I Live Here [Hardcover]

Mia Kirshner (Author), J.B. Mackinnon (Author), Paul Shoebridges (Author), Michael Simons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2008

I Live Here is a paper documentary–an intimate journey to humanitarian crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi.


~THE BOOK~

I Live Here is a visually stunning narrative — told through journals, stories, images, and graphic novellas — in which the lives of refugees and displaced people become at once personal and global. Bearing witness to stories that are too often overlooked, it is a raw and intimate journey to crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi.

The voices we encounter are those of displaced women and children, in their own words or in stories told in text and images by noted writers and artists. The stories unfold in an avalanche: An orphan goes to jail for stealing leftovers. A teenage girl falls in love in a city of disappeared women. A child soldier escapes his army only to be saved by the people he was taught to kill.

Mia Kirshner’s journals guide us through a unique paper documentary brought vividly to life in collaboration with J.B. MacKinnon, Paul Shoebridge, and Michael Simons, with featured works by Joe Sacco, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Phoebe Gloeckner, Chris Abani, Karen Connelly, Kamel Khelif, and many others.


~THE JOURNEYS ~


Ingushetia
The border of the Russian republic of Ingushetia is not even fifty miles from Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya. Today, some 15,000 Chechen refugees live in Ingushetia. Mia Kirshner and Joe Sacco traveled here together, returning with first-person accounts, video, photographs, and other materials gathered in Nazran and Moscow. The chapter includes journals by Mia Kirshner, the story of a young refugee as told by J.B. MacKinnon, the story of a young piano virtuoso as told by Ann-Marie Macdonald, and a graphic novella of Chechen refugees by Joe Sacco.

Burma
Ethnic cleansing by the Burmese military has displaced an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people; over 100,000 live in refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border. Burma is also believed to be home to more child soldiers than any other country in the world. Mia Kirshner and Michael Simons took separate trips to the region; this chapter is based on their interviews, photos, and video, as well as writing by sex workers and Karen refugees. It includes journals by Mia Kirshner, as well as work by Chris Abani, Karen Connelly, J.B. Mackinnon, and a graphic novella by Kamel Khélif.

Juárez
Ciudad Juárez is a large industrial border city in Mexico across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Since 1993, young women, many of them employees of Juárez’s more than three hundred maquiladoras, or global trade zone factories, have been disappearing from the streets. Mia Kirshner and Phoebe Gloeckner made independent journeys to this region; this book is informed by the stories and images they brought home. It includes journals, a story of one of the victims by Lauren Kirshner, and a graphic novella by Phoebe Gloeckner.

Malawi
Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, and has an AIDS rate close to twenty percent. The disease touches every aspect of daily life in the African nation, introducing immense chaos, particularly in the case of orphan children. Mia Kirshner and J.B. MacKinnon made the trip to Malawi and returned with interviews, photographs, writing, and artworks. This book includes journals, a children’s story by J.B. MacKinnon with art by Julie Morstad, and the stories and artwork of boys in a local prison.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This paper documentary, as they bill it, tells hot-button stories from four world crisis areas: Chechnya (in the midst of war), Burma (ethnic cleansing), Mexico (globalization) and Malawi (AIDS). Those credited are identified as an actor, an author and two creative directors who have conceptualized international advocacy campaigns, as well as a number of other artists and writers. Each 84-page book (collected in a foldout case) is formatted as a collage-illustrated multimedia journal with stories of various refugees. Two contain short graphic novels. Joe Sacco (Palestine) tackles Chechnya in his straightforward lack of style. Burma is the fumetti-inspired story of a young sex worker, featuring heavily photo-referenced art by Kamel Khelif. The Mexican entry tells the story of one of the many young female factory workers gone missing and found dead in Juarez. Malawi has the feel of an African folktale. An ambitious project of this scope, with all the attendant marketing, may strike the jaded as another guilt-assuaging, résumé-building charity effort. However, the vibrant, collage-like approach to the subject matter gives the material immediacy, even if those most likely to read it are already persuaded something should be done about these perils. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Powerful. . . . A touching, gorgeously produced, and thoughtfully edited compilation of stories from the world’s trouble spots. . . . Combines reportage, photography, fiction, and comics to create a group portrait of the lives of refugees and displaced people worldwide.” –New York Magazine

“Gut-wrenching–and hauntingly beautiful.” –Glamour

“Elaborately designed in its look, knottily layered in its content and far afield from the entertainment world in its subject matter . . . I Live Here is no vanity project.” –Los Angeles Times

“Compelling.” –Elle

“Gives a voice to the voiceless, vividly and beautifully illustrating the lives of marginalized women and children.” –Tribeca Film

“A potent and provocative graphic delivery system for unspeakable real-world horrors. . . . Each section elegantly manages to balance the personal and political aspects of its respective crisis.” –The Village Voice

“Intense. . . . Disturbing. . . . Effective. . . . With I Live Here, Kirshner shines an unwavering, informative light on important and troubling non-U.S.-centric issues in a truthful and often disturbing manner. She elevates celebrity philanthropic efforts to an extraordinary new level of sophistication in content and style. . . . One of the finest looking publications ever produced. In toto, the package forms an amazing work of art. An exceptional book of rare quality, I Live Here exceeds all expectations.” –The San Antonio Current

“Kirshner has taken a more deliberate, less paparazzi-infested approach to global suffering in I Live Here.” –Seattle Weekly

“Stunning, heartbreaking, riveting. True.” –January Magazine

“A harrowing, moving and memorable book. . . . Using first-person accounts, original art and prose, [I Live Here] is uniquely evocative in its presentation of the life-and-death struggles of marginalized people.” –Toronto Star

