Behind the Scenes: Making of LISSA A hijabi is rarely shown in graphic novels.
Anna and Layla grow up in the gardens of the courtyard playing. In Lissa, Anna’s father works for a transnational oil company located in Maadi, and Anna attends the American school (Cairo American College) also in her neighborhood.
Anna realizes that she no longer has to contend with “risk” as a personal problem that she alone must solve, and alongside Layla, can begin to imagine what risk can mean as a revolutionary call. The book is now available for order online. Photo taken by Sherine Hamdy. Hepatitis C is a disease that afflicts a large portion of Egyptians (estimates vary between 10 percent and 30 percent), in large part due to public health campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s that accidentally infected people through injections to treat or prevent schistosomiasis. See the trailer for In the Family, a 2008 documentary by Joanna Rudnick, a Chicago filmmaker who struggled to make decisions about her own genetic cancer risk. As Anna sits in the waiting room and then meets with the counselor, we see the toll that cancer has taken on her family. When Anna finds herself in Cairo as the revolution breaks out, she aims her photographic lens at documenting revolutionary action and identifying missing and martyred revolutionaries. He is injured while on the job in Saudi Arabia, and when this injury makes his employers aware that he tests positive for hepatitis C, he is deported back to his country. And then, as the women visit Abu Hassan’s grave, a cat brushes past their feet, present yet aloof, as it foreshadows the beginning of a resolution. PART III: Revolution
Votre sélection.
And as Layla struggles to comprehend her friend Anna’s medical decision, we glean a more critical perspective on the disproportionate standards of medical care in our unequal world. It is an arduous 3-hour trek by bus from Maadi to a provincial center in the Nile Delta, but Layla wagers that taking her ailing father and family there will be worth the trouble. For historical information about Maadi, see Samir Raafat, These images depict the same scene; in one (left) Layla is not wearing hijab, but in the other (right) she is. In earlier drafts of Lissa, this scene occurred when the girls were much younger, so Layla would not yet have been of the age when women would start covering their hair. PART II: Five Years Later
Medical school is a complex terrain for Layla: it is there that she meets nurturing and inspiring people such as Dr. Dina Shokry, but also arrogant doctors who scorn their poor patients. This structure is a small space for a family, but most of the family’s daily (and even nighttime) activities are performed outside.
As her camera becomes less of a personal tool and more of a political intervention, Anna’s perspective also shifts.
In the more congested apartment buildings in the center of the city, the bawab (or doorman, or porter) often occupies a basement or ground floor apartment of the building he guards. Through Layla’s political awakening, we come to understand the underlying commitments and hopes that her generation carried through the revolution.
The name of the graphic novel, Lissa, meaning “not yet,” “still,” “there is time,” in Arabic conveys hope and sacrifice coupled with breathtaking and indispensable artwork.” — SAID “I was very happy to see someone who looked like me in a graphic novel. Daily News Egypt has a short video clip, “Faces of Poverty: A Bawab’s Story,” about the life of a bawab. Although cancer genetics and prevention programs are associated with most major cancer clinics in America, they offer medical services that many people in the United States are not able to afford, and services that Layla might not fully appreciate or understand. Photography also offers her solace, since it was a passion that Anna shared with her mother, and one that provided a connection to deceased family members. Anna is the daughter of an American oil executive in Cairo.
Graphic novels are, simply defined, book-length comics. Illustrators will often use specific visual devices to tell a deeper story about a character, place, or event. Lissa team visits Cairo University Medical School, January 2016. THE STORY | BEHIND THE SCENES | READERS RESPONSE, PART I: Cairo This hospital is the base where Layla and her medical student peers learn clinical skills. PART III: Revolution Même recherche avec. Heedless of her warnings and despondent over the death of his father, whom he could not help save, Ahmed takes part in the violent clashes between the military and protesters in Muhammad Mahmoud Street in November 2011. Layla is headstrong and determined — earning her a place in the prestigious Medical School at Cairo University. While Layla herself participated in the initial 18-day campout at Tahrir Square, she cautions Ahmed against his continual resistance in the months of brutal military rule following Mubarak’s forced resignation. This episode demonstrates the different access that people have to healthcare in Egypt, which differentially predisposes them to serious disease. Lissa is a graphic novel written by academics Sherine Hamdy and Coleman Nye, and illustrated by artists Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer. … I believe my students responded so well to Lissa because it presents a fresh and innovative take on what is possible in scholarship. It is a leading tertiary care center specializing in kidney and liver diseases that is able to deliver high-standard free treatment to patients who cannot afford to pay.