while I was here and
I was doing these drawings, by
the way, was that I was really
doubting my role as a
journalist while I was doing it,
because obviously these are
people who fled from war.
These are people from Syria,
Afghanistan, Iraq,
who fled the war and terrorism.
And, you know, they've been
through so much, even the kids,
they've been through so much,
they're--they're basically all
traumatized. And here I was
just making nice little
portraits of them and going
back home with a plane.
And, you know, in my hometown,
I just had a shower,
I had warm water, I had food
and water and everything.
And it just felt so unfair to,
you know, to go to that place,
draw those portraits and go
back and never see them again.
And this was something
I recognized
in the Walker Evans exhibition,
where the subjects of his photos
also kind of complained
that they never
actually saw the photos
that were made of them.
So again, another trigger
for this book.
So for the people in this room
who are not really familiar with
the Dust Bowl, I just made like
a summary of what it
actually was. I think
most people here know.
But just to summarize the Dust
Bowl, it's a name for the region
and also the period that it
happened between 1930 and 1940.
It's called the Dust Bowl
because it kind of has the
shape of an oval.
It really is a dust bowl.
And it was a region that had
these immense storms.
They call them black blizzards,
because they would
blow so hard like
they would even dogs and cats
were just flying
through the air.
The winds were so, so hard.
And then the black part is that
sometimes these storms were
so dense that they completely
blocked out the sun,
you couldn't see
anything anymore.
It was just like nighttime
during the day.
And obviously a lot of people
left their farms,
left their houses
because it was just
impossible to
live there anymore.
You can see in this photo,
by the way, you can see
a farmer standing in what was
once a beautiful green place,
and now it's just filled with
dust and sand.
So here you can see that--that
oval shaped that I was
talking about. It
kind of looks like
an avocado now
that I look at it.
But you can see that the most
dense part of those those
dust storms were located
in the panhandle of Oklahoma
and a bit of Texas.
And this is why
I chose to locate my story
also in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
And this part of the country,
by the way, was called
No Man's Land for a
completely different reason.
But it sounded kind of spooky.
So that triggered me as well.
This is a photo you're all very
familiar with, I think.
I think it's on
display downstairs
or I saw it in the gallery.
We were just walking by the...
You pointed at the Thomas
Jefferson Library.
The ostrich. That's right.
I saw her. I saw her there.
Probably the most famous
photo of the FSA.
And to summarize very quickly
what the FSA was
before we continue.
This was an agency
set up by the government
to document the rural poverty
during the Great Depression.
Because, of course, we all know
the Great Depression from
Wall Street and
from the big cities
and the breadlines under
the Brooklyn Bridge.
But that was not a
part of America that was
suffering and that was,
the farmers into rural places.
So these photographers
were set out to--
to document those poor farmers,
to inform other Americans.
But also to be
able to give relief
and give help if
that was needed.
And it started as a
resettlement administration.
It went into the Farm Security
Administration.
And Dorothea Lange,
the photographer of this
beautiful photo, was one
of the main photographers,
but also Gordon Parks,
for example,
Russell Lee, Walker
Evans, of course,
and Arthur Rothstein.
The funny thing is that I think
this program wasn't set up to
become this huge photography
milestone. But it just became
that because the photographers
were so talented and they made
these beautiful portraits like
this one that just have this,
I don't know, it just touches
everyone that looks at it.
And so now, even though the Farm
Security Administration only
existed for five years, I guess
it has this super long-lasting
impact. And all the images that
we basically know from the
Great Depression come from this
vast collection of photographs,
which are here in the
Library of Congress.
So it might be good to know.
These are just a couple of
photos, but it's basically
it's impossible to choose
because it's how many thousands,
like hundreds of thousands of
photos and all of them
are worthwhile. So I made a
quick selection to show you
what kind of photos they were.
They were families
living in rural areas,
people on the move, people on
the road going toward
California, children playing
that kind of stuff, really like
the real life in the Dust Bowl
and real life in those farms.
Just beautiful.
And there was also some
controversy about the FSA.
There's a photo in the back of
the room with a steer skull,
which you will see here as well.
This photo was taken of these
photos were taken by
Arthur Rothstein,
a photographer.
And the controversy was that
he actually picked up this skull
and placed it in
different landscapes.
And you can see it in the
first, like the top image.
You can see that the skull is
looking at the little plant,
the little cactus, and then
the one below, he's looking
away from it. So he--he
obviously placed it differently.
