In recent years, comics have emerged as a central form for exploring histories of displacement and identity. From Persepolis to Footnotes in Gaza, comics have become a visual archive through which the personal intersects with the political. Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi (2015) presents the story of her father’s childhood in a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Born in Chicago to Palestinian parents, Abdelrazaq has developed an artistic practice that spans comics, installation, and performance. In Baddawi, she transforms intergenerational history into sequential art, using a visual language built through fragments, absences, and surreal imagery to demonstrate how personal and political histories are constructed through overlapping, subjective, and often fragmented perspectives. Baddawi develops a comic form that intertwines personal family history with the politics of diasporic memory across geographies and generations.

Abdelrazaq’s work also participates in a long tradition of Palestinian resistance art, from the revolutionary poster art of the 1960s and 1970s to the politically charged visual culture of artists such as Naji al-Ali [see Figure 1], creator of the enduring figure Handala. These visual forms, including murals, prints, comics, and political caricature, have long served as tools of testimony and solidarity, merging aesthetics with activism to assert Palestinian presence in the face of erasure. Her minimalist approach and expressive linework shows moments of resistance through the persistence of ordinary life and cultural preservation. This interview situates her work within ongoing scholarly conversations about comics as a medium uniquely suited to intergenerational memory, cultural history, and diasporic experience. Copyedited for clarity, grammar, and length, this conversation took place in November 2025 over Zoom as part of One Book initiative celebrating Baddawi. Footnotes and in-text insertions are the interviewer’s.

Bryant Scott (BLS): Thank you for joining me, Leila. I want to begin with a broad question about the comic medium itself. Comics are often described as a language that combines word and image to create meanings neither could achieve alone. How do you think about the formal power of comics and what this medium can do that other forms cannot?

Leila Abdelrazaq (LA): One thing I think about a lot in comics, something people often discuss, is the way comics visually represent the passage of time. I find that an interesting aspect of how text and image work together, allowing space and time to collapse into each other. I was playing with that before I was even fully conscious of it. It informs the surreal imagery in Baddawi [see Figure 2] where I do not appear as a character, but my lens on my dad’s memories, filtered through my diasporic imagination, comes through in the surreal elements. There is a collapsing of my dad’s memory with my present-day imagination along with stories from Palestinian history that become combined into a single image and text relationship. The way text and image work together in comics, especially around readings of space and time, has been useful for me in understanding Palestinian life, where the relationship to space and time is very fraught.

It is fraught because we are still experiencing many of the violences that initiated the Nakba in different ways. It is fraught because Zionism geographically separates us from one another, whether through displacement to other countries or through the geography of military control imposed throughout Palestine. All of these spatially and temporally complicated aspects of Palestinian life can be represented in compelling ways in comics. This happens in literature and in art as well, but when the visual and the written word are combined, it creates space for different kinds of storytelling about those spatial and temporal realities.

BLS: I wanted to continue from the idea of diasporic memory and imagination and ask about how those elements shape your work. The story you tell is rooted in your father’s experiences growing up in a refugee camp, but it is also filtered through your imagination and your memory, along with cultural, social, personal, and diasporic forms of remembering. How do you handle the balance between family testimony and artistic interpretation?

LA: I think the two are closely connected, because memories are not static. They are shaped by emotions and by the ways we tell ourselves the story of our own lives, and that process is influenced by everything that happens to us. The experiences we have and the people we meet all affect how we shape the story of our life, and that is a form of storytelling in itself. I do not make any claim to objectivity in my work. It is rooted in the personal. It is rooted in subjectivity and in examining those subjectivities. Recently I have been interested in looking at conflicting memories or different versions of the same story. Sometimes the memory is not actually in conflict, but two people might frame it differently or talk about it differently. I think about how those two versions can exist together and how I make sense of them as a family member and as a Palestinian in the diaspora. For me there is a great deal of creative possibility in that relationship. I take seriously the responsibility to the people whose stories are being told, but I also recognize that my own imagination and interpretation will always be part of the work. That presence is unavoidable when I represent these stories. So, the aim is not to search for some external objective truth. It is to find a shared sense of personal truth among the ways these memories have been experienced and understood by those who lived them and by me, shaped by my relationship to those stories and the ways they have affected me. My work is an effort to bring those elements together.

