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Travels & troubles: Graphic tales

Feature by Becky Ohlsen

Four new graphic novels address the appeal of running away and the impossibility of escaping your past, for good or ill.

TRIUMPHANT RETURN
If you’re even vaguely interested in graphic novels, you’re probably aware that Craig Thompson has a new book coming out. Thompson’s 2003 graphic novel Blankets told an autobiographical coming-of-age story and floored everyone who read it, winning all kinds of awards and making a star of its author. His long-anticipated follow-up, the utterly engrossing Habibi, is at least as gut-wrenching and even more substantial in size and scope.

Just to be clear, this book is not for the faint of heart. In the first few panels, our nine-year-old heroine, Dodola, is sold into marriage by desperate parents whose village is suffering from drought. Dodola’s new husband is no brute, but even so . . . she’s nine years old. Thus begins her journey through the world as a headstrong and beautiful Arab girl. Fortunately for Dodola (and us), her husband is a scholar, and he teaches her to read and write. She learns the stories of the Qur’an, the work of the great poets, the Thousand and One Nights. Then, abruptly, marauding thieves kill her husband and kidnap the girl. She’s brought to a slave market, where she finds and rescues a three-year-old orphan boy, Zam. From then on their fates are linked. They escape and live for a while on a ship marooned in the desert, but their need for food and water leads them to be discovered and separated. Each of them endures years of torment, accumulating scars, grieving and longing for each other. It’s pretty brutal.

But it’s also beautiful. Dodola’s and Zam’s stories are interwoven with the stories they learned as children, the underpinnings of Islam. This lends not only beauty and texture but also meaning and redemption to their suffering, and Thompson’s handling of the religious elements—something that might have been awkward or controversial—is restrained and graceful. His black-and-white drawings, often incorporating Arabic script, are at times floaty and feverish but always perfectly clear. He breaks up dreamy exposition with tightly structured action sequences, and the pages couldn’t be prettier. As always, his economical writing is deeply moving. Habibi is a book not to be missed.

A CHILD’S-EYE VIEW
Another story of a childhood spent in hostile surroundings, Marzi by Marzena Sowa, takes the opposite tack. Marzi’s story, especially at first, seems like it could be happening almost anywhere. In fact it’s set in Poland during the 1980s, as the country was rebelling against communism. It’s only as Marzi grows up and gains understanding that the impact of the political situation starts to become clear. For most of the book she’s a wide-eyed, innocent daddy’s girl with completely typical attitude problems, arguments with her friends, difficulty eating her vegetables, fights with cousins and so on. It’s fascinating and often hilarious to see huge world-changing events like the Chernobyl explosion and factory-workers’ strikes from the point of view of a regular little girl absorbed in her own life.

A FINE ROMANCE
Entirely different but equally charming is The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt by Caroline Preston, a fictional memoir told in gorgeous full-color collages. With postcards, news clippings, ticket stubs, receipts, catalog pages and drawings that look like illustrations from vintage fashion magazines, Preston tells the coming-of-age story of Frankie, a bright young girl who graduates from high school in 1920 and goes to Vassar on scholarship after her father dies. She gets herself into numerous romantic entanglements, all of them ill-advised, and seems constantly on the verge of abandoning her dream of becoming a novelist. But Frankie is stubborn and scrappy, and she manages to take care of herself in a world where most girls like her just want to be taken care of. The happy ending is a little sudden, but it’s a pleasure to watch Frankie develop and learn to trust her nobler instincts until they pay off.

MERRIMENT ON MOTORBIKES
And finally, an idea I’m surprised hasn’t been tried before: a graphic novel adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales—on motorcycles. This retelling is done by Seymour Chwast, one of the founders of the influential Push Pin Studios who has already adapted Dante’s Divine Comedy. His irreverent humor makes him an even better fit for Chaucer, who never left a good fart joke untold. And nothing goes better with fart jokes than motorcycle touring. (It’s not entirely clear just why the pilgrims are riding hogs, but that doesn’t matter.) Most everyone in these 24 travelers’ tales ends up being thoroughly mocked, both in the smartypants dialogue and in the simplified but pointed drawings. The book works either as an introduction to Chaucer’s original text or as an alternate take for those who’ve read it many times already.

Four new graphic novels address the appeal of running away and the impossibility of escaping your past, for good or ill. TRIUMPHANT RETURNIf you’re even vaguely interested in graphic novels, you’re probably aware that Craig Thompson has a new book coming out. Thompson’s 2003 graphic novel Blankets told an autobiographical coming-of-age story and floored everyone […]
Graphic Novels & ComicsGraphic Memoirs

Drawing women into focus

Feature by Hilli Levin

The world of comics and graphic novels may hold stigma as a male-centric genre, but these four new books explore the pains of growing up, moving on and embracing the messy parts of life—all from the female point of view.

