Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe

by Ali Fitzgerald

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. Black & white illustrations throughout.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Comics, Memoir, Germany, Politics, Comics Manga

196 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 2018

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drawn to Berlin is a memoir and political/pedagogical guide to how comics can contribute to the political dialogue about refugees. Fitzgerald moved to Berlin to draw comics, came to see some vestige of open queer Berlin culture, that Cabaret/Christopher Isherwood vibe. She edits Queer Berlin, but for a time she taught art classes at The Bubble, a refugee center in Northern Berlin.

The best part of this sort of loose, rambling tale is the stories of the refugee young adults who draw out of their experience, much of which is of course heart-breaking. It reminds me of Robert Coles' Children of Crisis, when the young psychologist was sent to work with the black children who were part of the integration of public schools and were traumatized by white adults screaming vile epithets at them. They were largely mute about their experiences--they were five to eight years old, they had no frame of reference for why adult human beings were being such monsters to them--and Coles could not get them to talk. He had the idea to get them to paint, and in these painful drawings the children speak, as Fitzgerald's students do. I highly recommend both of these books for artists who want to work humanely in similar circumstances.

Fitzgerald is a fine comics artist, working in the journalistic tradition of Joe Sacco, to some extent, but she's new to the city, doing her own self-discovery, her own political awakening. She's kind of a tourist, learning how to navigate the political scene, how to teach art to kids. Along the way she reads and make a parallel to Joseph Roth's work focusing on Jews who left Russia to escape pogroms to come to Germany, and the, let's just say harsh reception they received.

In the process Fitzgerald brings her students alternative, quasi-horror/surrealist comics from artists such as Jim Woodring and Charles Burns, and that move turned out to be useful to the young people, whose lives were in many ways nightmarish. One guy whose story we follow all the the way through is Michael, whom Fitzgerald befriends. Her book humanizes the lives of the refugees; only when they are some abstract entity might we be tempted to dismiss them--as too many do everywhere--as some thing less than us. Good book.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A graphic memoir about the author’s work facilitating comics workshops for asylum-seekers in Berlin. I liked how sensitively and respectfully she observed how attendees related to the art (“Tariq preferred to draw alone. He drew unhappy oarsmen beneath a cruel, sparkling sky.”) and to their experiences of dislocation (“How long will it take to get papers? What if they never come?”), as well as her own (“I didn’t know what to say a lot of the time. I didn’t want to be irresponsible. I wasn’t an art therapist. Or a social worker. I was just an artist.”). She also engages with some interesting historical context (I liked the section about fonts in German a lot).

[Emmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sobering, haunting, and illuminating. Fitzgerald's commentary on how the history of a place is taken up in its present (and actively shapes it) was fascinating.

3.5

[kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

i finished this book months ago tbh oops. it was good

[RJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the subtitle, I was expecting this to be a collection of comics created by refugees, or at least include some art produced in the workshops. It is instead a graphic memoir about an American ex-pat in Berlin, centered in her experience creating comics with refugees in an inflatable shelter. I think it was a valuable read, once I sort of accepted what it was and what it wasn't (and I appreciated that the artist also struggled with the question of how to write about others' experiences responsibly). The questions posed in the last few pages rang clear and true. Of all of the historical connections/contexts illustrated, I was particularly pulled in by the discussion of fonts and caricature, how fascism uses visual language to represent itself and those it casts as enemies - I imagine it's a topic that will spark the interest of lots of readers of comics.

[Liv Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why does this book revolve around a white lady I don’t understand

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant and Sad

This is a beautiful work of graphic nonfiction that is part history, part memoir, part biography. The stories told are heartbreaking and terrifying, but it’s important that they be told and that those of us who can help, do better. As a global community we must do more to help refugees and immigrants, not lock them in camps. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself.

For me, the only thing keeping this from being five stars is personal preference with regard to the artwork. It’s not a style that I find aesthetically pleasing and there were a few pages where I found the panels difficult to follow. It’s definitely worth the time to read, though, and is an important story to hear.

[Acacia · Rating 5 out of 5]

a gorgeous, engaging and sad book.

[Davida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. I loved it.

