My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Queen Street is a graphic novel that narrates the life of Aimee, a Filipina who immigrated to Canada in the late 1980’s. She was a lawyer when she was still in the Philippines and she left her established career when she married Joseph. After over a decade in Canada, she and her husband were blessed with a vibrant daughter who they named Melodie.
Aimee and her story as an immigrant is a vivid depiction of some of the problems a migrant like her that encounters. Their everyday struggles to live in a foreign country describes the real life that they have is not that wonderful. However, because of their enthusiasm, resiliency, vigor, and assistance from friends and loved ones, they can handle all the difficulty that life throws at them.
There are just some minor inaccuracies in the slang words/phrases that the character Aimee mentioned, just like the words “Alla Kat Ta” and “Okinam-!” As a Filipino, I never encountered such slang words; even those who I’ve asked who are older than I am are not aware of those terms. Perhaps the author, Emmanuelle Chateaneuf, only used those words that she heard from her Filipina mother. Probably those are just made-up terms of her own mother derived from the Filipino language, or that Emmanuelle just wasn’t able to clearly hear the exact Filipino words her mom used and she never bothered to ask about them.
Nonetheless, I still consider Queen Street a good graphic novel to check out because of its convincing story and that the illustrations were nicely drawn.
