A New Graphic Approach to Historical Trauma
Artist and anthropologist Dana Mashoian Walrath is releasing a graphic novel that confronts the mechanics of mass extermination. Her new work, The Book of Genocides, covers 10 distinct historical case studies, including the Holocaust, the killing of Indigenous populations in the Americas, and the Rwandan genocide. The book serves as an experimental blend of visual art, personal memoir, and academic research.
Walrath’s personal history informs the project. As an Armenian-American, she grew up with fragments of her family's flight from the Ottoman empire during the first world war. She notes that for decades, the story of her grandmother’s survival was condensed into a brief account of running at night toward an orphanage in Aleppo. Recently, she uncovered deeper, more violent details about those events, which she believes are essential to understanding the generational impact of such trauma.
The Psychology of Dehumanization
Walrath spent years traveling to the locations documented in her book to speak with survivors and descendants. During this process, she observed that genocide is rarely a spontaneous explosion of tribal hatred. Instead, she identifies these events as highly planned, bureaucratic operations. She points to land theft and systemic resource control as primary drivers, rather than simple ethnic animosity.
To help readers grasp these patterns, the book features an interactive design. Readers are encouraged to cut specific pages into thirds to create a series of portraits. As the reader flips these segments, the figures morph from human faces into various beasts or parasites. This mechanism is designed to illustrate how propaganda and state-sponsored dehumanization shift public perception, allowing populations to justify the destruction of others.
Confronting Modern Conflicts
One chapter of the book addresses the ongoing conflict in Palestine, an inclusion Walrath expects will lead to professional backlash and potential travel restrictions. She frames the current situation in Gaza within the same legal and ethical definitions established by Raphael Lemkin in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Walrath suggests that the systematic nature of the violence meets the threshold for genocide, a stance that she understands will provoke intense debate.
Despite the subject matter, Walrath rejects the notion that human violence is an evolutionary inevitability. She maintains that humans are hardwired to care for one another, and that genocidal acts are the products of specific, human-made government systems. The goal of the book is to prompt uncomfortable conversations and challenge the reader's own complicity in the dehumanization of others.
Walrath plans to continue her work from her studio in Vermont. While she anticipates she will no longer be allowed to enter Israel following this release, she remains focused on the potential for institutional change. The Book of Genocides arrives on 8 September, offering a visual framework for understanding some of the most difficult chapters in human history.