[Till Raether · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find her art evocative and beautiful (her New Yorker story about limbo brought me here), but I'm just not sure whether her telling of the refugee stories is or can be anything but reductive. Very conflicted about this. Good portrayal of Berlin in winter 😭

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an ARC I got at the ALA annual conference.
The graphic novel is part memoir and part observations of the treatment of refugees in Germany. I really enjoyed how the author compared the present times to the 1930s, and brought in the feelings of the community. One of the lines that hit me the hardest was when she asked one of the refugees if he liked Germany, and he answered that he thought he would like it more if he was German.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice. Fitzgerald takes a look back at the time she spent running a comic workshop in a refugee shelter in Berlin—this is not so much a collection of individual stories (partly because she didn't have the full stories and partly because she recognises the limitations and moral ambiguities of her role) but rather an exploration of her role, what she could and couldn't learn from the experience, and Berlin's complicated history of housing refugees in past and present. Nicely multifaceted, with few answers but a lot of food for thought.

[Robert Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first became aware of Ali Fitzgerald's art when she was painting and creating installations in Austin, Texas. She moved to Berlin and started drawing comics there. As Syrian refugees started pouring into Berlin as the civil war in Syria grew worse, she volunteered to teach art classes at The Bubble, a refugee center in Northern Berlin. At first, she relates, Germany was quite welcoming but things soon turned sour. Things took a decided turn for the worse after a large number of sexual assaults were committed by roving groups of migrants (mostly from North Africa) in Cologne and other cities on New Year's Eve 2015. Over the course of Fitzgerald's meandering story, we see life getting harder for the refugees and the rise of the far right party Alternative for Germany (AFD) and its attractive leader, Frauke Petry, whom Fitzgerald describes as "petite and pixied." Petry's descriptions of the refugees doesn't jibe with Fitzgerald's first-hand experience.

Fitgerald has several exceedingly interesting digressions. She describes at length Joseph Roth's descriptions of Jewish Berlin, particularly of the refugees from the pogroms of Russia. The parallels with the modern refugees seems particularly apt and chilling--we know what happened to those earlier refugees, after all. And then she has a lengthy diversion on fonts--specifically Fraktur, a very old fashioned Germanic-looking font that fell out of favor after the World War II. (One notable exception--novelist Gunter Grass insisted on Fraktur for his novels). It was abandoned for more sleek, less overtly Germanic fonts.Ironically, Hitler personally decreed that Fraktur be replaced with the more modern looking Anitqua in 1933. He thought it would be an easier sell in territories conquered by the Nazis. Fitzgerald notes the gradual and seemingly apolitical return of Fraktur into public life in Germany--simultaneous with the return of the ultra-right to politics, as represented by the AFD.

Fitzgerald shows her students comics work by Charles Burns and references the comics of Joe Sacco, whose classic "How I Loved the War" from 1992 was a first person account of Sacco's time in Berlin during the run-up to the Gulf War. Sacco shares a German class with several Palestinian students, which seems in a way to foreshadow Fitzgerald's own experience--two American cartoonists in Berlin encountering refugees from the Middle East. Sacco is a more innovative cartoonist, but it is undeniable that Fitzgerald's experience is the deeper one. She spent significant time with her students and got to know them and befriend them.

Throughout she focuses on her students, who flit in and out of her life as they are cycled through the refugee apparatus. There is an interesting scene where she has second thoughts about recording these stories--an issue that many memoir author faces. She did change people's names, though.

The title Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories From the New Europe is terrible. The pun is weak, the subtitle too long and overly-explanatory. But if you can get past that, this is a powerful and moving comic.

[Liszyrkn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Très belle bande-dessinée qui fait un parallèle entre l'immigration juive qui a fui les pogroms au 20e siècle en Europe, et l'arrivée des réfugiés qui ont fui la guerre, notamment de Syrie.
L'autrice donne des cours de dessin dans des centres d'accueil à Berlin et permet à ces personnes en attente d'une réponse pour leur demande d'asile de s'exprimer par l'art, mais aussi par la discussion.
Réflexion intéressante sur son rapport au passé : est-on nécessairement condamné à le répéter ou peut-on s'en affranchir et devenir une meilleure version de nous-mêmes ?

[Meepelous · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content notes for drowning, trauma, racism, nudity, and swastikas.

What kinds of keywords came to mind reading Drawn to Berlin? Line, typography, history, refugees, and place.

