A charming little book about the author's experiences living in Oaxaca amid protests, scorpions, wild dogs, ancient ruins, and amazing beauty. I would not ordinarily have selected this book to read, given that the majority of it is the author's often surreal water colors. But the paintings really added something magical to the book, which if it were published alone would have been quite boring. The text is often repetitive and is certainly not intended to provide a deep analysis of Oaxacan life....

This is a keeper. Thanks l'il bro. I read this whenever I need a "Oaxaca " fix. We have been there several times and this book puts a return trip on the top of the to do list. Gorgeous cartoons. Witty language. Explore the Spanish version. You will be pleasantly surprised how much is added to your experience of the book.

Diario de Oaxaca is the result of being in the right place at the “wrong” time...The day we landed in Mexico, July 3, 2006, the news was all about the suspicion of fraud in the previous day’s national elections. Oaxaca City was in the throes of a major teachers’ strike with encampments and protests throughout town, and just getting from the airport to our new neighborhood acquired circumventing strikers barricades...Over the next few months, as the teachers’ strike reached a boiling point, famil...

Highly recommended. a journal-like book describing one of my fav political cartoonists accidental life in Oaxaca Mexico during the teacher's uprising a few years ago. from the perspective of a sympathetic outsider (who is very reluctant to get involved), the book serves as a good overview of what happened during the uprising, although lacks any real details, as you'd imagine if reading someone's journal. for instance, the murder of brad will was only mentioned in passing. regardless, his writing...

I enjoyed this book very much. It seemed to have all of the things I like - travel experience in Mexico (in my favorite city of Oaxaca), lots of drawings because the author is an artist, and even a parallel translation into Spanish. I also liked the author's relaxed point of view on spending time in an area that was going through a crisis, and his descriptions of how the crisis did and did not affect his stay. But I cannot give it 5 stars, because there just was not enough content for a "Journal...

Pure. Happiness. And not just because I'm listed in the acknowledgments which I should disclose (though I'm hardly deserving), and not just because I have been a fan for a long time, but because it is beautiful, deeply personal, and brings joy. It is a sketchbook not a graphic novel, it does not pretend to be a deep analysis of the teacher's strike or Oaxacan history or etymology or even a regularly written travel journal. It is a series of impressions accompanied by art in Kuper's idiosyncratic...

I wouldn't recommend this as a standalone work particularly, but as a companion to Ruins, it's pretty interesting. I liked the blend of sketches, developed art, and writing.

Don't be freaked out, english-only-speakers, if your library shelves this book in the spanish section. My library does, and I was a bit worried when I opened it to see entire pages full of spanish text.This book is entirely bilingual. Virtually every caption, and all the bodytext is in both spanish and english. Something about Peter Kuper's art speaks to me. I don't always enjoy his aesthetic (maybe because he works in almost every style and medium on the books - all on one page!), but every onc...

✍️ DIARIO DE OAXACA: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico by Peter Kuper, 2009 / with new afterword 2017 from PM Press.Cartoonist / artist Peter Kuper and his partner lived in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca in the mid-2000s, witnessing (and drawing) several Indigenous rights protests and labour strikes, as well as daily life of shopkeepers, farmers, schoolchildren, and street dogs. DIARIO crystallized the mid-2000s, but the new edition I read also includes 2 addendums from the 2010s...

A unique look at the turbulence surrounding the 2006 teachers strike and uprising from the point of view of an accidental observer. Rather than running away, and many extranjeros might have, Kuper walked into its midst, recording the events by photo, sketch, and journal. While far from a definitive history of the events in question, this account provides the perspective of an outside observer with much love and respect for the people of the city and region. Small side journeys to Michoacan to wi...

The Oaxaca Diary is a lovely book filled with the author's own illustrations and photographs. It begins with a description of the teacher's strike of 2006 and the political situation in Oaxaca but then moves on to more personal experiences. Among these are a trip to Michoacan where millions of Monarch butterflies go in the winter, a trip to Puerto Escondido and another to Chiapas. Kuper also writes about street art/graffiti, dogs of the street, and the insects in his own back yard. Text is in bo...

No longer using this website, but I'm leaving up old reviews. Fuck Jeff Bezos. Find me on LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/profile/...This book was beautiful. Originally, I bought it for the first 60 pages documenting the Oaxaca Commune, a seven month struggle that temporarily replaced a fascist police state with a socialist, anarchist, and indigenous inspired series of assemblies. But the book is a travel journal of two years, and after some annoyance that this section was over, I ada...

I was more familiar with Peter Kuper's political stencil work so this full-color sketchbook from Mexico was a real surprise. It's a way more personal work than his strident, overtly-political pieces, and appealing in the way that drawing is such an intimate human endeavor. Of course there's still a huge teacher strike going on that he documents but we also get pages of nature sketches, insects & him geeking out about butterfly migration. The comic at the end is so good!

In 2015 cartoonist Peter Kuper published Ruins, about an artist and his wife taking a couple year sabbatical in Oaxaca. It focuses on his relationship with his wife, and with his life as an artist, and his drawing of bugs. And there’s some mention of political activity. I read it a couple years ago.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Now I come to read Kuper’s journal/sketchbook of those couple years, which would work as a nice companion to Ruins, of course. It is multi-genre, and gets less

Sketchbook travelogue of the author's sabbatical in Oaxaca City. He and his family moved there at the time that the teachers' strikes were attacked by the state. He discusses the strike from an observational standpoint, and acknowledges the corruption of the governor's office, but there is not an in-depth discussion of the political situation or the teachers. I love the sketches, especially all of the insects that he includes. Read Harder Challenge 2020: a graphic memoir.

Diario de Oaxaca offers the singular pleasure of browsing an artist's sketchbook, a beautifully curated one in this case; my only complaint is that I wish it were longer. Kuper combines colored pencil and black ink drawings with occasional photographs and other ephemera, plus narrative diary in both English and Spanish, and this additive approach is well suited to both the breadth of his interests and the eclectic beauty of Oaxaca. Like any really engaging sketchbook, it left me wanting to be a

Diario de Oaxaca opens during a teacher’s strike in a southern mexican town. Apparently the teachers strike every year for a week. The strike always ends after a week because the teachers always get what they want. Until 2006, when they didn’t.The descriptions of the strike seemed mainly observational. At first I wondered why the author didn’t ask questions like “Why is a yearly strike necessary? Why can’t the teachers just negotiate yearly instead?”. Then I realized that the author didn’t trave...

hm, seems like most people really love this book. and generally I am a fan of graphic/sketchbook travelogues, but maybe i am pickier about drawing style than I even knew. and honestly i was annoyed with how enamored kuper was about he and his family living in oaxaca for two years and how lucky he was to catch the teacher's strike. there is one passage where he talks about walking past tourists who have no idea all the strike madness that had just past and how awesome it was that he and his wife

Kuper's sketchbook and journal entries during the two years he spent living in Oaxaca, Mexico, during the time of a major political upheaval connected to a teachers' strike. Intelligent, well drawn, and full of great images of the many facets of Mexican life. Very good, although there is less "story" content than most people will probably expect from it. Most of the pages are sketchbook material, but I enjoyed Kuper's great collages of Mexican culture.