ORANGES

A poignant, topical, and absolutely beautiful graphic memoir by a queer Palestinian comics artist and graphic designer born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Amman, and now living in Milan.

It tells the story of three generations of Ahmad's family, tracing the impact of the diaspora on their personalities, relationships, and hopes for themselves. All the while it narrates Ahmad's search for belonging and his effort to reconcile his many identities, as an artist, as a gay man, as an Arab, and the grandchild of Palestinian refugees. One of the most difficult things is not feeling like you belong anywhere in the world, and ORANGES is Ahmad's touching and candid account of his unique journey of acceptance even while the war in Gaza brought him and his group of friends into entirely new levels of grief and feelings of exile. Ahmad Qatato works at Design Group Italia doing brand design and he's published comics online and in print with a Lebanese comic artist collective SAMANDAL. Ahmad's "Majida's Diaries," an Arabic-language comic strip published on Facebook, chronicled the ordinary lives of three Arab girls. What started with brief comic episodes began to include frank conversations about taboo subjects in the Muslim world, whether it be honor killing or same-sex desire. This generated considerable media attention and Ahmad appeared on CNN and Radio Monte Carlo, and was also featured in El Pais with the page growing to 150,000 followers. Ahmad is fluent in Arabic, English, and Italian.