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Burma Chronicles
Guy Delisle
By Garrett Martin
del.ico.us
reddit!
BURMA CHRONICLES | GUY DELISLE
DRAWN & QUARTERLY | 9.30.08
No one observes shit more wryly than French cartoonists—read Lewis Trondheim and realize the truth. French Canadians are close, though, if Guy Delisle is any indication. His series of cartoon travelogues (Shenzhen, Pyongyang) of horribly oppressive dictatorships continues with Burma Chronicles, documenting a year spent in the Southeast Asian country with his Médecins Sans Frontières administrator wife. Delisle doesn't flinch from portraying Burmese society at its most squalid and helpless, but focuses less on the indignities inflicted upon Burma's population by its own government than on how people deal with such conditions. Compared to the seemingly brainwashed North Koreans found in Pyongyang, the average Burmese citizen is less paranoid or depressed and more bemused by the ruling regime's absurd bureaucracy, and that attitude nicely matches Delisle's. A harrowing trip to outlying regions shows the true depths of the offenses, but mostly Burma Chronicles is a humorous study of perseverance and cultural differences.