Cartoonist and writer Mimi Pond is best known for writing the very first episode of “The Simpsons,” but her foray into the world of graphic novels may quickly overshadow her career’s early years—perhaps deservedly so. In her fictionalized memoir, Over Easy, Pond reflects on the oft-misunderstood 1970s and her waitressing years at Mama’s Royal Café (referred to here as the Imperial Café), which served as a beacon for burgeoning punks and the last wave of bohemians in Oakland, California. Pond’s alter ego is Margaret, an art school dropout itching to supplement her education with some honest, blue-collar life experience. Cue -Lazlo, the messianic manager of the café, who offers her a spot among his mouthy, ragtag staff. The job is grueling, but she toughs it out and taps into a well of self-reliance, eventually making waitress and earning the nickname “Madge.” With casual prose and dreamy aqua watercolor, Pond gets to the heart of the restaurant’s curious allure: hilarious banter between staff and customers, cheap and hearty food, recreational drug use in the back office, the steady stream of staff hookups and hastily organized poetry nights. If the ’70s usually conjures up thoughts of disco, gold chains and general excess, then Pond offers a refreshingly different side of the story.


Illustration from Over Easy, © 2014 by Mimi Pond

LATE BLOOMER
From a different perspective on the coming-of-age tale, we move to the story of a 30-something’s struggle for identity. Anya Ulinich follows up her debut novel, Petropolis, with a text-heavy graphic work, Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel. After her marriage, “a 15-year-long war,” finally reaches its end, Lena Finkle finds herself attempting to make sense of sex and dating as a 37-year-old single mom in New York. What constitutes a flirty text message? Is it wrong to wear the same dress on every date? Can she have a one-night stand? These and other questions swirl in her head as she struggles to stay afloat in the world of online dating. Her trial by fire comes in her relationship with “the Orphan”—a seemingly modest craftsman with a secret inheritance he is loath to rely on. His easy detachment soon clashes with Lena’s desire for dependability and love. She finds herself nursing a year-long heartbreak, during which Ulinich, with equal parts poignant and comic effect, portrays Lena as a tiny, helpless duckling. With a Shteyngart-esque eye for humorously conveying the Russian immigrant experience, especially in her interspersed snapshot comics—“The Glorious People’s Sex Education” and “The USSR ’80s”—Ulinich captures a woman’s earnest search for self between two cultures.

MILLENNIAL ANGST
Similarly understated and a bit bleak is Michael Cho’s debut, Shoplifter (Pantheon, $19.95, 96 pages, ISBN 9780307911735). After getting a degree in English, Corrina Park moves to the big city with stars in her eyes, convinced she’s on track to chase her dream of writing highbrow literature. Instead, she lands a job at a soul-sucking ad agency where she’s been grinding out copy for the past five years. She still doesn’t have any friends outside of work, and it’s all fumbles on her nights out, so she mainly keeps company with her grumpy rescue cat. Her main thrill comes from the occasional bout of shoplifting at her nearest corner store—which is increasingly depressing in the context of Corrina’s self-conscious, kind-hearted demeanor. She’s toeing the line of resigning to this life, until she snaps. During a brainstorming meeting for a perfume aimed at preteens, she realizes the reliable paycheck isn’t worth it anymore, and this whole treading water routine—waiting for her big moment to wander by—isn’t going to work. With lovely two-tone illustrations throughout, this debut nails the feeling of millennial uncertainly and the quest for answers to those questions that arise on sleepless nights.


Illustration from Seconds, © 2014 by Bryan Lee O'Malley

A ROCK STAR’S RETURN
Bryan Lee O’Malley has been an absolute rock star in the comic world since his Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, stuffed to the gills with wit, whimsy and pop culture references, garnered cultish reverence after they debuted in 2004. Now, five years after the series conclusion and a big-budget film adaptation, O’Malley treads similar, yet more grounded territory with Seconds (Ballantine, $25, ISBN 9780345529374). Weighing in at 300-plus pages and with some of the most gorgeous color work in recent memory, Seconds is a titan standalone in the graphic world. Katie, a 29-year-old, scrappy, self-made chef and restaurateur, is preparing to open her very own restaurant. Her talent and charisma have earned her top marks in the city’s dining scene, and she’s the envy of her younger protégé, but her drive often serves as a distraction from her regrets and lost love. When exactly, did she take these wrong turns, and how did she end up having to face this version of reality? After a particularly terrible day unfolds, Katie discovers a single red mushroom that can alter the course of time, and, of course, all hell breaks loose. Katie’s type-A personality can’t handle the power, and she begins an obsessive pursuit of perfection. But the consequences start to creep in, and the restaurant soon becomes the home of a dark and threatening spirit. O’Malley fans won’t be disappointed with this existential fable; he successfully tackles the quarter-life crisis with just enough blunt honesty and self-deprecating wit, and there’s even a “Buffy” reference or two to keep things from getting too heavy.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The world of comics and graphic novels may hold stigma as a male-centric genre, but these four new books explore the pains of growing up, moving on and embracing the messy parts of life—all from the female point of view.
Graphic Novels & ComicsGraphic Memoirs

Dive into a great graphic

Feature by Hilli Levin

Fall is a busy season in the publishing world, which means plenty of new arrivals are hitting the shelves! For readers looking for a little change of pace—and a more visual reading experience—we've rounded up our favorite graphic novels and memoirs that will bring a little color into these increasingly gray days. 

ADVICE FROM YOUR BETTER SELF
From The New Yorker cartoonist and author of the graphic memoir Cancer Vixen comes this satirical send-up of the New York media world. Self-serving Ann Tenna runs a celebrity gossip site that would make writers at TMZ blush, but a fateful car crash on her birthday leaves her unconscious and clinging to life. In a Christmas Carol-style chain of events, Ann leaves her body and comes face-to-face with her higher self, who takes her on a reflective journey through her most cringe-worthy life choices. Marchetto's laugh-out-loud and out-there tale is filled to the brim with pop culture references and lush artwork, making this one cosmic trip worth taking.