BLS: This raises the broader questions of witnessing and whose stories can be told, which connects directly to the aesthetic and formal restraint in Baddawi. The book avoids melodrama and sentimentality, and there are visible connections to Palestinian resistance art, to Handala, and to the work of Naji al Ali.1 How do you see Baddawi relating to that lineage of Palestinian resistance art?

LA: I drew heavily from Palestinian resistance art when I was developing the visual language of the book. I spent a lot of time researching. I interviewed my dad, sometimes with quick phone calls to clarify details. It was never a formal process. The project began as a web comic, so my approach was very improvised at first and centered on my dad’s stories. After receiving the book contract, I began doing more focused research on the Civil War period. Part of that research involved looking closely at political posters from the Civil War. There are books that reproduce these posters, and I relied on those. I also spent a great deal of time with the Palestine Poster Project Archive online.2 Those visual materials, combined with my study of the Civil War, helped me better understand what was happening in Naji al Ali’s comics. His work relies on symbolism, and it assumes a reader who already understands the political context. Coming from Chicago and working on this in 2013, I needed visual research to place myself within that world.

The poster art and resistance art of that period shaped the way I began thinking about how symbolism works in a graphic novel. Many of those posters are beautifully illustrated and use very strong symbolic imagery. I was looking at comics, including Naji al Ali and other comic traditions, but the posters were also a major influence on me. They continue to influence my later work in poster making, since I also create political posters. This visual legacy shapes my work in many ways. A number of well-known Palestinian artists who are often described as fine artists produced posters during that era. They were politically active in Beirut during the Civil War, and one of the ways they participated was through poster making. I see that as a lineage, one that many Palestinian artists have taken up, and one that I draw inspiration from and try to continue.

BLS: In your work, and in that broader lineage, there is a noticeable simplicity in the visual style, along with a strong use of light and shadow. I am interested in how you understand the function of that aesthetic. Does it connect to the history of poster art, which often relied on bold contrasts and clear forms to allow for circulation and reprinting? And in your own work, how does that approach support the way you place very striking images side by side, especially when they convey sharply different realities?

LA: When I first started working on the comic, I was thinking very practically about how to create a character I could draw again and again in a consistent way. I was also a beginner in many respects. I was studying theater at the time, not art, and I did not have formal training. Drawing was something I had always done because I enjoyed it. The comic gave me a space to work on themes and subjects that my theater program was not allowing me to explore. Because of that, I decided to use a pared back style that felt achievable for a long project. I needed a way to keep the drawings steady and the character designs steady, even as the character ages. Small choices, like keeping the striped shirt throughout the book, were practical decisions that allowed me to manage the workload.

At the same time, I have always been drawn to a stark, high-contrast black and white style [see Figure 3]. I cannot fully explain it. It is simply the way I like to work. I think that simplicity also made the story approachable for readers who might not have any prior connection to the subject matter. The style feels open and inviting. It is about a child, and the visual language reflects that, which I think helped the book reach people who may not otherwise feel tied to the themes. So, there was a practical dimension, but there was also strategy. Thinking about political strategy has always been part of my artistic practice. I think about how the work functions in the world, what it might do, what effects it might have, and what unintended effects might appear. I came into art through organizing, and that shaped the way I think about my work. I was always asking how the book sits in relation to other forms of political work and how it might contribute to a larger goal. That was not the only concern. There is the personal element and the desire to connect with my family’s history. There is the human story at the center of it. But there was also a very clear political dimension to the project, and I approached it with that in mind.

BLS: Do you see Baddawi as a political or activist work, and who did you imagine as its audience? You mentioned that the simplicity of the style helped the book reach people who might not otherwise connect with the subject. How do you see comics affecting the way different readers connect with the story?

