Women in transit in graphic narrative: Xosé Tomás’ Nómades and Thomas King and Natasha Donovan’s Borders

Abstract

[eng] This article engages in a close reading of the graphic novels Nómades, by Xosé Tomás, and Borders, written by Thomas King and illustrated by Natasha Donovan. The question emerges of how the stories of borders and border-crossing, undertaken by women in transit within Europe and North America, can be fruitfully represented in the form of graphic narratives written by men. With its bimodal reading requirements, the overlay of picture and text, the visible gaps and breaks inherent to a medium that relies on gutters and frames, the heterogenous, non-linear narrative of movement and migration can be narrated effectively. By drawing on theories of borders and nomadic subjects (Ahmed 2000; Tam-boukou 2021; Braidotti 2011), as well as work by comics theorists such as Hillary Chute (2008), among others, I will analyse how two specific texts offer different, and yet equally engaged, approaches to the graphic representation of otherness in transit.