Aya of Yop City (Hardcover)

~ Marguerite Abouet (Author), Clement Oubrerie (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Abouet and Oubrerie's sequel to their 2007 graphic novel Aya is a charming comedy of manners about a group of young women—a sort of Jane Austen scenario transplanted to the Ivory Coast of the late '70s. Aya's friend Adjoua has a new baby, and everybody's pitching in to help take care of him, although he looks rather less like the purported father than like an irresponsible bounder by the name of Mamadou. Meanwhile, their starry-eyed friend, Bintou, is plunging into a new romance with a man whose urbane extravagance blinds her to his sneakiness. Mostly, though, this volume is about the cheerful, communitarian spirit of the place and time it sketches out—a moment of postcolonial African history when people didn't have a lot of resources (Adjoua is entering a beauty contest in the hopes of winning cooking oil for the fritters she sells), but had high hopes for the future. Oubrerie's scrappy, witty pen-and-ink artwork is a small delight: everybody's got exaggerated but subtly expressive body language and facial expressions, and the story's dashed-off but dead-on settings—with traffic blocked by wandering sheep and tin roofs near ambitious office buildings—make its tone of historical transition between tradition and modernization even more vivid. (Sept.)
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From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up—Picking up where Aya (Drawn & Quarterly, 2007) left off, Yop City continues the adventures of Aya, her family, and friends in prewar Ivory Coast. Adjoua is trying to convince the Sissokos that their son is her baby's father, but the truth comes out in a comedic episode. Moussa Sissoko isn't off the hook though, as his father decides it's time for him to learn the family business. Meanwhile, Adjoua's friends are spending as much time caring for the baby as she is, although Bintou thinks she has met the man of her dreams. As usual, all the action revolves around the periphery of Aya's life, but this time the drama hits closer to home at the book's end. Readers who haven't read the first volume will have a tough time following the action, as it picks up threads introduced there with little explanation. As in Aya, back matter includes more Ivorian detail such as recipes, childbirth customs, and a glossary. Oubrerie's illustrations are even more colorful than in the original and match well with the light, humorous tone of the text. An interview with the author is included. This continues to be a pleasant addition to both world literature and graphic-novel collections in its depiction of Africa as a more modern urbane place than much of the literature we see about the continent.—Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1897299419
• ISBN-13: 978-1897299418
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #208,772 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written; good use of multithreading; great art/drawings, May 31, 2009

By	B. T. Denyer "Graphic designer" (Midwest, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A friend turned me onto this book, and I have to say that at first glance I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be. BUT, by the third page I was hooked. Really hooked and read it through in one sitting.

I love the fact that it is peppered with local slang and language from the village. Nothing that would require footnotes, but it does have a glossary in the back for about a dozen words used in the book.

It also has a recipe for Chicken Kedjenou, a dish mentioned in the book. It also has a very cool step-by-step illustration for how to tie the pagne around your baby in order to carry it on your back.

At the very end, there is an interview with Marguerite Abouet by Angela Ajayi called "Drawing on the Universal Africa".

I think this book would be a great young adult and adult graphic novel/comic. It wasn't too preachy, nor was it written outside the grasp of a young adult. I found the story to be very entertaining and had a nice pentameter to it. Great character development, too.

I highly recommend this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Beautiful, May 1, 2009

By	Reader (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This was the second Aya book I read, and I love them both. The drawings are outstanding and the text is moving and totally engaging.

5.0 out of 5 stars Teen love and adult affairs, February 2, 2009

By	Gagewyn (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Aya of Yop City is the sequel to Aya. At the end of the previous book, Aya's friend Adjoua got married in a hurry to Moussa, the son of the wealthy family in town who owns the beer factory. Lo and behold, when the pregnancy which inspired the marriage came to term, the baby looked nothing like Moussa.

The story begins with Moussa's parents demanding that Adjoua's parents find a relative who looks like the baby.

The baby makes things a bit more serious than in the previous book in the series. The four young women, Aya, Adjoua, Felicite, and (sometimes) Bintou pass the baby about and share chores as they go on with their lives.

What really makes this book heavier than the last is that the soap opera activities shift from teen crushes and hook-ups towards the adult world. Aya's father works as a manager at a distant branch of the town beer factory. This means a commute through several cities in a fairly nice car and a separate address. He has been fooling around and his wife and children are clueless. Bintou is no longer schemeing over the inept and extremely immature Moussa. Instead she has moved on to secret liasons with Gregoire, an expatriate visiting from France. She and he have totally different views as to how long term their relationship will be. He knows all about that difference in view, but doesn't enlighten her.

Because the nature of hook-ups and relationships shifted, the feel of this was a bit more heavy than the last. It's still a soap opera, but with bigger ramifications and consequences.