The summary is "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. Black & white illustrations throughout."

My one note is that, to her credit, I did feel like Ali centered herself a lot less then this summary would necessarily imply. At least to me. This is certainly an outsider looking in sort of story and Ali does not shy away from including herself in the story in a way that clearly explains her perspective, but in my opinion at least Ali does a decent job of balancing her life, the lives of the people she works with, and larger themes about belonging in Berlin - both in the past and in that present.

Other autobiographical facts about Ali include she now lives outside of Paris; she contributes comics to a number of magazines; she's queer; and she describes Drawn to Berlin as Surreal Nonfiction.

Looking at the artwork, as always I'm pretty biased towards finely crafted and dramatic black and white art. Plus, the use of line was pretty distinct.

Looking at the intersections of identity as we always do...

One of the strengths of the volume in my opinion is that Ali does include a pretty wide variety of people.

People of many races, classes and sexualities have all come to Berlin throughout its history. There's discussion of the economic exploitation of undocumented people. The history and present of violent fascism and it's propaganda. 

Gender felt a little less explored, although a diversity of the binary is present... Disability felt the least explored.

To conclude... it took me a little too long perhaps to get to this book as things continue to only get worse. Four stars.

[Sheila Bracken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ali is an American artist who moved to Berlin and began teaching an art class to asylum seekers from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. The book is a sort of illustrated journal of experiences, relationships with her students, and her views of the city that she describes as a “dirty, furtive utopia. A place where history sits with itself.” She compares the refugees of today with those of the past, particularly the Jews who were referred to as the “Peril of the East” when they flooded into Berlin, to escape persecution. There is much talk of the Nazi era characterized by the events of the Holocaust that have left a stain all over Germany. I’m not sure how the editor missed it, but at one point, she mistakenly says that Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) occurred in 1933; however, she corrects herself later saying it took place in 1938.
The illustrations in the book are black and white, the simplicity of which represents the pain of loss experienced by the refugees and the confusion of what the future holds for them. The communal act of drawing allows both Ali and her students to work through their painful memories and to find common ground amid shared images and stories and music.
Part of my class’s annual Holocaust study includes learning about other genocides that have occurred in the world along with looking at the politics of immigration and discussing the problems faced by refugees fleeing from war-torn countries. This example of graphic nonfiction will join other, similar resources to help students better understand these complicated issues and empathize with those impacted by them. 3

[Cflack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful and topical graphic memoir/non fiction work which not only follows an expat living in Berlin teaching drawing classed to new immigrants but also compares Germany in the late Weimar times when Jews were in similar positions as the Syrians and others are now and how in the 1930's it was part of the historic events that lead to pogroms and other Nazi actions against Jews and other refugees in Germany.

The portrayals of Fitzgerald's students and their current plight as well as their harrowing journeys were vividly depicted in both tragedy and pathos, and the descriptions of how it impacted her was also were well done.

"The whole world thinks in such tired, warn traditional cliches. It never asks the wanderer where he's going. Only ever where he's coming from. And what matters to the wanderer is his destination, not his point of departure." - Joseph Roth in "The Wandering Jew

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book chronicles how Ali provides comic workshops in refugee shelters and provides a new perspective on the ever evolving city of Berlin. Having visited this city several times, it was interested to see how it was reflected in the author's own experience living there, but then how Germany was reflected through the eyes of the students that she teaches. In particular, this creative outlet gives some of them a valuable opportunity to express themselves or the struggles they faced or challenges about their journey to bring them to Europe. However, a lot of it was really sad and a bit disjointed since that reflects the experiences of the migrants. In particular, I was a bit disappointed that the story didn't have threads following specific individuals further so it would be a more direct connection with their story. It felt as if it jumped around a bit too much for my taste.

[Emylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. I thought it was gonna be much more related to the refugees' experiences, but this was more of a memoir, where her work in the refugee shelter is kinda a backdrop. Fitzgerald relates the tense situation in Germany with the refugees fleeing war torn countries with both the second World War and in the 1920s, when Jews were fleeing the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe.

I appreciate that she brought up the struggle of writing about other's experiences even if, like what one person mentions in the book, it's her experience too. Still, listening to the stories of her students was really interesting. And I learned a lot about their experiences and just the process of not knowing what's next, as many of the students wait forever to get their papers.