LA: It is [political] and it is not. The project was deeply personal. It was a research project for me and a way to connect with my family. It also had a political dimension, but I did not want it to be read only as an activist comic. There is a type of activist comic that works in a very direct show and tell way, where an image is presented and then explained to clarify a systemic injustice or a specific situation. There is some of that in Baddawi. I include a glossary, I explain things, and I provide context. But the work is guided by a human story, and that has always mattered to me. In many ways I have moved away from explaining or translating. When I was working on Baddawi, I was still an undergraduate. I was active in Students for Justice in Palestine, and I began to notice that many people, even within the Palestinian community, did not fully understand the camps. The camps were often viewed as places where you might go teach English, with little attention to the political role they had played, especially in Lebanon but also in Jordan and elsewhere. The camps were central in shaping Palestinian national consciousness. The PLO and other organizations were based in Beirut during the Civil War, and much political activity came from the camps. That history is very deep, and it is also part of the present.

BLS: Did you imagine a specific reader while working on the book? I’m curious how you navigated the tension between accessibility for Western readers and recognition for Palestinian readers who would immediately understand certain symbols and references.

LA: Several things led me to create the comic. One part was wanting other Palestinians in the diaspora to understand the camps as I had come to understand them through my dad’s stories. Another part was wanting people who had never met a Palestinian, or knew nothing about the region, to learn something meaningful. These stories felt compelling to me and I wanted to share them. So, I was thinking about two different audiences. One audience was the Western reader who might not know the history and needed enough information to follow the story. The other audience was Palestinians, and for them I embedded symbols that would be recognized without explanation. Some people have told me they saw the cover and immediately recognized Handala. Someone without that background would not know who Handala is, but they might still be drawn to the patterning and imagery. I was playing with symbolism that would signal something to Palestinian and Arab readers, or to anyone familiar with the visual language of that time, while also providing enough context so that someone unfamiliar with the history could still follow the narrative. Now most of my current projects avoid that kind of explanation. I sometimes mix Arabic and English, but I do not include translations or clarifications. That has been freeing. I no longer feel the need to guide the reader through every cultural or historical reference. That work can be done by others. It is not what I am interested in doing at this moment.

BLS: I would like to bring in some of your more recent work as well, because I think there is always this tension and negotiation. Do you think Palestinian artists and writers face pressure to represent a single story or experience? Do you feel any pressure to speak for a collective experience, and how do you approach that?

LA: Yes, I did feel that pressure when I was working on Baddawi. I do not feel it as strongly now. Being in community with other Palestinian artists after the book came out eased that feeling. It helped me see myself as part of an ongoing conversation with other Palestinian and Arab artists, rather than as the only Palestinian voice in a room. That said, even without the pressure to represent the totality of Palestinian experience, there is still the need to be thoughtful about how the work is made. There is so much misinformation, intentional distortion, and anti-Palestinian propaganda that you have to be aware of how your work might be read. You have to consider how it might be misinterpreted or used in ways you did not intend. You cannot predict everything, of course. Once the work is out in the world, it takes on its own life. You have to be attentive to these questions, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It is simply part of making work in the world. You think through the implications of what you create, and you attend to the context you are working within.

BLS: For many artists and writers there is an ongoing tension around representation, especially the question of who is allowed to speak for others and the limits of speaking for a larger community.

LA: Exactly. And I do sometimes give that disclaimer when I talk about my work. But, as I said, changing the way I situate my work, the way I think about it, the audience I imagine, and the creative community I feel in conversation with has freed me from some of those pressures. Audiences are increasingly international now, which is part of what allows me to feel that my work is in conversation with artists from many places. I think shifting the audience I imagine has also shifted how I understand my responsibilities as an artist. I feel it is urgent to offer internal critiques and internal conversations within the Palestinian community, and that is part of why I stopped translating certain things in my short comic The Opening (Abdelrazaq 2017), for example, I include Arabic text and Arabizi written in English letters, and I do not offer translation [See Figure 4]. I am not trying to engage only with readers who need everything explained. There are many Palestinians who may not speak Arabic, but the point is that I am prioritizing a different readership.

BLS: Yes, absolutely. And we will share some of these images. This feels like a shift from Baddawi. There is a point where being too transparent or too legible turns into translating yourself or your experiences so much that they become too easily packaged or consumable.