And finally, he even moved it to
a different landscape, like
the cracked soil that you see is
a totally different landscape.
So people were suddenly
realizing like, oh, maybe
the FSA is staging photos, maybe
the FSA is manipulating photos
to get a certain vote because
it was a federal project,
of course, or maybe they had
different intentions.
Should we still believe the
photos that we see
or are they all like
actors and stages, etc.?
Of course, this is all very
political, but to me it was very
interesting to think about, oh,
okay, so what is manipulation
and what is photographer
Arthur really?
You know, what was
his idea of that?
What was his response?
He didn't really
respond to it, actually.
So I was left with these
questions, which I obviously put
into the book in my own
character, John.
I pitched the story idea to
Dargaud, which is a French
publisher. I pitched it in 2018
with these two images.
These are the very, very first
images that I drew.
And what you do in a pitch
is you summarize a story,
and then you show some quick
sketches and some pages
to show them this is
what I want it to be.
This is what I think the book
will look like.
And then they can say
yes or they can say no.
But luckily for me,
they said yes.
They, they absolutely
loved this pitch.
And even though these pages
didn't end up in the final book,
they were strong enough to
convince them that this would be
worthwhile. And so in 2018,
I finally started
writing and drawing.
The first thing that I do,
of course, before I start
with a subject like
this is do research.
I read a lot of books.
I saw a lot of movies, I
watched a lot of documentaries.
You will see some
familiar titles here,
"The Grapes of Wrath",
of course.
"Let us now Praise Famous Men".
There's a touching book on
photographs from the "New Deal".
Um, what else? "Worst Hard Time"
from Timothy Egan, which is the
Dust Bowl book that. That you
should read if you're ever going
to read one book
about the Dust Bowl.
That's the one. And Susan
Sontag wrote an essay on
regarding the "Pain of Others",
which is about photojournalism,
and the friction and the ethics
of photojournalism.
And all of this was very useful
for me to start.
You know, I had my basic
information.
I knew what I was going to do.
This is part of the process in
comics that we call
thumbnailing.
The reason it's called
thumbnailing is that
those images are
as big as my thumbnail.
You can see it in the little
insert there.
The idea of thumbnails is
basically, you just translate
for the very
first time your ideas
and your fantasies to paper.
Some people do it by writing.
They write a scenario, but I'm
not that kind of cartoonist.
I just have to see it. So I do
very quick drawings, very tiny,
so that there's not enough,
there's not a lot of detail.
And this kind of clears my head.
So I've put it all in paper.
And then the next phase is to
change things, to edit things
and make it more
of a flowing story.
But of course at this time
I was still in my studio
in the Netherlands, very
far away from the Dust Bowl
and all those books and films.
They gave me the starting point
and they were very helpful.
Even the photos that I had from
the online archive of the
Library of Congress were very
helpful, but I never had the
feeling that I was really there.
It was I just was drawing all
these cliches, you know, I was
imagining that if--if an
American author would make
a book about the Netherlands,
maybe he would only draw these
windmills and stuff and tulips.
But, you know, the Netherlands
is so much more than that.
You know, there's
no tulips at all.
And so I thought, you know,
it's, it's not enough.
I need to go there.
I need to see Oklahoma.
I need to see this area.
Even though the dustbowl is
long gone, I just need to go
there and see for myself
what it looks like.
You can see here that I used
those photos from
the Library of Congress Online
Archive to inspire the book.
Yeah. So I chose to travel
and I actually got a fund from
the Dutch Foundation for
Literature to compensate
for the cost that
I made. So the plane
and the car that I rented,
all of that was
paid for, luckily.
And that was just fantastic
because it allowed me to, to do
much more than I had
originally, you know, that I was
able to do with my
own money, basically.
So what do you see here is a
map of my trip.
I went with my boyfriend
Bob together.
He is a photographer, so I kind
of needed him to take
good pictures, and...
I started in Oklahoma City.
That's where I flew out to.
And I ended in Bakersfield.
And for some of you have read
"The Grapes of Wrath",
this may sound familiar.
Because this is
the exact route that
the Joad family and "The
Grapes of Wrath" has driven.
So they started out in Oklahoma
and they drove all the way
to Bakersfield. The only thing I
changed in my route was that
I went to the
Oklahoma Panhandle,
which is a bit
above Oklahoma City.
But then afterward I
returned to the route,
and this is also part of
the Route 66, of course.
