Bayou by Jeremy Love (my graphic novel group’s book)

My graphic novel group read Bayou, Volume One (New York: DC Comics, 2009), which was written and drawn by Jeremy Love and colored by Patrick Morgan. It is the story of a young African American girl named Lee Wagstaff who lives in the small town of Charon, Mississippi. The year is 1933, and despite the oppressive existence of Jim Crow and the horrible mistreatment of African Americans in this time and place, Lee’s best friend is a young white girl named Lily Westmoreland. One day, Lee and Lily are playing near a bayou and a swamp monster takes Lily away. Soon after Lee returns home, her father is arrested on charges of doing unspeakable things to and murdering Lily. As she knows what really happened to Lily, Lee embarks on a journey into the bayou to save Lily from the monster and to save her innocent father from being lynched.

Without giving too much away, on her journey Lee meets a good swamp “monster” named Bayou, who helps her on her mission and who Lee helps to empower in the process. Lee was scared to leave her world to find Lily but she did it anyway. She became brave once she realized that it was up to her to be strong and to fight; only she could save the two people she loves the most. And even though Lee is a young child, it is her self-discovery that motivates Bayou to escape the chains of slavery and Jim Crow and to fight back against the Southern white power structure that keeps him – and every other African American – down. As Lee, and later Bayou learn, African Americans (and whites) need to face their past and demons and destroy them in order to overcome them, rather than let the past and demons destroy them.

A major theme that plays through Bayou is that of dark and light, which one can argue is how Love interprets southern history and the African American experience in the South. On the one hand, there are the dark elements of Southern history – slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, lynching – that never disappeared and continue to haunt the South in the form of the alternate “Dixie” universe. But on the other hand, there is the lightness that comes from African American cultures and families that gives African Americans strength and an inner light/purpose in the face of so much human darkness, as well as a lightness that comes from the power of the kind of friendship that is colorblind (as Lee and Lily’s bond represents). And what makes Bayou even more powerful – and haunting – is Love’s brilliant combination of the dark and light elements of Southern history and African American culture with dreamlike fantasy qualities, including Cotton Eyed Joe, the child-eating swamp monster, and Lee’s treacherous voyage into the Dixie alternate reality to rescue Lily and her father. In this sense, Bayou reminds me of books and movies like Alice in Wonderland, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Wizard of Oz, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Odyssey.

I knew that I had found a great graphic novel with how fast I tore through this book and with all of the questions I was left with once I finished it. I read Bayou from start to finish in an hour. At first I was going to split up the reading, but once I got into it, I was so hooked that I could not put it down. I want to read Bayou, Volume Two now to see what happens next! Will Lee find Lily? Will Lee’s father get lynched? And what about Lee’s mother, what is going on with her? There was a hint in the narrative that made me wonder if she was stolen by a monster like Lily, and that perhaps Lee and Bayou will find her – or at least find out what happened to her - on the next leg of their adventure. I look forward to getting answers to my questions during the winter break! 

 --Ashley Cleeves