THROUGH THE LENS OF CHILDHOOD 
French author Riad Sattouf chronicles his childhood as the son of a French mother and Syrian father in his playful yet brutally honest graphic memoir. Sattouf was adored and doted on by his father, an academic and firm believer in pan-Arabism and the importance of education for the Arab people. Years living in Gaddafi's Libya—where each citizen was guaranteed housing, but squatters frequently took claim of the Sattouf's various residences and a later stint in Assad's Syria—take a toll on the family's bright-eyed idealism. At first called a little angel for his flowing gold locks, Sattouf is later insulted for his "ugly yellow Jewish hair," and he must come to terms with his feelings of being an outsider in a part of the world his father so badly wants to make theirs.

SUPER STAN
It's almost impossible to have a conversation about the evolution of graphic storytelling without dropping Stan Lee's name at least a few times. One of the most influential creators in the comic world (Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men, to name a few) tells his own story in the unmistakably zippy style he's known for in his new autobiography. Starting from his childhood in a Depression-hit Manhattan, Lee chronicles his first meetings with collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, but his moments of pride are balanced by shocking, painful recollections of his personal losses and family struggles. For fans of the Marvel brand and the wide world of superheroes, this is a well-executed autobiography that should not be missed.

RACING TOWARD SHAMBALA
This innovative hybrid is a captivating tale that weaves sections of prose alongside pages of comic panels for an action-packed story. Set during World War I, this immersive read will satisfy fans of classic good vs. evil adventure stories. The globe-trotting action follows an underground group of explorers sworn to seek out and solve the world's greatest mysteries, and in this volume, the Guild must travel to the golden city of Shambala from Buddhist mythology. If you're a fan of Indiana Jones, then this book will satisfy your desire for a little nostalgic fun. 

CLOWNING AROUND
Peruvian-born and acclaimed author Daniel Alarcón is known for his gorgeously rendered prose that draws frequent comparisons to Steinbeck, Nabokov and Roberto Bolaño. In his first graphic novel, he expands upon his short story, first published in The New Yorker in 2003, which follows a young Peruvian journalist in the wake of his father's death. After discovering his father's secret second family at his funeral, Chino is sent on a strange, almost absurd reporting assignment: write a feature on Lima's street clowns. What follows is Chino's tender recollections of his early childhood, interspersed alongside his increasingly sad observations of the poor working clowns. Stark visuals from Sheila Alvarado make this forelorn, moving work of literary fiction come to vivid life. 

Fall is a busy season in the publishing world, which means plenty of new arrivals are hitting the shelves! For readers looking for a little change of pace—and a more visual reading experience—we've rounded up our favorite graphic novels and memoirs that will bring a little color into these increasingly gray days.
NonfictionParentingGraphic Novels & ComicsGraphic MemoirsFilmArt

A solution to the age-old conundrum

Feature by Keith Herrell

Father’s Day comes but once a year, and boy are we lucky for that. With ties going out of style thanks to tech billionaires (they’re all wearing hoodies now), the gift choices are slimmer than ever. Fortunately, as is so often the case, books can come to the rescue.

FOR THE SPORTS FAN
When it comes to sports, the “what-if” possibilities are endless. Mike Pesca has assembled 31 of them in Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History. His list might not match yours, but it’s still a fun exercise and a highly readable departure from traditional sports literature. Pesca, host of the Slate podcast “The Gist,” keeps his readers on their toes with a different author for each scenario, so an earnest “What If the National League Had the DH?” is followed by a whimsical “What If Nixon Had Been Good at Football?” (The verdict: still a president, but no Watergate.) Other authors bolster their arguments with charts (“What If Major League Baseball Had Started Testing for Steroids in 1991?”) or, in the case of “What If Nat ‘Sweetwater’ Clifton’s Pass Hadn’t Gone Awry?,” 38 footnotes. The contributors are a multitalented lot, including actor Jesse Eisenberg, radio host Robert Siegel and journalist/historian Louisa Thomas. The contributors are a multitalented lot but each one embraces the task with gusto, inspiring readers to come up with some “what-ifs” of their own.

FOR THE BIG READER
You probably know Michael Chabon as a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, but he’s also an acclaimed essayist. His first collection, Manhood for Amateurs (2009), was subtitled “The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.” This time around, with Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces, he’s produced seven essays, all dad-oriented. The centerpiece, “Little Man,” recounts a trip to Paris Fashion Week with his youngest and most individualistic child, Abe. (Chabon was on assignment for GQ, where the essay originally appeared.) The essay is not about finding common ground, as is often the case in such essays where father and son are poles apart, but rather Chabon’s happiness that his son has finally found “your people.” The remaining essays are shorter and peppered with humorous insights, particularly “Adventures in Euphemism,” which has Chabon trying to read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to his children without uttering a certain word. Chabon’s relationship with his own father, of course, does not go unexamined, and again he zigs where others zag, taking care not to be overly sentimental.

