Hurricane Helene was a one-in-a-1000-years storm that devastated Western North Carolina. The land of the sky became islands in the sky. Towns and communities are washed away, but the people remained. Now, a new Appalachian comic book is bringing stories of the survivors, the helpers, their resilience, courage, resourcefulness and most of all love.
The Communication Department and WCU’s Society of Professional Journalists chapter are hosting National Book Award-winning author Andrew Aydin, who recently led the creation of on the nonfiction comic book “Islands in the Sky: A People’s History of Hurricane Helene.”
The event is on Tuesday, Oct. 27 at the Hunter Library 101A starting at 6 p.m. Aydin will talk about the stories in the book and why telling them in a comic non-fiction book is an effective way to teach about Helene impact on WNC.
Aydin felt compelled to tell true stories about Helene survivors after witnessing growing misinformation after the hurricane.
“I just got really angry because here I’d seen something totally different. I’d seen people pulling together. I’d seen what it took for us to save ourselves. And I wasn’t seeing that story represented either in the press or online,” said Aydin. So, he founded the Appalachia Comics Project to “revitalize Southern Appalachia by amplifying local voices and fostering community growth in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.” Their first project is “Islands in the Sky.”
“Non-fiction comics allow you to tell a story in a way that you can’t through any other medium,” said Aydin on why he chose non-fiction comic books to tell these stories. “You can move time differently. You can slow things down. You can speed them up. And you can do so in a way that still allows the reader to experience it in their own way, because they choose how they read the page. And that is what makes nonfiction, graphic novels in particular, so effective at teaching history and keeping a shared understanding alive in people’s minds.” Aydin is familiar with this practice due to his work with the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis to tell his story and history of the Civil Rights Movement in the nonfiction comic book trilogy “March.”
“Islands in the Sky” is a result of the combined efforts of over 40 people, including letterers, writers, colorists, inkers, and interviewees. With the help from Cory Vaillancourt, former reporter and editor for The Smoky Mountain News and now Asheville Citizen Times, Aydin shared that he received “dozens” of testimonies from real survivors within 24 hours of an article running in the Haywood County paper, which make up the content of the book.
At the event, students will have the opportunity to learn how this book came to life, and learn how non-fiction comic books can benefit storytelling and communities.
“I want students to understand what it took for us to make this history so that they understand the significance of this book,” Aydin says. He believes that the book can succeed in bringing attention to, and common understanding of, less well-known histories in a similar way as his previous works like “March.”
“By 2019, ‘March’ had become one of the most widely taught graphic novels in America, one of the most widely taught texts about the Civil Rights Movement. And you saw a generation who had gone through the last six, eight years with ‘March’ in their schools being explicitly informed about nonviolent civil disobedience. And, now all these people know about Bayard Rustin and Fannie Lou Hamer. We were starting that,” said Aydin, “I think we can do the same thing with the Appalachia Comics Project, where we can help bring that national understanding to the extraordinary stories of this region, and at the same time empower the people who live here.”
To learn more about the book visit appalachiacomics.org. Books can be purchased from this site to directly benefit the Appalachia Comics Project so they can make more comics. Aydin will also do signings of the book at the event on Oct. 27. Stay tuned on information about the event, follow @wcucommdepartment on Facebook and Instagram.
