While this is occurring, Aya's friend Bintou begins seeing a Parisian man named Gregoire. Aya takes care of Adjoua's son the majority of the time and is always helping Adjoua while trying to keep up with her schoolwork at the same time. All the while Adjoua is selling fritters at the market trying to provide for her son. At work he tends to hit on the women workers, and is always being yelled at by his father. His father seems to be very hard on him, but at the same time Moussa is extremely lazy and does not really do much. The wedding between Moussa and Adjoua is canceled when they discover the child is not Moussa's.

The book begins with the birth of the son of Moussa and Adjoua. All of the characters are connected by the main character, Aya, as she assists and helps them through their various dilemmas and daily issues. Through this depiction, Aya of Yop City subverts negative stereotypes that plague Côte d'Ivoire and Africa in general.Īya of Yop City is a novel that follows the lives of many different people living in the Côte d'Ivoire. Abouet's depiction of everyday African life through humor gave western viewers a very different viewpoint of Africa that they are not accustomed to seeing. The quotidian nature of the stories in Aya of Yop City counters heavily with common conceptions and representation of African life, such as famine, civil war and unhinged wilderness. Although Abouet has denied that the stories are based on her own life, she admits it is strongly based on people in her childhood in Côte d'Ivoire. Inspired by French graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, Abouet has created a story that depicts the normality of life in Côte d'Ivoire. Later, Clément Oubrerie, animator, artist and children's book illustrator, gained interest in the project, and it eventually became the first graphic novel for both artists. She ended up writing up a group of Ivorian teenagers' everyday lives. Marguerite Abouet was working as a legal assistant in Paris when she conceived the idea of Aya of Yop City, inspired to create the series by her friends who encouraged her to write stories from her childhood in her native Côte d'Ivoire. The authors adapted it for an animated film of the same title, which was released in 2013.

All three of the books in the series have been illustrated by the author's husband, Clément Oubrerie. Aya of Yop City is the second of three books in the Abouet's Aya series, each based on the same characters. Although not entirely autobiographical, the story is based on the author's life in Côte-d'Ivoire.

The first six volumes have been translated into English by Drawn & Quarterly. The original French albums were published by Gallimard between 20. Comprises the first 3 volumesĪya of Yop City is a series of seven bande dessinée comics written by Marguerite Abouet and drawn by Clément Oubrerie.

Aya by marguerite abouet