FOR THE MOVIE BUFF
A cute gopher popping out of his hole adorns the cover of Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story. This is ironic, because the makers of the film hated the last-minute addition of the animatronic gopher that bedeviled Bill Murray in the 1980 film. They saw it as an example of the Hollywood studio system destroying their masterwork. But gopher or no gopher, Caddyshack, a slobs-versus-snobs tale set at a country club golf course, became a cult classic, rife with quotable lines and fondly remembered scenes. Film critic Chris Nashawaty tells the behind-the-scenes story in an entertaining fashion, starting at the very beginning with the founding of the National Lampoon, which served as a springboard for Doug Kenney, who co-wrote the classic Animal House and co-wrote and produced Caddyshack. In fact, Nashawaty doesn’t start recounting the actual filming of the movie until well past halfway through the book. No worries though, as readers will enjoy the backstories of writing, casting and the cocaine-fueled shenanigans of Murray and his pals, including Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Kenney, the real star of the book if not the movie.

FOR THE COMIC-BOOK FAN
The genre of graphic literature has grown past just comic books and the newspaper funny pages, and Michael Kupperman, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and Marvel comics, is deadly serious in All the Answers. This black-and-white graphic memoir is perfect for dads who grew up reading comic books and are looking for something with a bit more weight to it. It tells the story of the author’s father, Joel Kupperman, who became famous as one of the stars of the 1940s and ’50s radio and television show “Quiz Kids.” The elder Kupperman subsequently became an author and professor of philosophy, but he retreated from public life as an adult. Spurred by his father’s diagnosis with dementia, Michael coaxes him into talking about his experiences in the public eye and how they shaped his life as an adult. In the process, father and son have some frank exchanges. The son learns how to be a better father as a result of the failings of his own dad, who was perfect in math, perhaps, but not so perfect in the challenges of marriage and family life. Kupperman’s simple, stark drawings add to the somber mood of the book and enhance readers’ understanding of its haunting story.

FOR THE JOKESTER
So Dad thinks he’s funny, eh? He likely has nothing on Tom Papa, whose Your Dad Stole My Rake: And Other Family Dilemmas is a collection of essays with laughs on every page. The aptly named Papa, a father and head writer for the radio variety show “Live From Here” (formerly known as “A Prairie Home Companion with Chris Thile”), has a one-liner for every family situation, from Facebook (“a class reunion every day”) to owning a cat (“like dating a supermodel”). The book is organized by topics (wives, grandparents and so on), so skip around if you like, or simply read straight through for an extended look at Papa’s twisted but ultimately sunny (well, no more than partly cloudy) vision of family life. If you’re lucky, it lines up with your own.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Father’s Day comes but once a year, and boy are we lucky for that. With ties going out of style thanks to tech billionaires (they’re all wearing hoodies now), the gift choices are slimmer than ever. Fortunately, as is so often the case, books can come to the rescue.

Graphic Novels & ComicsGraphic Memoirs

Draw me a story

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

We reach for graphic novels and memoirs because we treasure the experience of art plus story, of exploring a world of finely crafted illustrations that convey multitudes. Each of these four new comic books is a treat for the eye and balm for the brain, thanks to a heady mix of perspectives and representations of life in all its scary, funny, illuminating, weird, joyful glory.

Fans of Nicole J. Georges’ Lambda Award-winning graphic memoir, Calling Dr. Laura, will be thrilled she’s returned to form with Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home. The book opens with a pooch’s 15th birthday party, where the dog lunges at two children. Initially, it seems “bad dog” is an accurate moniker, but as Georges winds back through time, it’s clear there’s more to the story.

Teenage Georges adopted Beija as a gift for her then-boyfriend. When he left, the dog stayed, and Beija remains the author’s companion into adulthood. Their relationship is not without its (many) challenges: Beija is fearful and reactionary, and she gets in fights at the dog park. But then again, Georges chooses homes filled with noisy strangers and lets Beija off-leash at said park. Via flashbacks, Georges introduces her loving but neglectful mother and macho stepfather, and as loneliness and anger become the author’s constant cohorts, the impetus for dubious choices becomes clearer. Happily, as a young adult, Georges finds her queer feminist vegan identity, learns to practice self-expression through art and thus becomes a better pack leader for Beija.

Fetch does have the occasional crowded page and inelegant transition, which can make for a bumpy read. But overall, the art is wonderful, and the story is engaging and heartwarming. It’s a moving chronicle of triumph over difficult beginnings and the struggle to find people, a place and pets that feel like home.

From Fetch. © Nicole J. Georges. Reproduced by permission of HMH.

SURREALISM IN THE SKY
Julian Hanshaw’s Cloud Hotel is a beautifully rendered and engrossingly weird work of autobiographical fiction inspired by the UFO that Hanshaw and his family encountered when he was a boy in Hertfordshire, England. Hanshaw’s titular hotel, a colossal, light-beaming rectangle with lots of rooms inside, is a place for kids who have gone missing in the woods.

Remco is one of the lucky ones: Upon his return from his first journey to the sky, his beloved grandfather finds him in the woods. As pages turn and the hotel shifts and changes, Remco discovers he’s the only child who can move between the hotel and his regular life. Readers will wonder whether that’s a good thing as Hanshaw masterfully builds suspense and foreboding, prompting questions like: Where and when is the hotel? Who are the children? Is any of this real?

Curious readers who like a trippy, absorbing story with touching family moments and a wondrous depiction of another reality will enjoy Cloud Hotel. And fans of Hanshaw’s previous work—like Tim Ginger, which was short-listed for the British Comics Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize—will be ready to check right in.