So I was very grateful with that
fund because I was able to
do this trip. Otherwise, it
would have been a lot shorter.
And so this is one of those
photographs of my boyfriend Bob
took, and you can see why I
needed him.
It's such a beautiful picture.
And you can see also
immediately why I needed
to go to Oklahoma. Because for
me, if I look at this,
I can just imagine coming
across one of those jalopies
with those dustbowl refugees
just standing by
the side of the road,
changing a tire. You know, it
was just--just exactly the same
landscape as that that
I saw in those photos.
But this time it was in color.
It wasn't black and white,
and it was alive.
It had a smell. It had,
you know, it was a temperature,
it had a sound.
And it was just so inspiring
that I even scrapped out
a lot of instances in the book.
Because I thought, no, this was
this isn't at all what would
have happened.
You know, after coming to
Oklahoma, I really knew
what the real dustbowl
would have felt like.
So during that trip, I was
visiting a lot of museums.
I was talking to a lot of
experts, I was talking to
librarians and archivists, and
everyone was was really helpful
in this research and digging up
the Dust Bowl.
And they were all very surprised
that this Dutch girl from Europe
was making a graphic novel
about the Dust Bowl.
But they were also so
enthusiastic because normally
those librarians, they
work with academics and
students. And now it was a
cartoonist, you know.
So everyone was just
really, really helpful.
But I think the thing that was
most helpful was just
the landscape. As
you can see here.
I use this in the book, these
beautiful old telephone poles,
which were still the same ones
as in the 1930s.
And if you look at them from a
distance, you don't even see
the wires anymore. There's just
these big wooden crosses.
And in the book there's a scene
where a character dies and
I won't spoil who it is, but
after that scene I inserted
this, this little image of the
main character driving away
and passing all these
huge crosses.
And this was an idea that
I got in Oklahoma while I was
driving there. So you can
see how a trip like that
is really, really
inspires the book itself.
And this is the Tumbleweed.
I had only seen tumbleweed
in movies.
I didn't know it was
a thing, you know.
So I had to include
it in the book.
This is you all know this,
but you know,
Dutch people don't know this.
And this is also
this is an image
that I took to--to show also to
the foundation, like
how thorough the research was
because I was just digging in
the ground, picking up the
soil, feeling the soil.
And this might seem a bit, you
know, like an overreaction.
But actually in Holland,
we have very different soil.
Our soil is more like grayish
brown, very different structure.
And so after I was like
literally touching the ground
in Oklahoma, I knew what it was
like and I could draw it.
And you can see in the book,
the color is the same
as the soil in my hand.
And this was so useful because
I had read about those
dust storms. I read
that they were
orange and red of color.
But now that I actually saw
this soil in my hand,
I understood why they
were red and orange.
Sorry. Trying to go to the next
slide, but it's not working.
I'm just going to try and turn
it on and off.
So this is the... Yeah,
this is another one.
Those animals that another
thing that I didn't know existed
in Oklahoma but the Pronghorns
and these are everywhere.
When you drive through Oklahoma
they're just very curious
little creatures. And
if you stop by the road,
they just come toward you and,
you know, look what's going on.
And I'd never seen those
creatures. I thought they were,
you know, only living in Africa
or something, but they actually
live in Oklahoma. And this was
also one of those things that
I thought, I have to
include this in the book,
because, you know, if an
Oklahoman reads the book,
they will say, "Ha,
she's been there."
And like I said, so all
the researchers and the
academics and historians
that I asked
were so nice and so helpful.
And here you see Jeff Briley
in the Oklahoma History Center
showing me his
collection of cameras.
I just simply asked him what
kind of camera would this
photographer use in
the Great Depression?
What was the type of camera
that he would use?
And he showed me so many.
In the end, we chose a speed
graphics camera.
And, you know, this was also
why this trip for me was
so special, because without all
those people and all the
knowledge of those people,
it would never have been
such a thorough book.
In Cimarron County, which is
also in the panhandle of
Oklahoma, there is very, very
nice and huge museum where they
have actually an old restored
dustbowl house
and they restored everything.
So the living room,
the bedrooms, the bathrooms,
everything is just the way that
it would have been in
like the 1930s. So even
the dust on the table,
the dust on the floor and
the dust in the beds
is still there.
And I just loved
visiting this museum.
I also took a lot of photos and
and all of it came
back in the book.
When I was making these
drawings of interiors.
