On June 17, in Paris, Marguerite Abouet, scriptwriter of the famous comic strips Aya of Yopougon AND Akissi, received from the hands of the former Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, the medal of Knight of the National Order of Merit. Two weeks later, on the evening of the first round of the early legislative elections, the 53-year-old Franco-Ivorian is in Martinique. A guest of the festival Partir en livre, she is accompanied by her 17-year-old son, who has just graduated from high school. While Hurricane Beryl threatens the archipelago, the National Rally is in first place, with 33.35% of the votes cast. “We were in a restaurant and the people around us were happy. I got hit,” She admits.
Marguerite Abouet, who became a star of youth comics in the 2000s with nearly 1.3 million copies sold, is not one to let politics get the better of her. “I believe in my France”, She says. At the time, she worked to reassure her son. Then she continued her summer, marked by the preparation of the publication of her next book, the eleventh volume of Akissi’s adventures. For fourteen years, with the designer Mathieu Sapin, she recounted the tribulations of this little Ivorian girl who looks very much like her, in the Yopougon district of Abidjan.
But the girl’s story takes a new direction this autumn: like Marguerite Abouet before her, at the age of 12, Akissi leaves her country for France. For the release of volume 1 of this new cycle, called Akissi from Paris, Gallimard Jeunesse pulled out all the stops with an initial print run of twelve thousand copies. On August 21, the publisher revealed the cover on Facebook, via a post. “sponsored”, a common practice whereby the platform, in exchange for a fee, increases the circulation of a post. In this way, it can reach a much wider audience and not necessarily the first target audience. The message announces: “Akissi is coming to Paris! Akissi has just left the Ivory Coast and is returning to a Parisian university. But integration is not easy: new country, new codes, new friends… Akissi has barely arrived and is already at the end of her life!”
hate messages
The following Monday, Gallimard Jeunesse teams were shocked to discover the hundreds of racist comments posted over the weekend in response to the post. “I’ve always accepted criticism: you have the right to not like what I do. But this is something completely different.” – confesses Marguerite Abouet. Since the beginning of her career, counting “Universal stories to show that the other is all of us” She works, she says, to combat prejudice by urging her young readers to build relationships. “through knowledge and understanding.” For the first time, he is the target of an army of anonymous trolls.
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