“Intimate. . . . Moving.” –mtvU

“Beautiful. . . . Heartbreaking. . . . Extremely personal and intimate. . . . The stories, woven throughout the beautiful illustrations and the sometimes-disturbing photos, are a wake-up call to the atrocities that are occurring daily.” –Curve Magazine   

“A remarkable assemblage of refugee stories. . . . [This] composite of four notebooks designed to be taught, read, spoken of and remembered, not only chronicles the lives she encountered, but it gives them each a voice. . . . Mia’s not in any way preachy, she’s just determined to do whatever it takes to make this world a better place to live in for those whose lives are lived in the margins.” –The SunPost (Miami)

“A harrowing tribute to the overlooked victims of war. . . . Innovative, moving.” –The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“A vibrant, passionate look at lives affected by poverty, violence, and political repression. . . . [A] brave attempt to break beyond standard documentary approaches.” –Planet Magazine

“Creatively compiled. . . . Beautifully constructed. . . . We can’t all make the remarkable journeys Kirshner has, but with this book, she serves as our unexpected ambassador.” –Modern Tonic

“I Live Here brings to life those who blend into the crowds we see on the news every day. . . . [It] makes a strong attempt to bring to life the world’s oppressed in a way the news media cannot.” –The Georgia Straight (Vancouver)

“I Live Here is not just another Hollywood starlet story.” –The Kansas City Star

“Kirshner–with the help of Mackinnon, Shoebridge, and Simons–does an exceptional job putting a human face to devastating problems to which people of developed nations have become desensitized. I Live Here is both heartwrenching and beautiful, inspiring readers (without ever preaching) to reach out to those in need.”–BookLoons.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; First Edition edition (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375424784
• ISBN-13: 978-0375424786
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 1.5 x 9.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique book, powerful stories, November 5, 2008

By 

Charles A. Crowley (Costa Mesa, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: I Live Here (Hardcover)

This book is really a series of four smaller books inside a unique packaging. Each book illuminates the lives, often horrendous, of people in Ingushetia, Ciudad Juarez, Burma, and Malawi. Each book has a slightly different approach to the subject matter, using Mia Kirshner's journals and interviews, graphic novel techniques and photographs from her collaborators. There is nothing lightweight in here. If Mia Kirshner's career as an actress lead me to this book, she totally downplays any glamour and sticks totally to the subject at hand. I applaud all those involved for their courage and insights

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Call to Awareness, November 24, 2009

By 

GraphicNovelReporter.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: I Live Here (Hardcover)

The anthology I Live Here is spearheaded by actress and debut author Mia Kirshner (The L Word) and collects four short books focusing on displaced women and children around the world. A hardcover sleeve opens to reveal four individual paperbacks to pull out and digest one at a time. Each book opens with Kirshner's journals from her travels to each location and is followed by a series of related writings and illustrations.

The first book takes readers to Ingushetia, a refugee camp not far from Grozny, Chechnya, during the fighting that has continued since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In this book, Kirshner and her cohorts prove to be talented and engaging writers, crafting such vivid imagery (in this collection and the three that follow) of extreme circumstances that it can be almost physically gut-wrenching in the way a Chuck Palahniuk novel has the power to turn readers' stomachs.

It can be overwrought at times, but that physical connection is designed to make readers truly empathize and pay attention to the dismal situations. The authors and artists pull no punches in their depictions of the darkest, dirtiest, and most horrible of things that are happening to their subjects, but it is all with the goal of affecting their readers.

Celebrated comics journalist Joe Sacco contributed a graphic novella, "Chechen War, Chechen Women," to the first book that may be the finest of the collection. Sacco offers an incredible amount of detail--culled from a personal trip to the refugee camp--in his recognizable black-and-white art style.

The second book focuses on Burma, or the Union of Myanmar, the infamous war zone of Southeast Asia that has seen refugees fleeing to bordering Thailand for roughly 50 years. This book, like most in the collection, forgoes a broad explanation of the situations (brief summaries can be found inside the hardcover sleeve) in favor of individual accounts designed to personalize the events. The artists tell a disturbing and deeply affecting tale of manual labor, home abortions, and the sex trade.

The final two books focus on Ciudad Juárez, a city facing El Paso, Texas, on the United-States-Mexico border, and Malawi, a dense African republic plagued by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The former tackles the stories of women who are disappearing from the factory-laden city and touches upon the drug-trafficking, rape, and murder that are reportedly prevalent in the area. The latter spotlights the overbearing feeling the AIDS scare can have on everyday life when one lives in a country where one out of five people has contracted HIV and coffin demand is so high the area is becoming deforested.

Any project of this magnitude is bound to have its problems, and I Live Here is no exception. Readers will inevitably gravitate toward certain authors and artists over others in the varied project, but the impact of this Amnesty International-supported venture is hard to deny. It is a celebration of art in its many forms, and an important call to awareness.

-- William Jones

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Speechless, November 25, 2008

By 

Andrea Macancela "Drdrey412" (Garden City, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Live Here (Hardcover)

What can I say that hasn't already been said about this AMAZINGLY produced book?

If you have a heart go out and buy a copy of this book. It will change your perspective about life. Also, it makes you realize that more humanitarians are needed in this world.

Mia Kirshner writes from the heart about her experiences to these four places in need of humanitarian efforts.
Dont forget to help out her organization, I Live Here, by making a donation.

Remember that WE are all humans and everyone of us will need help from someone else one day. Give a helping hand today in order to make the difference TOMORROW!