OPIOIDS AND ORGANS

After her father Chris's overdose, Arizona has to make an important decision: to donate his organs. This act, presented everywhere as a gift of life, continues to haunt her months later. She has a hard time accepting the idea that her father, like many other people whose organs are harvested - often destitute young drug addicts - would never have qualified to receive such a gift himself. By agreeing that the body of her father, whom she barely knew, be used to heal those of strangers, did she contribute to perpetuating a form of social inequality?

Accompanied by Izzy the lizard, the embodiment of her anxieties and obsessions, and Frankie, Mary Shelley's friendly cadaverous creature, Arizona delves into the history of transplants and experiments conducted on human remains. She then discovers that this imbalance between the social class of people whose bodies are used for scientific purposes and the social groups who benefit from them is not new. Whether in Ireland, where Arizona joins her mother Heather, on the campus of a large American university, or in the catacombs of Paris, traces of this exploitation are everywhere, dating back to Antiquity.

Through inventive illustrations, sometimes macabre, sometimes whimsical, and a tone that is both inquisitive and humorous, Arizona O'Neill raises crucial questions about a sacred practice that nevertheless involves its share of ethical challenges and dark areas. At the same time, the author and illustrator touches on the peaks and troughs of grief, filiation, and our relationship with death.