I was always looking at the
photos from this museum.
Okay. Come on.
Struggling with the
technique here.
I hope it's not stuck.
Sorry, guys. Okay.
Seems to be working now.
Well, this is not a picture
from that museum.
You can see the
dust on the table.
The car. This is in the John
Steinbeck Center in California,
where they have a huge museum
about John Steinbeck, but also
a beautiful archive with letters
from Steinbeck and everything.
I was just digging through
these archives like crazy,
trying to photograph
everything I saw.
And this is actually in the
Sunset migrant Camp,
also in California, where
the Joad family in the book
"The Grapes of Wrath", ends up.
This was a camp
that really existed, and where
just four refugees lived while
they were doing seasonal work
in California. And to be
in that place, you know,
that was very special.
And they didn't use it
in the book in the end.
But it was just so useful to--to
finish the trip there and to
go there and see where those
people ended up.
I guess sometimes you do a lot
of research and you only use
a 10% of it. But even then,
it's worth it, you know?
One of the cars in the Oakland
Museum of California,
one of those cars where the
refugees from the Dust Bowl
drove in toward California.
So this was kind of special.
This was also in the Oakland
Museum of California in the
Dorothea Lange archive.
And Dorothea Lange was
a photographer of the
Migrant mother, the famous photo
and all of those contact sheets
that she made her private
collection were donated to this
museum. And you can just go in
and take a look in all those,
you know, all these photographs.
It was just amazing.
These are contact sheets.
So that means that they're not
necessarily all printed.
Some of them are never printed.
So if you go there and you go
through those photos, you will
see a lot of images that were
never exhibited, for example.
So that's really special.
And now, of course,
the Library of Congress,
where we are right now. You
might have seen this outside.
I went to SPX in 2019 and I was
already working on this book.
I already did that whole trip
to Oklahoma and California.
And then I thought, okay,
I need to do more research.
And when I'm at SPX, I'm just
going to use my time there
to visit the Library of Congress
and dig into that archive.
These are the real photographs
from the FSA, and
for so many reasons, it was so
useful for me to--to be there.
I spent, I think, 5 hours in
the print and photographs
division to just, you know, go
through all those drawers,
and look at all the photographs.
One of the most interesting
things that I saw and you might
remember the photo I showed
earlier with migrant mother,
she has this kind
of white skin tone.
But actually the migrant mother,
Florence Owens Thompson
is her name was of
Cherokee descent.
So her parents were both
Cherokee.
And she--she lived in
the Indian territory.
So. Farmer Oklahoma.
She was born in a teepee.
So the Library of Congress
has this print
that you see on the
right, that was made
that was developed
by Dorothea Lange herself.
And Dorothea Lange,
of course, saw her.
She was with her.
So she remembered the skin tone
and she made a much darker
print of that photo.
Whereas the FSA, the lab
of the FSA, made a picture
that was much lighter
with a lighter skin tone.
It's for me, this is so
interesting.
Maybe it's all very
boring to you, but
and I wouldn't say
it's like whitewashing.
I don't think there was the...
I don't think that
that was the case.
But, you know, the people
at the lab of the FSA never
actually saw this woman, so
maybe they just didn't know.
These are some pictures that I
saw in the Library of Congress.
Just so beautiful and so real.
You can imagine just spending
hours and hours there.
I really recommend doing that.
One of the questions I still
had for the staff here was
there's a scene where John,
the photographer, goes running
into the office of the FSA
because he has
a job appointment.
But I didn't know
where he was running to.
I didn't know where
the FSA was located.
So I asked the staff,
where was the FSA,
what building, what street?
You know, I want to
make this scene accurate.
And after a couple of hours,
they came back with the answer.
And it was in the
Department of Agriculture,
which is still here today.
So you can even just
visit this building.
And this was so useful because
I could finally stage this scene
and I knew where this character
was running toward.
Another thing that's some
people think that I made up
in the book, but it's really not
made up is the shooting script.
And these are also part of the
Library of Congress collection.
The shooting script is the
script that the FSA gave to the
photographer's list of subjects
that they could follow.
For example, make a photo of
an interior, make a photo of
farm animals, make a photo of
children in the garden.
They would give them this--this
list of subjects.
And then the photographers had
something to work with.
They weren't bound to that
shooting script.
They didn't have to follow it.
But some photographers
were very...
they really followed it
very thoroughly.
So this is also part of the
book, as you can see.
