The fraught rela­tion­ship between art and resis­tance under an oppres­sive soci­ety has been explored in many works of lit­er­a­ture. Maria van Lieshout’s graph­ic nov­el, Song of a Black­bird, is based on the exis­ten­tial choic­es con­fronting Dutch artists and cit­i­zens under the Nazi occu­pa­tion. To an unusu­al degree, the book engages with all the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able in this genre, com­bin­ing images and text with incred­i­ble flu­en­cy. The result is a remark­able work of intense com­pas­sion, fea­tur­ing com­pelling char­ac­ters who are test­ed by the cir­cum­stances in which they live.

The over­ar­ch­ing metaphor of a black­bird intro­duces the nov­el and flies through­out its pages. Both an observ­er and a par­tic­i­pant in the events of the plot, the bird express­es empa­thy and offers its song as an uplift­ing accom­pa­ni­ment to a cast of char­ac­ters. One focus of the graph­ic nov­el is Emma, a Dutch stu­dent and tal­ent­ed artist trapped in Nazi-occu­pied Ams­ter­dam, who is called upon to make extra­or­di­nary deci­sions when the Jews of her city are impris­oned and then deport­ed to death camps. She is set in con­trast to Annick, a young woman in 2011 whose oma (grand­moth­er) is ill and requires a bone mar­row donor to sur­vive. When Oma learns that her sib­lings — poten­tial donors — are not bio­log­i­cal­ly relat­ed to her, Emma urgent­ly needs to unrav­el the his­tor­i­cal mys­tery in order to help her grandmother.

The Nether­lands had a high lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazis dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, and there­fore a dev­as­tat­ing death rate of Jews. But there were also hero­ic Dutch Chris­tians who risked their lives to save friends and neigh­bors. When the Nazis con­vert­ed the grand Dutch The­ater into a depor­ta­tion cen­ter, Jews and Chris­tians worked togeth­er to save a small num­ber of chil­dren by recruit­ing fos­ter par­ents and destroy­ing records. Oth­ers labored in secret work­shops to forge doc­u­ments; the intri­cate process of cre­at­ing these papers was artis­ti­cal­ly demand­ing, requir­ing high­ly tech­ni­cal skills. The result­ing works of art were also con­crete acts of resis­tance. In the book, two pages of dia­logue encap­su­late the way that abstract con­cepts became phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of vio­lence. Emma’s teacher, Mr. Nijholt, describes the way that pro­pa­gandic lies become accept­ed truths through igno­rance and will­ful dis­be­lief; sev­er­al of his naïve stu­dents prove his point, argu­ing the implau­si­bil­i­ty of rumors about Nazi death camps.

The par­al­lel rela­tion­ships in each time peri­od are sub­tle, but indi­cate the threads that tie both eras togeth­er. In 2011, Annick becomes involved with Koen­ji, a poet and street artist who is com­mit­ted to his vision, and also to sup­port­ing Annick in her pur­suit of the truth. Back in the WWII time­line, Emma becomes involved with Erik, an artist and forg­er who faces dan­gers that his mod­ern coun­ter­part can only imag­ine. By sup­ply­ing intri­cate details about the intaglio method he uses to engrave his beau­ti­ful ren­di­tions of the city, Erik rein­forces the idea that the

free­dom to cre­ate is anti­thet­i­cal to a dic­ta­tor­ship. There is no divi­sion between his use of the same skills to enable Jews to escape the Nazis. Emma learns from Erik’s meth­ods how to con­vert sketch­es to prints; these even­tu­al­ly sur­face in Annick’s life and help her to locate Oma’s sur­viv­ing relatives. 

Van Liehshout’s art­work echoes that of her char­ac­ter, pre­sent­ing a cohe­sive pic­ture of beau­ty pro­duced under des­per­ate cir­cum­stances. She also incor­po­rates pho­tographs as doc­u­men­tary evi­dence of her fic­tion­al­ized account, and pro­vides an exten­sive after­word reveal­ing the his­tor­i­cal mod­els for peo­ple and events.

The omnipresent black­bird com­men­tary appears as white text against a black back­ground with a slight­ly upturned flour­ish in one cor­ner — dif­fer­ent from how oth­er char­ac­ters’ speech is dis­played. The blackbird’s truths are insep­a­ra­ble from the story’s his­tor­i­cal ones, leav­ing read­ers with both answers and ques­tions upon fin­ish­ing the book.