DARK OBSESSION
History and mystery, horror and grief, ghosts and memories all collide in Idle Days, a darkly dramatic, occasionally explosive tale written by Thomas Desaulniers-Brousseau and illustrated by Simon Leclerc.

In Canada during World War II, Jerome is a military deserter hiding at his grandfather Maurice’s remote forest cabin. Jerome is angry about the war, restless in his isolation—and soon he becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to the people who lived in the cabin before his grandfather. Rumors of murder and suicide capture his attention as battlefield bloodshed haunts his dreams. He’s also mourning the recent death of his father and striving to elude capture, but “Wanted” posters and radio broadcasts ensure the war cannot be ignored.

Leclerc’s liberal use of black, red and orange evokes fiery warmth, while his skillfully drawn, violent tableaux convey the horror and fear in Jerome’s memory and imagination. Idle Days’ title plays on the aphorism, “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” and to be sure, such days build to Jerome’s reckoning with the past, acceptance of the present and a hint of what might lie in the future. It’s an absorbing amalgam of imagery and story that’s far from wordy, as illustration-only pages leave many aspects of the story open to readers’ imaginations. It’s scary stuff.

MOVING MADCAPPERY
About Betty’s Boob by Vero Cazot and Julie Rocheleau is a nearly wordless sequential narrative, but Betty’s voice surges off the page. When we first meet Betty, she howls with post-op fear and rage as she demands to be given back her just-removed left breast. She attempts to return to life as usual, gift-boxed synthetic breast in hand, but is frustrated at every turn—by a boss who insists all employees have two breasts (it’s in the contract!), a boyfriend who rejects her and a woman who tries to bite the apple that serves as a poignant yet functional prosthetic. This surreal story has cleverness and wit sprinkled throughout, like the store that sells “luxury breasts since 1973,” some of which cost “8008” euros. Ultimately, Betty strikes out on her own, and through a sequence of delightfully wild events featuring dancing, costumes, wigs and a dazzling array of pasties, she finds acceptance and a new identity within a boisterous burlesque troupe.

The artwork is vibrant and kinetic, and its depiction of goings-on both fantastical and reality-bound is detailed and eminently appealing. About Betty’s Boob is an inspiring, entertaining story of pain and grief transformed into joyful self-acceptance—societal expectations be damned.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

We reach for graphic novels and memoirs because we treasure the experience of art plus story, of exploring a world of finely crafted illustrations that convey multitudes. Each of these four new comic books is a treat for the eye and balm for the brain, thanks to a heady mix of perspectives and representations of life in all its scary, funny, illuminating, weird, joyful glory.

NonfictionGraphic Memoirs

Graphic memoirs: It all comes flooding back

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Readers who love coming-of-age tales will welcome these two graphic memoirs, both of which poignantly explore the ways childhood experiences reverberate through our lives. In these pages, there is fun and frolicking, confusion and sorrow—the bittersweet nature of life, finely drawn.

In They Called Us Enemy, pop culture icon and social activist George Takei harks back to his childhood, several years of which were spent in internment camps during World War II. He was 4 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and 120,000 Japanese Americans were subsequently removed from their homes and sent to prison camps along the West Coast.

Takei and co-writers Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott capture the terror, fear and frustration of those years, and Harmony Becker’s art masterfully conveys the harsh violence of warplanes and bombs, as well as the sweet sadness of kids playing within barbed-wire fences.

They Called Us Enemy is an important read for anyone who wants to learn the full truth of our country’s history of institutionalized racism and gain greater context for our present. A tribute to Takei’s parents, this meditation on citizenship and community will educate, challenge and inspire.

Set in 1980s Massachusetts, King of King Court is also a trip down a bumpy memory lane, one that winds through Travis Dandro’s life from age 6 to 16 and contemplates the ways in which love, anger and loneliness collide. Dandro’s art is expressive, his storylines often impressionistic.

Kinetic dream sequences feel whimsical yet enlightening, dark shadows reveal even as they conceal, and scenes of kids making mischief are unquestionably cute. Thanks to the adults who loomed large in young Dandro’s world, such contrasts (and confusion) were not uncommon, especially when it came to his biological dad, Dave. He’s macho, mustachioed, addicted to drugs and still appealing to Dandro’s mom.

Readers will sympathize when teen Dandro feels beleaguered and angry at adults’ ill-advised choices, and they’ll appreciate grown-up Dandro’s empathy. Dedicated to his mother, this moving book is a happy ending to their story—and perhaps a beginning, too.

Readers who love coming-of-age tales will welcome these two graphic memoirs, both of which poignantly explore the ways childhood experiences reverberate through our lives. In these pages, there is fun and frolicking, confusion and sorrow—the bittersweet nature of life, finely drawn.

NonfictionSocial SciencePhotographyGraphic Memoirs

Gift books: For resisters & persisters

Feature by Alice Cary

Four books celebrate our friends who fight for justice, the right to love, the power to tell their own stories and the possibility of a better future. They’re also the perfect gift for a budding ally who wishes to learn more.

