Yellow Negroes And Other Imaginary Creatures

“Alagbé’s sharp, mesmerizing images catch the eye, and they compel you to continue reading. These difficult stories stick with you, continuing to turn over and over in your head.” —Shea Hennum, The AV Club’s ‘25 Best Comics of the 2010s’

“With poetic, elliptical text and stark, impressionistic black-and-white art, French cartoonist Alagbé reveals the toxic legacy of European colonialism upon individuals and families.” —Library Journal

“A timely collection about race and immigration in Paris by one of France’s most revered cult comic book artists. Alagbé uses stark, endlessly inventive black-and-white brushwork to explore love and race, oppression and escape.” —Publishers Weekly

“One of the most arresting comics works to hit stands in a good long while.” —Abraham Riesman, Vulture

“Nègres is one of those works that becomes emblematic not just of its publisher, but of a particular moment in comics. Where the individual parts just click, where every creative decision feels right and supports the author’s intent, while retaining the spark of youthful ambition… . The book … deserves attention. It is a bold and nakedly intense effort to represent the way bereavement may trigger memories, dreams, and rationalization, as well as to describe how, like it or not, family dictates our lives.” —The Comics Journal

Yvan Alagbe was born in Paris and spent three years of his youth in West Africa. He returned to study mathematics and physics at the Universite de Paris-Sud, where he met Olivier Marboeuf. Alagbe and Marboeuf founded a contemporary visual arts review called L’oeil carnivore and the magazine Le Cheval sans tate (“The Headless Horse”), which gained a cult following for its publication of innovative graphic art and comics. Labeling these artistic collaborations as “Dissidence Art Work,” Alagbe and Marboeuf soon founded their own publishing house, Amok, drawing from the material serialized in Le Cheval, including the first version of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. In 2001, Amok partnered with the publishing group Freon to establish the Franco-Belgian collaboration Fremok, now a major European graphic novels publisher. Alagbe lives in Paris.

Donald Nicholson-Smith is an award-winning translator of French literature. He has translated Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Fatale and The Mad and the Bad, Jean-Paul Clebert’s Paris Vagabond, and the forthcoming NYR Comics title The Green Hand and Other Stories by Nicole Claveloux. He lives in New York City.

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