“Welcome to the New World”: Cartoons in crisis

Amid a world-wide refugee crisis, the Council on Middle East Studies at the MacMillan Center held a colloquium with Jake Halpern and Michael Sloan, the co-creators of The New York Times comic strip about refugees called “Welcome to the New World.” Halpern is also a contributor to the New Yorker and This American Life. Sloan is an award-winning illustrator. During the colloquium, the two came together to talk about their experience working on the comic, which details the journey of a refugee family after their arrival in the United States. The talk was titled “Cartoons in Crisis: The New York Times Reports on Refugees… in a Comic Strip.”

Halpern began by describing the origins of the project. The first story he pitched about a refugee going to the same school as his son was rejected and an alternative story—a book comic—was suggested instead. Halpern then decided to follow a Syrian refugee family from the very beginning of their arrival in the United States.

He reflected on first starting to work on the story, which was during the 2016 presidential election. After the election results started coming in, Halpern realized that the refugee family “came to one country and woke up in another country.” The family, however, did not realize that Trump had won until two days later. They had no access to the internet and were accustomed to judging if things were going well by looking out their window, through which they saw no turmoil after the election. The family only realized something was wrong when they received a text from their mother who said that she would not see them for a long time. This part of their lives, as well as many others, are captured in the comic.

Halpern stressed how thankful he was that the family decided to trust him, especially at the beginning. He understood that in Syria, “journalists were often spies or informants for the government.” Much to his surprise, “it actually took no coaxing… he [the father] immediately started telling me the story of the day Assad’s men abducted him and his brother.” During the writing process, Halpern felt he was “helping them write a ghost memoir of sorts.”

Sloan then discussed the process he went through to create artwork for the comic. The comic is ordered in 8-panel episodes, each of which took over 40 hours to complete. Sloan showed the audience some of his favorites, including a comic depicting one of the daughters learning to swim—first her fear of the water and then her triumph afterwards.

Near the end of the talk, the family starring in the comic came in and were recognized by Halpern, much to everyone’s surprise and pleasure. Although at the beginning of the project, the family feared possible repercussions from their participation in the comic, the family is now more settled in and has gone public. 

Written by Julia Ding, Yale College Class of 2019.