Activist by KK Ottesen
One can’t help but feel inspired by the over 40 interviews and black-and-white portraits compiled in Activist: Portraits of Courage, written and photographed by KK Ottesen, a Washington Post contributor and author of a similarly styled book, Great Americans. Ottesen’s powerful photographs immediately draw readers in, adding to the intimacy of these highly readable first-person interviews, all introduced by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

In content, layout and style, this is an engrossing, inviting volume, one that spotlights a wide range of figures, from age 21 to 94. There are well-known personalities like John Lewis, Ralph Nader, Angela Davis, Billie Jean King, Bernie Sanders and Marian Wright Edelman. Then there are relative newcomers to the scene, such as Jayna Zweiman, co-founder of the 2016 Pussycat Project; Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian American co-chair of the 2017 Women's March; and transgender actor Nicole Maines, the anonymous plaintiff in a Maine Supreme Judicial Court regarding gender identity and bathroom use in schools. Maines speaks of knowing from an early age, “I didn’t feel the need to hide who I was. Nobody else had to, so why should I?”

Seeing Gender by Iris Gottlieb
After reading last year’s Seeing Science and now Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression, I’ve become an incurable Iris Gottlieb fan. No matter what the topic, this graphic artist has a singular knack for presenting an imaginative array of art and text in an informative, exciting way.

Early on, this new book features a helpful spread of 24 gender terms, including agender, cisgender, gender dysphoria and intersex. “All of us are shapeshifters,” Gottlieb explains. In straightforward, vibrantly illustrated prose that is neither politicized nor reactionary, Gottlieb further explores these terms, while also discussing such varied topics as gender etiquette, gender biology, sex verification in sports, Frida Kahlo, Laverne Cox, Prince, gender violence, Stonewall, #MeToo and much, much more. Gottleib also includes her own story, noting that “she” is her pronoun of choice for the time being, that she identifies as a boy (“for now”), is asexual, has struggled with anorexia and in 2018 had both breasts removed, a surgical transformation she bravely describes with a series of “after” photos.

No matter your age or inclination, Seeing Gender presents an extraordinarily helpful discussion in a way that’s both personal and powerful. As Gottlieb concludes, “The process of learning about gender is never finished.”

Drawing Power edited by Diane Noomin
Many books have been born from the #MeToo movement, but perhaps none so comprehensively resonant as Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival. In vastly divergent styles, 63 female cartoonists—of different races, ages, nationalities and sexual orientations—tell their immensely varied, poignant stories here, demonstrating the power of their medium.

Emil Ferris (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters) describes how she found her way back to cartoons decades after being sexually brutalized by a relative while watching a Mr. Magoo special on TV. As a result, her beloved cartoons felt suddenly poisoned, and for years she turned instead to fine art and illustrating. Finally, while working on the aforementioned graphic novel, Ferris noticed that she “found herself using a cartoonier style when I needed to talk about difficult things . . . especially those revelatory moments when a character confronts abuse, fear and shame.”

As Drawing Power so strikingly proves, cartoons do indeed provide the perfect forum for sharing these intensely intimate, painful stories. And editor Diane Noomin offers an important distinction, noting, “The artists in this collection present themselves not as victims but rather as truth tellers, shining light on the dirty secrets of abusers.”

How to Cure a Ghost by Fariha Róisín
As an Australian Canadian based in Brooklyn, Fariha Róisín knows all too well how tricky it is trying to navigate the world as a queer Muslim femme. “i was born to this sticky mess, this stark confusion.” she writes in How to Cure a Ghost, her powerful biographical collection of 50 poems, beautifully complemented by abstract illustrations from Monica Ramos.

In a sensual, evocative style reminiscent of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, Róisín acknowledges, “i am tied to this skin, although I may not always understand it.” She chronicles her father’s challenges as an immigrant and her mother’s struggles as a Muslim woman with mental illness. Róisín remembers being 7 and briefly taking a “white name”—Felicity Hanson—to try to gain acceptance from a neighbor. She describes watching 9/11 unfold on television from her home in Sydney, Australia, saying that as a Muslim, “this world was not built for us.” Her virginity was stolen by a man who got her pregnant, telling her “it’s not a big deal.”

Despite everything, Róisín writes of hope, boldly declaring, “i am better now. i gave birth to myself, a new beginning, a robust cycle. i rewrote the scriptures of my mother’s pasts, and her mother’s pasts. i am in the throes of survival, i am lived. i am living. it’s astonishing.”

Four books celebrate our friends who fight for justice, the right to love, the power to tell their own stories and the possibility of a better future.
Science Fiction & FantasyYA NonfictionYAGraphic Novels & ComicsGraphic Memoirs

Draw us in: Images and prose entwine to create distinct atmospheres

Feature by Eric A. Ponce

Sometimes a story can be told solely through prose, but these two graphics make it clear that some stories need more than just powerful words. Addressing themes of death, grieving, angst and longing, these books find that love can survive loss, and that the world is perfused with wonder.

Tyler Feder confronts loss with a gentle smile in Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir. No stone is left unturned as Feder recounts her mother’s cancer diagnosis and reflects on her own ever-present grieving process. Feder walks us through her journey in hilarious, moving detail, and the illustrations enable us to experience her pain even more deeply.

When Feder and her sisters go to the mall to get “black mourning clothes,” they stumble into Forever 21, where 2000s-era neon dresses are comically lurid against their sullen faces. Feder jokes lovingly about this experience. She also shares insights into the grieving process that recall Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, as when she refuses to let anyone clean out her mother’s closet or when she admits to feeling like her mom is “just on a long trip somewhere far away.”

