Newswise — EVANSTON, Ill. --- When we first meet Northwestern University’s Ozge Samanci in her graphic novel “Dare to Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey,” she's an adorable six-year-old who sneaks into her older sister’s elementary school classroom and joyfully slides into the seat beside her.
It’s one of the last times readers see Samanci, now a multi-media artist and assistant professor in the School of Communication, jazzed about school. By the time she's in first grade, Samanci is learning harsh lessons about the Turkish educational system and her country, which was undergoing intense political and social upheaval during the 1980s and '90s.
“It’s the book I would have liked to have read in college,” Samanci said. “I was told I was going to end up in a cubicle with a math degree, but things unfolded in a very different way. Life keeps offering opportunities if you have the openness.”
Since its publication, “Dare to Disappoint” has become a bestseller on Amazon; the English version is selling well in Samanci’s home country of Turkey, where she “has become the year’s most inspiring figure among comic artists, and a subject of intrigue for Turkish magazines, newspapers and budding artists,” the New Republic said.
Samanci’s work has been described as “whimsical,” “charming” and “full of unorthodox surprises.
Throughout the autobiographical book, she wrestles with universal conflicts, including fitting in, feelings of failure, family expectations and finding her own voice in a hardline conservative school. It’s also a pivotal time in Turkish history; the country is awkwardly transitioning from a nationalist dictatorship to a Western and Muslim nation obsessed with the television show “Dallas.”
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