La vie is like that by Magali Duzant

Structured like an alphabet primer and risograph printed, La vie is like that reflects on dementia, migration, and the connection between language and identity.

La vie is like that explores memory and forgetting, language acquisition and loss, migration, love, grief, family, and identity. The impetus for the work began as I was learning a language whilst my father, recently diagnosed with dementia, began forgetting his own. Structured as an alphabet learning book (A is for…), also known as a primer, La vie is like that is composed of short passages of writing formed from a non-chronological narrative that embodies a circular sense of time. The book's writing style embraces a conversational tone, with humorous asides combined with personal archives, including observational imagery informed by movement, touch, light, and shadow translated through Risography. The book balances text and images, breaking and pausing between each chapter, and unfolding and overlapping temporalities across various topics spanning Greek myth, Japanese temple architecture, CAPTCHAs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Russian and Turkish Baths on East 10th Street, the letter Y in romance languages, linguistic false friends, and dream interpretation.