While Feder’s experience is uniquely Jewish American, including kriah ribbons and a shiva, her memoir looks beyond culturally specific ideas about death to face loss and grief on a personal level. With a mix of sadness, compassion and joy, Feder tells a touching story for anyone who has lost someone—or really, for anyone who loves someone.

Borja González’s A Gift for a Ghost is the ensorcelling, strange yet familiar tale of the intertwined fates of a 19th-century girl who longs to be a horror-poet and a 21st-century high school punk band. The story and images are reminiscent of something Kurt Cobain wrote about the Raincoats, another amateurish band: “Rather than listening to them, I feel like I’m listening in on them. We’re together in the same old house and I have to be completely still, or they will hear my spying from above, and if I get caught, everything will be ruined.” The novel creates a similar effect: The story unfolds slowly and endearingly, and you find yourself drawn in to its air of mystery and magic. 

As Teresa prepares for her poetry debut, and as bandmates Gloria, Laura and Cristina try their hands at songwriting, the story builds, with anxiety rising in all of their lives. As the four girls struggle to decide which sides of themselves to embrace, González’s artwork can be both spare and hyperfloral. We begin to wonder who the girls will become and what brought them all together in the first place. Once (some of) these questions are resolved and the story reaches its end, you can’t help but feel that you missed something, but that feeling is actually just a desire to read the book all over again.

Addressing themes of death, grieving, angst and longing, two new graphics find that love can survive loss, and that the world is perfused with wonder.
NonfictionTrue CrimeGraphic Memoirs

The sharp lines of storytelling

Feature by Matthew Jackson

For readers who enjoy immersing themselves in memoirs and true crime, the comic book format offers even more to devour.

In a world saturated with superhero media, it bears repeating that comic books are a medium, not a genre. There’s nothing wrong with capes and tights and giant robots, of course, but to reduce the wide world of comics to such a narrow view does a disservice to the medium’s vast possibilities. Through tales of darkness, recovery and self-discovery, three towering works of graphic nonfiction reveal the full breadth of comic books’ expressive power.

In Happiness Will Follow, longtime superhero comics fixture Mike Hawthorne turns the full force of his talents on his own struggle to understand where he comes from and how he grew into the man and artist he is now. This stunning graphic memoir begins with an old shoe in a doorway, a sign to Hawthorne’s Puerto Rican mother that a curse is upon them, and then catapults through years of poverty, violence and psychological and physical trauma, as Hawthorne comes to grips with a heritage from which he feels removed.

Hawthorne’s narration is candid, raw and precise, but the memoir soars on the strength of his art as he zooms out to offer us a sense of isolation amid the crush of New York City, then zooms back in to depict haunting, bold close-ups of the key figures in his life. Chief among those figures is his mother; their relationship roots the book in a powerful, unflinching exploration of what it feels like to anchor yourself to another person, especially when that person is a harmful presence in your life. As Hawthorne takes us through the past and present, the cultural and personal, the painful and beautiful, he tells his story with empathy and vulnerability, and that makes Happiness Will Follow an essential graphic memoir.

Coming-out narratives are too often depicted in popular culture as a linear decision-making process followed by a single crystallizing moment when all becomes clear and a pure sense of self is achieved. But this is definitely not always the case. Coming-out journeys are just as often bumpy, messy and full of false starts, as British artist Eleanor Crewes reminds us through her beautifully rendered, endlessly witty graphic storytelling in The Times I Knew I Was Gay.

Drawing on memories from childhood, early adulthood and beyond, Crewes tells the story of her own journey to coming out fully and for good. Her memoir defies the conventional forms of graphic storytelling; there are no panel borders here, no defining boundaries to keep Crewes confined to a certain time or place at any given moment. Sometimes her gorgeous pencil drawings pause the narrative altogether so she can break the fourth wall and reflect on the tale as she’s telling it.

The Times I Knew I Was Gay began as a short zine, and that DIY ethos is still present in these pages, reminding us that our most personal stories are often best told in the simplest and most direct way. There’s an elegance to this simplicity that makes it feel like a friend is opening up to you as you read, creating an intimate connection between book and reader.

Maids
From Maids by Katie Skelly. Used with permission from Fantagraphics.

Of course, graphic nonfiction isn’t limited to memoirs. Sometimes the comics medium is also the perfect vehicle for a stylized retelling of a true crime story, as Brooklyn-based cartoonist Katie Skelly proves with her dazzling Maids.

Using a simple grid layout that she manipulates to great effect, and with art that blends Eastern and Western styles, Skelly tells the story of the infamous Papin sisters, who worked as maids for a wealthy French family until they murdered their employer’s wife and daughter in 1933. The story of Léa and Christine Papin has been told many times before, but never quite like this. Maids draws striking power from the way Skelly fully embraces the potential of her format.

The narrative unfolds slowly and suspensefully, giving ample space to build a visually and emotionally symbiotic relationship between the two sisters. The way they seem to float through the panels together, moving through the world in a way the other characters do not, contributes to a growing sense of dread. Even if you know this story intimately, you’ll be itching to know what happens next. That Maids pulls off this particular trick is a testament to both Skelly’s talent and to the power of graphic narratives.

For readers who enjoy immersing themselves in memoirs and true crime, the comic book format offers even more to devour.
NonfictionMemoirGraphic Memoirs

The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Review by Alice Cary

A new graphic memoir from Alison Bechdel is always a treat, and The Secret to Superhuman Strength is no exception. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006), which concentrated on Bechdel’s father, became not only a bestseller but also a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. The subsequent Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012) was also a bestselling hit. The long wait for Bechdel’s third book—and the first one to be published in full color—is now over, and this time her long-standing obsession with exercise is in the crosshairs of her literary lens.

