Aya: Volume 7

Abidjan’s favorite daughter returns in an all-new volume of writer Marguerite Abouet’s beloved series

Long-time creative team Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie make a stunning comeback after a lengthy twelve-year hiatus. Aya: Claws Come Out takes us all back to Yop City--home to the hustle and bustle of the Ivory Coast.

As Solibra’s newest intern, clear-eyed college student Aya finds an unexpected adversary in the beer giant’s brand-new head of HR. Her friend Moussa, heir apparent to the company’s CEO Mr. Sissoko vies for his father’s attention while struggling to tone down his tendency to party. After being outed, Albert must find a new place to stay and grapples with the realities of insufficient student housing. His old flame Inno discovers first-hand how difficult life can be for undocumented migrants in France. Back at home, Bintou navigates the ups and downs of newfound soap opera stardom. All the while, Didier just wants to take Aya out to dinner--if she can ever find the time.

Now translated from the French by Edwige Dro, Aya and all her friends greet the bigger, bolder world of the 80s in true Abidjan style, delighting fans both old and new with vibrant but too often unseen depictions of middle-class life in Africa.

Marguerite Abouet was born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 1971. At the age of twelve, she was sent with her older brother to study in France under the care of a great uncle. She lives in Romainville, a suburb of Paris, where she works as a legal assistant and writes novels she has yet to show to publishers. Aya is her first comic. It taps into Abouet’s childhood memories of Ivory Coast in the 1970s, a prosperous, promising time in that country’s history, to tell an unpretentious and gently humorous story of an Africa we rarely see--spirited, hopeful, and resilient.

Clément Oubrerie was born in Paris in 1966. After a stint in art school he spent two years in the United States doing a variety of odd jobs, publishing his first children’s books and serving jail time in New Mexico for working without papers. Back in France, he went on to a prolific career in illustration. With over forty children’s books to his credit, he is also cofounder of the 3D animation studio Station OMD. A drummer in a funk band in his spare time, he still travels frequently, especially to the Ivory Coast. In Aya, his first comic, Oubrerie’s warm colors and energetic, playful line connect expressively with Marguerite Abouet’s vibrant writing.