Welcome Home
By Blanche and Clarrie Pope
A group of squatters occupy an empty flat in a condemned tower in London, aiming to unite their neighbours to resist the demolition. But it’s not as easy as that. Rain is in love with her housemate Eva, who unfortunately happens to be her best friend’s girlfriend. She can’t stand Will and his try-hard activism, and is avoiding Yaz, who used to tease her at school and lives in the tower.
Her life in the squat is repeatedly interrupted by her work in a care home where she has grown particularly close to Doris, a resident with dementia, who used to live in their flat. Through Doris’s stories we discover the history of the tower and another, older love triangle.
Shortlisted for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Prize 2018, Welcome Home is inspired by our experience of squatting and housing struggles, as well as Blanche’s time spent working in care homes.
It explores the class, race and gender politics involved in both through a humorous look at the way in which these issues affect the minutiae of people’s lives. Welcome Home can be ordered to your local bookshop and online (e.g. here) or direct from the publisher, Minor Compositions.
Written with my sister Blanche, Welcome Home is about lost struggles, unrequited love and irritating activists. Despite its gloomy topics, it is written with humour and driven by hope.
(310 pages, April 2022, Minor Compositions)