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Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel)
Sigrid Thomsen | Navigating Movement and Uncertainty 167
brainwash [her] vs. Birthright is actually pretty reasonableâ (Glidden 2016: 27). To do so, the
courtroom is peopled with Sarahs: not only is the judge one iteration of Sarah, but so are the
witnesses and the members of the jury, each one representing a different view on whether Birth-
right is giving a subtle historical account or trying to sway the participantsâ minds. As Matt
Reingold argues, âThese mini-Sarahs act as both conscience and devilâs advocate; they judge,
they accuse, they defend, and they enforceâ (Reingold 2019: 531). This sudden plethora of Sar-
ahs on the page works on two levels: firstly, it makes her confusion literal and tangible for the
reader. She is torn, as she is not just of two minds but of several minds, and each of these minds
is represented by a separate Sarah. But secondly, within the text, it is an attempt of hers to work
through her confusion, and to solve it, as each Sarah is either making a different argument or
listening and having to make up her own mind based on what she hears. This difference and
variety in argument on the textual level, however, is contrasted with the striking sameness on
the visual level â though the arguments vary, the look of the person saying them does not. All
of them are Sarah. Writing about nonfiction comics, Sara Kersten argues that â[t]hrough mul-
tiple modes, we read multiple truthsâ (Kersten 2017: 24) â the simultaneous multimodality of
comics can present us with different truths at one and the same time. Something related hap-
pens here â in presenting us with a diversity of opinion, Glidden is showing us that the truth,
for Sarah, is not just multiple but absent; in its place, Sarah finds a variety of argumentative
strands and perspectives.
In reconstructing this autobiographical comics narrative some time after the trip, Glidden
is once more navigating the uncertainty she was faced with on the trip itself. In travel writing,
the author aims âto articulate him or her self through the writing processâ (Graulund/Edwards
2012: 7); here, this happens through Gliddenâs âboxes of memoryâ (Smith 2011: 67). What we
are seeing and reading is uncertainty felt in the moment and depicted at another. In autobi-
ographical comics, both is true at once: we are witnessing the story as well as the act of the
storyâs narration. Though this is not so different from other literary forms â there is always
the level of narration and of plot, the level of what is told and the level of the telling â it is
particularly overt in comics, since we always see traces of the physical presence of the hand.
As Hillary Chute writes, âComics is largely a hand-drawn form that registers the subjective
bodily mark on the page; its marks are an index of the bodyâ (Chute 2011b: 112). While this is
generally the case in comics, Glidden draws on this when she âreturns us, and her protagonist,
to bodily experience, and suggests that truths must be embodiedâ (Kahn 2016: 245). Through
the embodiment of Sarahâs physical presence in Israel, the multiple depictions of Sarah, and the
marks on the page, Glidden depicts how Sarah is moved to change her views while traveling:
Moving from one truth, her clear-cut stance from early in the comic, to one where âtruthâ is
continually destabilized. There is no one truth that the quarreling Sarahs will ever arrive at.
Conclusion
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less âis for a large part a journey of exploring [Gliddenâs]
American-Jewish identity through the encounter with Israelâ (Fischer 2015: 305). In it, Glidden
makes use of the panel structure of the comic, along with the fluid-seeming watercolors, to make
visible and render legible her undecided, ambivalent stance with regard to Israel. In âFacing the
Arab âOtherâ?: Jerusalem in Jewish Womenâs Comics,â Nina Fischer argues that Palestinian life
>mcs_lab>
Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020
The Journal
- Title
- >mcs_lab>
- Subtitle
- Mobile Culture Studies
- Volume
- 2/2020
- Editor
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- German, English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 270
- Categories
- Zeitschriften Mobile Culture Studies The Journal