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As part of the project to develop comics in Vietnam, on the occasion of the launch of the book series "Memories of Overseas Vietnamese", Kim Dong Publishing House in collaboration with the French Institute in Hanoi (Institut Français de Hanoï) organized a panel discussion themed "Graphic Novel: When literature and history intertwined with illustration" featuring author/illustrator Clément Baloup and literary researcher Le Nguyen Long on May 11.

Clément Baloup was born in 1978, with a French mother and a Vietnamese father. After studying design in Marseille, he attended the Angoulême School of Fine Arts and the Hanoi University of Fine Arts. His two books on Asian immigration issues - Memories of Overseas Vietnamese - have been widely praised and won many awards.

At the panel discussion at Kim Dong Publishing House. Photo: tuoitrethudo.vn

In the event, participants enjoyed impressive images from two graphic novels and listened to speakers share about the cultural and historical significance, creative inspiration, and appeal of the comic genre, combined with historical documents.

The book "Linh Tho: The Forced Immigrants", examines the lives of Vietnamese migrants who relocated either voluntarily or by force to metropolitan France. It's a longer piece (a separate book in the French original) on the work of French journalist Pierre Daum, who documented the story of the 20,000 Vietnamese whom the French Government effectively press-ganged to work in French factories at the outbreak of WW2. Once France fell, they were, for the rest of the War, rented out to whomever in the south of France needed low-wage labor, particularly to grow rice in the Camargue.

Meanwhile, "Chan Dang" (The Volunteers of New Caledonia) offers insights into the working conditions of Viet Kieu laborers in New Caledonia in the early twentieth century. Each book comprises short vignettes depicting the individual experiences of Viet Kieu migrants, based on firsthand accounts shared directly with the artist.

With French and Vietnamese blood and a special interest in Vietnamese history and culture, Baloup has exploited stories from many different perspectives: Comparing the differences between the perspective of witnesses and the perspective of the outside world; the concerns before the fate of people when living abroad; about the relationship between generations (parents - children).

Clément Baloup's two books published in Vietnam. Photo: tuoitrethudo.vn

Drawing on historical research, archival materials, interviews, and personal notes, Baloup has recreated a reality that intertwines the past and present, across vast spaces, from Vietnam to France and New Caledonia.

According to him, comic pages allow him to share his emotions because drawing is a desire to express personal thoughts, a dialogue with other people's views, and a way to present one's perspective to the world. Memories will gradually fade in everyone's mind, so he wants to use comics to connect those fragile memories with valuable timelines, to reveal the inevitability of human destiny.

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