LA: Yes, exactly. And I think resisting legibility, resisting visibility, creates an interesting tension. Especially now, given the political situation, there is even more reason to resist legibility and visibility and to move in more clandestine ways because of the level of surveillance we are under. That is where this refusal to translate comes in, along with printing physical media and distributing it in the world rather than online, and even using anonymity. I have been making zines where I do not put my name on them at all, simply printing them and letting them exist in the world. These practices, which I had started experimenting with before this moment because these surveillance systems have been in place for a long time, have turned out to be useful ways of making work now. And that is something I am continuing to explore.

BLS: One of the things that seems to have shifted, and you can tell me what you think about this, is that for a long time there was this idea that what was needed was more awareness. The thought was that if people were more aware, then things would change. So, part of the work was to raise awareness and to make things legible, getting these issues into circulation with the expectation that this would lead to some sort of change. But over the last couple of years, that does not seem to be the case. Everything is now so hypervisible that to not be aware almost has to be intentional.

LA: Yes, and the visibility question is complicated. It has been effective and not effective at the same time. It has been effective in the sense that everyone knows now. Having been a student organizer on a college campus from around 2011 to 2015, the shift in people’s awareness is clear. People now understand what Israel is, and I think its public image has genuinely been damaged. But none of that has translated into policy or accountability.

The comparisons people made for years between South African apartheid and Israel have now become widely accepted. Israel is now associated with apartheid and genocide, actions it has long carried out, although it used to be very difficult to make people see that. Now many people understand it immediately.

BLS: So, there’s been a shift in your work, how much of that has been informed by current events?

LA: This shift began before the present moment. I was thinking about these issues when I made The Opening, which came out in 2017. This move away from transparency and legibility is something I have been exploring for a long time. It developed further as I built more community with Arab comic artists in the region and with Palestinian artists around the world after the publication of Baddawi. That gave me the space to work differently. In 2019 I co-founded a small press with my friend Aya Krisht, who is an excellent designer and printmaker. The idea behind the press is to create storytelling that is for us, resisting translatability, resisting legibility, and shifting the imagined audience. It is called Maamoul Press.

BLS: What can comics do to shape global awareness around Palestine? And how does that differ from what media or film can do? What does the form allow that other media do not?

LA: That is a really good question. Comics are built around storytelling, especially personal storytelling, and the chance to use surreal imagery. My book began as a web comic, and of course web comics exist, but I really love printed media. I love printed ephemera. I love things you can hold in your hand, sit with, and pass from person to person. I think these objects have a certain power, not only in the strategic sense I mentioned earlier, where you can circulate material in person to avoid digital surveillance, but also in a way that feels intangible and almost magical. Printed material moves through the world in its own way. I am very interested in that movement and in the way comics, whether they are printed as a book or a zine, take part in that space of printed material that circulates between people. People gift these objects, lend them, forget them somewhere, and they travel in unexpected ways. I am still thinking about the particular place comics hold within that world, but it is something that continues to interest me.

BLS: That circulation you’re describing raises questions about responsibility and the uses and ethics of representation. How do you think about what you choose to depict, especially in representing violence?

LA: Yes, absolutely. I was very intentional about not re-traumatizing readers or repeating violent imagery that further normalizes harm against Palestinians. My goal has always been to represent Palestinian life in its fullness and to balance that with showing the reality of Zionist brutality, without relying on graphic depictions of violence on Palestinian bodies. That has been important to me throughout my work.

BLS: Finally, Baddawi continues to reach new readers, including our incoming freshman class here in Doha, who read it for our inaugural Riwayati One Book Series at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. What do you hope young readers and aspiring artists take from the book?

LA: I think I would want them to know that I made the book in a very improvised way, without formal training, and that it began as a web comic. I want people to feel that they can find their own way into creative storytelling in whatever form makes sense for them. I would encourage people to try things out and see what kinds of storytelling feel right for them, even if it is not comics. One thing I often return to is a question from when I was in theater school: why does this need to be a play? I think about that with everything I make. Why does this need to be a comic? Why does this need to be an essay? Why does this need to be a poster? That connects to the thinking I mentioned earlier about how the work moves in the world. I would encourage people to follow the forms that feel urgent for them, whether that is writing, poetry, comics, painting, or anything else, and to have a sense of why a particular form feels necessary for the idea they want to work on. And even if they do not fully know why yet, if something feels urgent to make in a certain format, they should trust that instinct.