A graphic novel explores the fears of those living in Italy as they see the migrants arrive. The novel also tells of those migrants who have made the crossing and feel disoriented.
There's the black fear of those who land safely after miraculously escaping shipwreck, with their hopes and dreams. Children and mothers in particular tell openly of their journeys at the mercy of the waves and of how they managed to exorcise their fear, singing and praying, until their arrival. The book describes the environment when they arrive as "made of walls and barbed wire, of loneliness". Turning the book upside down, there's the blue fear, namely the fears and commonplace assumptions of those who already find themselves on the more affluent side of the Mediterranean and are called to receive the migrants in whatever way they can. Ten short stories narrate two sides of the same fear.
Target readership
The book has been written and illustrated respectively by Alessandra Ballerini (a civil lawyer specialising in human rights and immigration) and Lorenzo Terranera (an artist and set designer), with writer Fabio Geda and anthropologist Marco Aime as special guests. It targets adults but particularly children from age 4 and is dedicated to Bisher Dahhan (aged 1), Tarek Dahhan (aged 4), Mohamed Dahhan (aged 9), Joud Mostafa (aged 3), Mohamed Jammo (aged 6) and Nahel Jammo (aged 9 months) who drowned in the October 11, 2013 shipwreck off Lampedusa in which 268 Syrian refugees including 60 children died.