On the Coffee Table: Sarah Glidden

Title: Rolling Blackouts

Writer and Artist: Sarah Glidden

via Amazon

Sarah Glidden tags along when a couple freelance journalist friends travel to Turkey, Iraq and Syria in the early 2010s.  The primary goal of the trip is to uncover the stories of those displaced by the US war in Iraq: Kurds in Turkey and Iraq and Arab refugees in Syria.  Also joining the trip is Dan, an ex-Marine who had previously done two tours in Iraq.  The journalists are hoping to include his story in their project.

Embedded journalism - where a journalist is placed directly into a military unit for an intimate and often dangerous perspective - is a common practice in wartime.  Sarah Glidden's (admittedly less dangerous) experience feels like a comic book writer being embedded with journalists.  As a result, the war experiences the group hears are intertwined with Glidden's fascination with her friends' process.  Through her, we learn that the story you seek and the one you end up with are often quite different from each other.  Interview subjects don't give you the material you expect.  The truth can seem clouded by self-delusion or flat out dishonesty.  Mistrust of Americans and/or journalists impedes access.  

The group doesn't observe any combat directly.  Instead, they witness the everyday lives of refugees and exiles.  As such, we see the war from an indirect but deeply human level.  While everyone they talk to is reasonably safe in the moment, they have each been through a lot.  And the reaction to Americans run the gamut.  The Kurds typically see American involvement in the region as a positive as their own status has been boosted.  The Arabs are more resentful - and understandably.

A lot has happened in the region since - in fact, a lot happened between the trip and the ultimate publishing of the book, including the Arab Spring and the outbreak of civil war in Syria.  Since then, American withdrawal has had a brutal impact as well.  And that's not even getting into everything happening in Israel and Palestine.  American/Western intervention typically comes with its own brutally high price, no matter the best intentions of the participants.  Glidden's book doesn't offer much in the way of answers - how could it?  Instead, there are more questions.

Rolling Blackouts is an engaging read.  The artwork is simple and relatable.