And then finally, when I was
here in 2019, Barbara Nathanson
was still working
here at the library.
She's retired now, but I hope
she's watching at home.
Because one of the questions
I had was that
I had the feeling after
doing all that research
that when we think of Dust Bowl
families, they're all white.
And of course, if you think
about The Grapes of Wrath,
it'sa white family. And if
you look at the migrant mother,
like I told you,
it's a white woman.
Apparently, it wasn't. But, you
know, the way they developed
that photo, white skin.
And I just I read so many books
and it wasn't like that.
That was a really big part of
the farmers in the Dust Bowl
who were African-American.
They were tenant farmers.
They were landowners even.
I mean, there was this
stereotype that we have of the
cotton pickers that were black,
but really there were farmers
and landowners there too.
And I could just couldn't
figure out why we never
saw those, the black people
in those photographs.
And I asked Barbara here
at the library, like, what?
What do you think is behind it?
Why? Why do we have that image
of the white farmer?
And apparently, I ask this
question to the right person
because her husband, Nicholas
Nathanson, wrote a book about
this very subject
in 1994 or '92.
And so she just walked away
and came back with his book
and said, "Read this."
And what Nicholas did
was he I don't know
if you can read it, but what he
did was compare
the representation of
African-Americans in FSA photos,
and then compared it to the
numbers of the population
at the time. And it turns
out this was for me
quite shocking because I didn't
expect it, I guess.
But it turns out that
in 10% of the FSA photos
there are African-Americans.
And at the time the
population of the
United States was
for 9.8% black.
So it's actually
very, very good.
You know, it's--it's almost
the same number.
So as far as representation
goes, they did very well.
And I did not
expect this at all.
And I still thought like but
but then what happened?
You know, if this was so well
done, what happened?
Apparently something else
happened.
It was not Roy Stryker's fault.
This guy was in charge
of the FSA.
It was not the
photographer's fault.
The main reason that there's
not so many photographs
of black people, you
know, in our common
knowledge about the
Dust Bowl and the farmers
is because those photographs
were printed
and published and selected for
magazines and newspapers.
And in that process, that
selection, that's where things
went wrong. So you will see
newspapers that published photos
from the FSA and not
a single black person
would be in the selection.
So--so the discrimination
actually happened afterwards.
So after the photos
were made and of course, we have
that the Joad family,
The Grapes of Wrath,
that's you know, that's the
most well known book and film
that we know. I guess it's a
combination of those factors.
But I was actually very happy
to know that it wasn't the FSA
that was discriminating at all.
And some even in some states
they were overrepresented.
So that's, you know,
that's just great.
And I really wanted to include
a black farmer in the book just,
you know, to--to bring that
story out that not all Okies
are white, you know?
So that's where
this family came in.
And in the background of the
book, in the images, you will
see these little like little
things, like there's, there's a
picture of a background that
you see here in an insert
where it says
help wanted white only.
These are the little things
that I put in to show you that
segregation and discrimination
were still happening.
It's never really mentioned in
the book, but I don't think
you have to, to feel it.
So after all that research,
I came home
and I had to start drawing.
So this, the next few slides
are just
images from the process.
Sketches like this one.
These are all done
digitally in Photoshop.
After this process, I do inks,
which is just
black and white drawings.
And maybe some of you will say,
well, it's already finished.
But for me it definitely
wasn't finished
because I needed color.
Especially because all those
photos are black and white
already. And I have the power
to add something to it,
to add color. So
I had to add color.
And in this very next slide,
you see how that works.
On the left, you see the black
and white image,
the drawn image.
And then on the right
is the colored image.
And this was colored in
Photoshop. It's all digital.
And you can see that the color
really adds something.
It's, I don't know, the
atmosphere the feeling of it.
It's much more clear.
And I included
a lot of silent pages.
So there's not a lot of text in
the book, even though it's quite
a big one. You can read it
pretty quickly because a lot of
the pages are without text.
They're just images.
And like, this one is,
this is over two pages,
so it's a spread.
To really show you the
landscape of the Dust Bowl.
Here you see another page,
as you saw earlier,
in black and white.
And in all of these images,
you will recognize
all the things
I talked about in this lecture.
You will see the
color of the sand.
You will see the type of camera
that is holding.
You will see the
telephone poles.
You will see
all the things that
are stuck in the fences,
tumbleweeds and everything.
All that research is in
there, and I don't have to
explicitly say how much I read
about it, how much I know about
the Dust Bowl. There's this
danger in journalism.
