„Dojrzałam do niekomunistycznych butów”. Mityzacja dzieciństwa jako sposób radzenia sobie z traumą

The comic book "Marzi" by Marzena Sowa (script) and Sylvain Savoi (drawings) – is an autobiographical comic book series, published recently in France, concerning a childhood of the author in the eighties of the XX th century in Stalowa Wola in Poland. Apart from the hard conditions of living in the decaying communist system, the image of the relations of Marzi with her parents looks not very lightly. After reading all parts of the comic book series, the addressee is confronted with the confidence, that the childhood of this girl – although represented in warm colors (both in the word and image layers) was not so nice and happy. It was in that time when Marzi was confronted with the death of her beloved grandma, a guinea pig Perełka (Daisy), a cruelty against mentally ill relatives (aunt Henia), sexual prejudices (the figure of Arthur), exclusion of the poor, as well as with the jealousy towards richer relatives, living in France (aunt Irene) and a physical violence or psychical abuse. All that phenomena appear only with the revealing of the story and it turns out, that the mithization of the childhood of Marzi is not so much a try to deal with the trauma of the “great” history (Communist Poland), but with the trauma of “small”, local history – the history of the family.