Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21066/carcl.libri.13.2.3
The Nostoi of Two Acclaimed Immigrant Picturebook Creators
Petros Panaou
; University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
Abstract
Peter Sís and Allen Say are two acclaimed immigrant picturebook creators who travelled illuminating Odysseys, setting sail on boats of image and text. Only a few years after the end of World War II, Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say emigrated to the US from Japan. And during the Cold War, Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Peter Sís fled to the US from the Communist regime of former Czechoslovakia. Even though they came from different cultures, geographies, generations, and emigration experiences, both immigrant artists turned to art to negotiate their yearning for nostos (returning home), solace, and identity. Their negotiation of the paradoxes of nostalgia led them on similar paths: valuing the imagined, reconstructing their homelands and childhoods through and within art, and forming their identity by building on their self-image as artists. Their highly autobiographical picturebooks show us how healing, home, and identity
may be found in Art and Story.
Keywords
Allen Say; art; home; paradoxes of immigrant nostalgia; Peter Sís; picturebooks;
Hrčak ID:
328026
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2024.
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