It's called notebook dumping.
Maybe you've heard of it that
if you do a lot of research, you
kind of want to put everything
in the book to show everyone how
smart you are and
how much you know.
But the trick is to--to not do
that and to just tell the story
and let the research flow in, in
the background, for example,
like I just showed you.
I mean, it doesn't have
to be a school book.
It doesn't have to be a history
book.
It just has to be an engaging
story.
And again, the color of the
soil and everything is in there.
All those little things that I
couldn't have done without that
research. Telephone poles.
And actually, this was quite
tricky to draw the storm because
I read in one of the diaries
from the Dust Bowl that the
clouds had a rolling movement.
They were rolling over to land,
and I just didn't know how to
capture that in a still image.
But finally, after hours and
hours of trying, I came upon
this and I was happy because it
it kind of feels like it's
rolling over. But it took me a
while.
This is John, the photographer
having a staring contest with
his camera.
So obviously, he's--he's
doubting his own intentions.
He's having trouble with his
work.
I'm not going to spoil too much
because you just have to read
the book. But in this scene,
you can definitely see he's
troubled with his camera.
He--he doesn't really feel
connected to it anymore.
And one of my favorite things
about the book before we move on
to the Easter eggs. One of my
favorite things on the book is
the use of the real photographs
from the Library of Congress.
So what we did, so me and the
publisher is with every chapter,
and there's about eight
chapters in a book.
Every chapter is introduced by
a photograph from that time.
And what I did was integrate
those photographs inside
the book with the drawings.
And that sounds very vague.
So I'm just going to show you
one example. Here
you see a photo that's also on
display at the back of the room.
And this is a photograph from
the Great Depression.
You see a breadline with people
standing in line for bread and
soup. And these were
businessmen, you know, these
were people who overnight just
lost all their fortune.
People from all walks of life
standing in line for a bit of
bread. And as you can see, this
is near the Brooklyn Bridge, I
think. And they're going all
the way towards the end of the
street. And then
they turn around.
They turn the corner.
Now, as you can see, this is a
spread.
So these are two pages in the
book and you have to flip the
page. And when you flip the
page, this is what you see.
You see that the line that went
around the corner is ending up
in a drawing, and this is
exactly what integrates
the photos with the drawing.
Each photo is part of the
book as part of the drawing and
very fluently you go from
photograph to drawing,
to photograph to drawing.
It's not just a random image.
And I think this worked
particularly well in the book.
And I got a lot of good
responses to it too.
So the Easter eggs are here, so
we're almost at the end.
So just to show you a couple of
things that no one else knows
about this book, and if you buy
it or if you read it, you will
see this. And I hope that it
will just give you a little
spark of joy.
First of all, this is John
Fahey, who is a guitarist,
American primitive guitarist.
And he was the soundtrack of
this book. I listened to his
music almost every day while I
was drawing. And it's a, it's a
very it's like fingerpicking
guitar style based on the
Mississippi Delta blues, all
instrumental. So no singing.
And so I decided as a--as an ode
to the soundtrack to bass, the
main character, John on John
Fahey.
So you can see in his face and
his hair, all of it is almost
literally based on him.
Then you may be familiar with
this photo from Gordon Parks,
the American Gothic.
And this was a photo made
inside the office of the FSA.
He was just hired by Roy
Stryker to become a photographer
for the FSA. And Roy Stryker
said, "You know what?
Just walk around Washington,
walk around the office and make
some pictures and just make
photos of what you see."
One of the first things he did
was make a photo of the cleaning
lady, Ella Watson, here in the
office of the FSA.
And so I had to include her in
the scene where John is visiting
the office. So if you look
closely in that page on the
left, you see a woman in a
green dress with an American
flag behind her. That's Ella
Watson.
And then, of course, there's a
lot of names in the book.
Betty, who is a character in
the book, has a very big family.
She has many children, and all
the children have names that are
references to people who
are in some way connected
to the Dust Bowl,
like Woody Guthrie.
So there's a kid called Woody.
There's a girl called Eleanor,
who is named after Eleanor
Roosevelt. There's Sonora, who
was named after Sonora.
Barb, a great writer who wrote
also books about her experiences
in the Dust Bowl. So all those
names have a meaning.
And then to me, it seemed like
a good idea to also reference
some great American artists
just for fun.
I mean, it doesn't really mean
anything, but just for fun as an
ode to American culture and
American art.
