Aya Conflicts

Aya by Marguerite Abouet is a graphic novel that illustrates the imperfection of the characters as they support one another through their troubles. With the constant conflicts that families in Aya face, the characters must turn to others outside of their family, uniting the entire neighborhood, to help resolve their problems, redefining family by presenting everyone in Abidjan as family.

In the novel, one of the adolescents, Adjoua, becomes pregnant, which causes much chaos, as this is one of the main topics the story focuses on that causes conflict between most of the characters. All this chaos begins the moment Adjoua tells Moussa she is pregnant, and he is the father. Moussa gets upset and begins worrying when Adjoua tells him that her father is a journalist and might possibly write about her pregnancy in the newspaper: “‘You don’t know him. He just might write about it in the papers!’ ‘How come? Is

At Calamity Morning.’ ‘Calamity morning! No! He can’t do that!’” (Abouet 73) Since Moussa is afraid of Adjoua’s father writing about this news, he goes to his parents, and tell them what is going on, which causes conflict between him and his parents because he is clearly too young to have a child, and his father did not even believe his son knew how to make a child. Once Adjoua’s parents and Moussa’s parents speak to each other about arranging a marriage for Adjoua and Moussa, conflicts arises between them because Hyacinte, Adjoua’s father, wants to write about the marriage in the newspaper: “This is great news! I’ll write it up in my newspaper.’ ‘Oh no! Forget it! Don’t make me change my mind.’” (Abouet 94) Although there is constant conflict arising because of Adjoua’s pregnancy, everyone is trying to come together and form a marriage, showing the unity of Abidjan. Even