Abstract
In this chapter, Phillips focuses on Nam Le’s “The Boat” and its graphic novel adaptation to explore the contentious debates surrounding Australian asylum seekers. Le’s “The Boat” describes his own experience as a so-called “boat person,” taking the perilous voyage to Australia as a small child fleeing Vietnam in the 1970s. In 2015, this story was adapted into an interactive online graphic novel, which combines text and images with the use of soundscape and reactive text to draw the reader into the experience to a far greater extent than words on the page could. Phillips argues that this graphic novel has the effect of creating greater empathy within readers, as they are able to experience not only something of what it was like for Le’s family in the 1970s but also what conditions are faced by “boat people” coming to Australia today, with an emphasis on how using the graphic novel in the Australian setting empowers students to see the difference between political rhetoric and lived experiences.
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Notes
- 1.
This study found that this effect was limited to the consumption of narrative fiction: “Consistent with this idea, our group has shown that frequent readers of narrative fiction perform better on two different empathy tasks, whereas frequent readers of expository non-fiction perform worse.” Another study took this distinction further, showing that empathy increased when readers consumed “writerly” (i.e., literary or challenging) texts as opposed to “readerly” (i.e., less challenging and more simplistic) texts (Kidd and Costano 2013; see also Keen 2007).
- 2.
Kurdi’s name was initially reported as Aylan in the Western press.
- 3.
The 2014 figure was down from 300 boats with 20,587 people in 2013 and 378 boats with 17,204 people in 2013. The Abbott government would argue that this proved their policies were much more effective in “stopping the boats” than the policies of the previous Rudd/Gillard governments.
- 4.
There is no law in Australia prohibiting the act of arriving in Australia for the purposes of seeking asylum without a valid visa, despite the government’s claims to the contrary. And while it is correct that the Australian Migration Act 1958 makes a distinction between “lawful” and “unlawful” non-citizens, it is also true that, by being a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, the Australian government agrees not to treat asylum seekers as if they have committed an illegal act by seeking asylum in Australia (see “Scott Morrison”).
- 5.
The origins and attribution of this quote to Stalin are in some doubt. The Quote Investigator website cites an article by Leonard Lyons from the Washington Post in 1947 attributing it to Stalin , although it is possible it was not originally said by Stalin , but rather made up by the journalist himself.
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Phillips, J. (2018). Revising the Rhetoric of “Boat People” through the Interactive Graphic Adaptation of Nam Le’s “The Boat”. In: Burger, A. (eds) Teaching Graphic Novels in the English Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63459-3_10
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