This is one this is the famous
painting from Andrew Wyeth,
Christina's world.
And you see, Betty, as is
almost in the same position.
Another one painting from
Edward Hopper, and I included
this gas station in the book.
You can see the three little
red things coming back into
page. Of course.
Campbell Soup from Andy Warhol.
John is eating soup from a
Campbell can.
I also did some digging.
They were already around at the
time, so it's fine.
So then in May of 2021, so last
year, the book came out in
France because my publisher is
French and in the Netherlands,
and it was a big success.
I'm very happy to say that it
was a bestseller.
And right now we sold over
60,000 copies worldwide with
translations in--in Germany and
Spain and English and Brazil,
Poland, I don't know,
everywhere.
And it won 11 awards already,
even in Japan, which is kind of
crazy. So the Dust Bowl even,
you know, reached Japan, which
is to me, it's just amazing.
And I really remembered what
Roy Stryker, the head of the
FSA, said to his photographers.
He said, "I want to show America
to Americans."
And I think this book showed
America to non-Americans.
So that's good.
So the conclusion and I hope
this is all clear by now, but if
you want to do research for a
book, I guess the main
conclusion is you have to go
there.
You can't just base your
research on photos or films
or stories and books.
You have to go there and touch
the sand, and smell the air and
don't do any notebook dumping,
but just use that research
because in the end the reader
will notice it.
The reader will feel that you
did all that research, even
though it's just in the
background, like these objects
in the house. It's--it's a small
thing.
Nobody really explains why
those objects are there, but the
reader can feel out, okay, this
is real.
And one of the biggest
compliments I had from readers
was that they said they felt
like they were actually there.
And they had to shake out the
sand of their hair after reading
the book. So that was a
beautiful compliment.
If you're still around here for
the weekend, I really recommend
you visit SPX, Small Press
Expo in the North Bethesda
Marriott Hotel.
I will be there all weekend,
signing "Days of Sand".
There's also a copy up there
if you want to look through.
And also be at a panel on
Saturday called All Writing.
It's autobiographical. I'll talk
little bit about my other work.
But for now, this was my
presentation.
I hope you really enjoyed it.
And if you have any questions,
maybe this is a good time
to do questions. Yeah.
Okay, let's do the questions.
Thank you all for listening.
[audience clapping]
>> Okay. So we're going
to alternate between our live
audience here and the questions
that have been asked online.
So we'll start off with a
question from the audience.
>> MEMBER OF AUDIENCE: Hi
Thank you so much for that talk.
I wrote a graphic novel
about my great-grandfather, and
it took four years of research.
And at a certain point, I
had to stop myself.
When was the point where you
stopped yourself?
>> Aimée de Jongh: Yeah,
that's a really good question.
I also have to stop myself
because you can just keep on
reading and keep on.
And I did animation for a while
and I made it films.
And they always said that
people could get stuck easily in
the conceptual phase. Because
it's very tempting to just keep
on sketching and thinking, and
writing storylines and never
actually starting because it's
kind of scary to start.
So like you, I had to stop
myself and say, "Okay, now I'm
just going to start." And I
think I was in 2018.
So that was already one year
after I started doing research.
So yeah, after one year.
But I'm impressed that you did
research for four years.
That's--that's crazy.
And we're very curious about
the book now.
>> Okay. So I just
want to tell Aimee
that Barbara Nathanson
is online.
And she did send you
a comment to say hello.
And thank you for looking so
closely and thinking so deeply,
and portraying the experience
of the Dust Bowl migrants and
FSA photographers so
evocatively.
It was wonderful to hear about
the research and
creation process.
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Oh, thanks, Barbara.
Yeah.
>> MEMBER OF AUDIENCE: Um, this
is sort of a negative question,
and I apologize for that.
But have you gotten
anybody using this as a climate
denier saying that global
warming has been occurring in
America for 90 years now?
It's nothing new.
>> Aimée de Jongh: Oh, good
one. Well, so far so good.
But, uh, I don't know.
I guess the--the Dust Bowl is
just an instance.
It's just an example of how
climate change has been
happening for decades.
I mean, it's--it's getting to,
like a boiling point right now,
but it's clear to me that
it's always been happening
and it always will happen.
But yeah, so far the responses
have been good and no, no
climate change deniers so far.
But if you know any, just give
them the book and maybe they'll
change their minds. I guess not.
But maybe that's.
