The Once and Future Riot
Joe Sacco's latest is a meditation on truth-seeking, the valour of journalism, and Hindutva. It's brilliant.
When I read The Once and Future Riot last year, I wanted immediately to share it with the world. Now, thanks to Progressive International, I can. (I’m on the PI council, and urge you to support their work, not least by signing up to their occasional newsletter, from which this excerpt comes.)
Joe Sacco is the author of Footnotes in Gaza, for which he received the Ridenhour Book Prize and the Eisner Award, as well as Paying the Land, Palestine, Journalism, Safe Area Goražde, and War on Gaza, both also Eisner Award winners. His comics reporting has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, and Harper’s Magazine.
In his book, The Once and Future Riot, Sacco sets out to document the genesis and the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots in the small town of Muzaffarnagar in India, which led to deaths and displacement.
This excerpt from his book elucidates a scene where a meeting calling for unity of the two communities is disrupted by, mostly Hindu members, who demand that a ‘stronger’ action to be taken.