But yeah, good book.

[Kathy KS · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*

Actually a memoir. The author, an American expat to Germany, has spent years teaching art to refugees in Berlin. This graphic nonfiction title relates her experiences with various individuals living in refugee camps and attempting to find asylum in Germany. Several, obviously, became her friends, even after they left the camp. She also relates some of her own angst during this part of her life and some historical background to Berlin as a destination for refugees over the last few centuries.

I discovered a few details that were interesting, but it just wasn't compelling for me. I am glad to have some new insights into these recreational experiences of refugees, since they don't usually have work or school to give them something to do while they wait. So, her work hopefully helped them.

[Jessica Nish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very sombering important read. Something I kept thinking about when reading this book is how there are so many people who have been labeled as refugees who aren’t given the ability to create freely. The author would try to get the refugees to draw interesting comics and some of the refugees didn’t even know how to get started because they had never been given opportunities to create freely. And even the refugees who did get creative in their drawings couldn’t fully divorce themselves from the trauma they had lived through.

I’m also glad the author acknowledged the murkiness of her relationship with the subjects. I think so many illustrators and artists and journalists unknowingly or maybe even knowingly exploit their subjects.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m being generous with stars and reviews lately because I’ve been realizing how hard authors and graphic artists work to bring their stuff into the world. I have increasing respect for the work. So even though I didn’t particularly care for her self-proclaimed surrealist style of memoir, I see that she researched early Berlin and did her best to depict a complex, refugee affirming and simultaneously right wing refugee denying dynamics. I liked the stories she told about refuges and how she got them to open up via drawing.

[Dale Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drawn to Berlin is the memoir of a young lesbian women who taught art at a refugee shelter in Berlin, Germany starting around 2016. It describes the refugee crisis through her eyes and the stories of her students who drew comics. I liked it because it gave me a piece of recent history and a perspective on current events that was not in the newspapers or media. I liked some of the stories of her students. On the other hand, I found it a bit boring at times and I did not always follow the stories.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sat down to read a page or two or three before bed and ended up with a cranky hubby asking if I was going to sleep sometime this week?

It really drew me in. Very Scott McCloud-esque. She blends her personal story with the stories of the refugees in Berlin and the story of Jewish refugees in Berlin in the 20s. She lets the facts speak for themselves, very honest and pure. I'm very glad I bought this.

[Rob McMonigal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one packs a powerful punch, as Fitzgerald uses art as a way to connect to the stories of the refugees heading into Berlin. It's a gut punch and she does a great job of staying out of the way and letting them tell their stories to her, while also being a stand-in for the reader. And yikes, it's a reminder that the rest of the world isn't a lot better than America (or is worse) when it comes to dealing with refugees.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on an important topic. The storyline was a bit meandering at times, but this felt realistic. I really liked the author's depiction of Germanic fonts as a representation of traditional/neo-Nazi values re-emerging. The art was slightly overstylized for my tastes but captured everything and everyone well.

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an okay graphic novel depiction of what it was like to volunteer at a Berlin refugee camp in 2015, and what became of the refugees afterwards. The parallel between the Berlin refugees of 2015 and 1920 was interesting, and the artist has no shortage of good intentions, but it would have packed more of a punch if the artwork was good.

[Rory]

Je ne mettrai pas de note à ce livre. Mais pas parce que je n’ai pas aimé, au contraire. Ce que je veux dire c’est que j’ai été surprise de voir le contenu de ce livre. Mais j’en ai énormément appris sur Berlin, l’Allemagne et sa politique pour les réfugiés. Si vous pouvez lire en anglais, lisez le. C’est très intéressant. Même si j’avoue parfois avoir eu du mal à suivre avec la temporalité

[SheMac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Takes TDS to a new low. See once there was a teacher in Germany who was critical of the Nazis. So he was replaced by a man named Georg Trump, and, in a stunning coincidence, Georg was from a village only about 100 miles from Donald Trump's ancestral home and .... There is no and. The author just throws that in for no reason except to make the reader want to associate Trump with Nazis. 🤦‍♀️

[Potassium · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a haunting story of how Berlin handles refugees. Fitzgerald gives us intimate an portrait of her refugees’ eyes and also Berlin as a whole. Right down to the different fonts people use to convey their message. Beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time.