Is that it for the question?
Oh, another one.
>> MEMBER OF AUDIENCE:
Beforehand. I was reading
the first few pages
of the book now.
And that was I was just so
engrossed in it.
I had to set it down because we
were starting.
And I was wondering in--in that
early scene when the
photographer is interviewing
for the job. And I guess it's
where a Stryker says, oh, your
work thus far has been very
focused on black subjects,
right?
Where was your inspiration for
that?
Was it--was it based on the
history of an individual
photographer? And then
separately, I was wondering,
when you were in Greece, did
you have an opportunity to, I
guess, operate differently than
the
photographers that--that
operated in--in the Dust Bowl,
for instance, you get to leave
a copy of the portrait
of Muhammad with him.
>> Aimée de Jongh: Thanks
for the great questions.
So, yeah, so maybe I should
explain that exactly in the
beginning of the book. John,
the photographer comes into the
FSA office and he shows his
portfolio. And in this portfolio
are many pictures of black
people in the streets of
New York. And Roy Stryker then
says, "Well, we're looking for
a photographer in the South.
And so I don't know if you're
if you're a good photographer
for that, because there's not a
lot of black people left in the
South." This was based on the
Great Migration.
I think you're familiar with
that history that after the
freed men, they--they there was
this huge migration wave of the
black people coming from the
Deep South, going to the big
cities like New York, but also
to the west, northwest,
northeast of the United States.
This went on for many, many
years and they were fleeing from
the lynchings.
They were fleeing from
discrimination, segregation in
the southern states.
And so a lot of black people
ended up in New York, for
example, but also in
Washington, in the big cities.
And so, John, this photographer
is taking photos of these
communities. And I guess it was
mostly based on that history.
I really wanted to put that in.
And also, the black family
that's in the book is part of
that migration wave. They're
coming from the Deep South and
they're traveling toward
California. So it wasn't based
on a particular photographer,
but it was more based on the
history of how that happened.
And I mean, there was a there
was a huge migration wave that
was like 6 million people, I
think, who fled from the Deep
South. It's incredible.
I think I should make another
graphic novel about that topic
because it's, you know, again,
in Europe, nobody really knows
about this. Well, it's--it's so
interesting and it really
changed everything in the
United States.
And then the second question
about Greece, it's funny because
I was actually in touch with
some of the refugees that I drew
portraits of, and I sent them
the final work afterwards.
But this is also kind of a not
all journalists do that because
they're afraid that people
might want to change things.
Like they could say, "Oh, I
don't like how you drew me.
Can you make another drawing of
me?"
Like I know Joe Sacco, for
example, never shows his work
to the people he interviewed.
And it's like, well, you--you
could, but then they will
definitely tell you to change
this and this and this and this.
And after a while, it's just
it's also a question of
trust. I guess you have to
trust the journalist.
But to me, it was very
important to share it.
So I did. And they were happy.
So that was good. Well, thanks.
>> We have a question online.
If you could write another
historical fiction book,
what would the topic be?
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Oh, that's a good one.
Well, I'm actually right now
I'm in the process of creating a
picture book about migration
through history.
So from the very early
migration out of Africa until,
you know, the war in Ukraine,
basically all the the big
migrations. It's--it's huge.
But I'm so, so interested in
people on the move.
So it would be something with
migration, but I don't know
which one. I mean, there are so
many.
Yeah. Okay, I think that's it.
>> Okay. Last call.
Any questions in the room or.
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Last one.
>> MEMBER OF AUDIENCE:
I'm a librarian.
So this is kind of
a librarian question.
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Okay. Good.
>> MEMBER OF AUDIENCE: After
you did all the research,
did you include a
bibliography in your book?
>> Aimée de Jongh: Yes.
Well, I didn't really
put a bibliography in the book.
I have well, I have a list of
all the photographs that I used
and all the reference numbers
and everything, so you can look
those up. I didn't include
a list of books because
this is really a
comic book thing.
But people don't do that in
comic books.
So if you--you know, if you read
if you read any other academic
book or you will find a list of
all the books that were
referenced. But I didn't.
Sorry. You can always send me
an email and just ask.
Okay.
>> Well, thank you.
Aimee, I think.
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Thanks so much.
>> Deb is going to close this
out here, and we--
we just had a few
more comments online
thanking you again for
a wonderful presentation.
>> Aimée de Jongh:
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks. Thanks, everyone.
[audience clapping]