Peter Sis and The Geography of the Body: Body Image and Movement Metaphors as the Manipulation of Identity in <i>The Wall</i>

  • Jordana Hall La Trobe University

Abstract

The Wall is a graphic memoir for children authored by Caldecott winner Peter Sis. In this complex picture book, he describes growing up behind the Iron Curtain in a method understandable to children, but he also conveys something intimate about himself and his artistic journey to free expression. With few words used more as labels than story, he relies upon visual form and medium to share his narrative. The pictures reveal a geographic motif, the mapping of identity onto space and places of his lived experience. He couples this geographic metaphor with representations linked to an embodied, visceral reality. Through color coded representations of place Sis creates a social, geo-biography that depicts ideology competing alongside the lens of the body; art is representational of a desire for freedom of expression juxtaposed against the conformity and constraint that map out the boundaries he continuously struggled against as an artist and individual growing up within a tyrannical regime. Sis’s seemingly simplistic picture book offers new revelations about metaphor and embodied subjectivity.

Author Biography

Jordana Hall, La Trobe University
David Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature, and in Fiction for Young Adults. He has previously taught English, Literature, History and Drama in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian. He is interested in the history of traditional "boys' adventure" stories, especially those involving aircraft.
Published
2018-11-08
Issue
Vol. 21 No. 1 (2018)
Section
Picture Window
Essays and articles published in The Looking Glass may be reproduced for non-profit use by any educational or public institution; letters to the editor and on-site comments made by our readers may not be used without the expressed permission of that individual. Any commercial use of this journal, in whole or in part, by any means, is prohibited. Authors of accepted articles assign to The Looking Glass the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently available electronically. They retain the copyright and, 90 days after initial publication, may republish it in any form they wish as long as The Looking Glass is acknowledged as the original source.