Below you can view Memoire of a Congo Girl by Kabuika Kamunga, an example of mosaic or lyrical graphic narrative inspired by Maira Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty. This memoir was created in a graphic narrative course. Kabuika did not have photos of her family with her, so she used simple drawings and collages to illustrate her text. In a free-wheeling, personal and journal-like style she juxtaposed surprising images and ideas, moving from mundane specificity (a glass of cola) to larger concerns (politics), from the painful (circumcision of brothers) to the tender and humorous (hair, family celebrations), from the personal to the general and back again. This is a way of telling story without linear plot. Kabuika’s book is moving and proves you can make people feel things even with stick drawings. She strongly evokes an atmosphere, a world.

Kabuika Kamunga also wrote a children’s book called I Used to be Afraid of Animals in a creative process class I taught. This book was published through First World Publishing and translated from English into French and Congolese. It’s illustrated by Tris Bain and available on Amazon here. You can view Tris Bain’s website here. You can read more about this book here.