But what I associate most with Heimat (the German term for the place where you belong) is Germany as a site of childhood memories: the trips with my family to the countryside, the landscape of the Black Forest, our walks in the fields and vineyards. Of course, the country where you grow up shapes you most-culturally, historically, politically, emotionally. Do you identify as German or German-American? What did you learn about your country once you left?

You grew up in Germany but have lived abroad for most of your adult life. For this particular book, it was especially important to weigh the text and the images carefully, in order to avoid a sense of sentimentality, or the impression that I was trying to create false sympathy for the Germans.Īll that said, we’re currently considering producing an audio version of my book, and I look forward to thinking more about how the story can be told without images. My goal was not to translate the writing into images but to use pictures to give the reader a more emotional access into the narrative. Combining visual and literary forms allowed me to jump between the present and the past, the factual and the poetic, the documentary and the imagined. I always begin my process by writing, but I don’t believe there is a hierarchy between the two mediums. What drove you to write and draw a graphic memoir? Would you have tackled this if you could only write? If you could only draw? You’re known as an illustrator, and it’s what you teach.

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