“My bookish exterior perhaps belies it,” she writes, “but I’m a bit of an exercise freak.” She immediately adds, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ‘good at sports.’ I’m not a ‘jock.’ That’s a whole different ball game, and not my subject here.” Instead, she takes readers on a very personal journey—divided into decades, beginning with her birth in 1960—that showcases America’s many fitness crazes over the years.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Alison Bechdel reveals the surprisingly physical process of creating her illustrations.

Bechdel’s early fascination with exercise was sparked by Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads in comic books. These ads made her realize she was “a textbook weakling” and led her on a lifelong quest for strength. “It’s a world gone mad!” she observes about the current state of working out. “Pacifists paying for boot camp! Feminists learning to pole dance! Geeks flipping tractor tires! And the trends keep coming!”

Don’t be fooled, however. The Secret to Superhuman Strength is much more than simply a fab, fit, fun retrospective. With her trademark self-deprecation and deliciously dark humor, Bechdel takes a thought-provoking look at her gradual realization that she’s gay, as well as at her search for transcendence as she ages and faces the specter of her own mortality. While exploring these themes, she devotes scenes to literary and philosophical heroes who may at first seem like unlikely exercise gurus: Jack Kerouac, Margaret Singer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and more. Rest assured, in Bechdel’s talented hands, such commentary works beautifully, immensely enriching the book.

Every page yields a variety of delights. There’s the poignancy of a full-page depiction of her last walk in the woods with her beloved, complicated father in late 1979, just months before his death. There’s the surprise of peppered-in fun facts. (Ralph Waldo Emerson was so grief-stricken a year after his first wife’s death that he opened her coffin.) And there’s the simple, repeated joy of reading a really great line. After a karate class in the 1980s, Bechdel guzzles a Budweiser and says, “There was no constant, namby-pamby suckling of water bottles in those days.”

The Secret to Superhuman Strength is the liveliest literary workout you can get. Bechdel’s unique combination of personal narrative, the search for higher meaning and nonstop comic ingenuity will leave you pumped up and smiling.

Alison Bechdel’s unique combination of personal narrative, the search for higher meaning and nonstop comic ingenuity will leave you pumped up and smiling.
NonfictionMemoirGraphic Memoirs

Commute

Review by Catherine Hollis

With its deceptively simple line drawings, Erin Williams’ Commute illustrates the numerous ways she (and many women) negotiate the presence of sexual threat on a daily basis. Some of these encounters might seem mundane—such as the man who continuously stares at her while sitting too close on the train—but their impact is real. In an otherwise empty train car, such a man is a threat; and while women instinctively know this, men need to learn that this can be a daily experience. Among other things Commute does well, it’s a good education for men about the lived experience of women.

Commute is a graphic (in both senses of the word) memoir. Williams focuses the book on one regular day in her life, the life of a working mom: her 5 a.m. alarm, the commute into Manhattan, the work day, her commute home and time with her baby. The illustrations can be lively and humorous at one moment and shattering the next. They show, in a way words can’t, how creepy it can feel to be stared at. Or how the memories of a teenage sexual assault might play back each and every day, as routine as a morning cup of tea, but far more disturbing.

Through the use of flashbacks, Williams reviews her sexual history, both the assaults and the more ambiguous encounters. Some of the most arresting moments in this memoir concern Williams’ past use of alcohol to pursue bodily disassociation. Her subtle and devastating illustrations reveal the link between sexual assault and alcoholism in visceral detail, and the graphic-memoir format makes these issues accessible to a broad range of readers.

Williams asks hard questions about shame, compliance and desire, both in her own life and in the larger culture. Her story, she says, is the “mundane tragedy of every woman you know.” By sharing it, she adds an eloquent voice to the chorus of stories testifying to the daily experiences of women under patriarchy. Commute is a book that really should be read by everyone.

With its deceptively simple line drawings, Erin Williams’ Commute illustrates the numerous ways she (and many women) negotiate the presence of sexual threat on a daily basis. Some of these encounters might seem mundane—such as the man who continuously stares at her while sitting too close on the train—but their impact is real. In an […]
Graphic Memoirs

Looking at the past through pictures

Review by Becky Ohlsen

Like a blend of Persepolis and A Christmas Carol, Parsua Bashi's graphic memoir of growing up in Iran, Nylon Road, takes a playful tone but covers some seriously dark material along the way.

Bashi was born in Tehran in 1966 and moved to Switzerland in 2004. Her memoir is narrated from Switzerland in the present day, but the story is triggered by a little girl she suddenly sees one day in her kitchen. The little girl, it turns out, is Bashi herself as a child. Once she figures this out, she suddenly starts running into previous versions of herself all over the place, and interacts with each of them in an effort to reconcile various elements of her difficult past. It's a neat trick that lends itself well to the graphic novel treatment: we get to see Bashi as she is now talking with Bashi at 21, or at 35. In one scene, for example, one of her more argumentative former selves appears at her side during a dinner party, and Bashi locks herself into the bathroom to hash things out with her.

Some of her former selves are more fun to run into than others. Bashi avoids herself at 29, for example. At that age she was a young mother whose 5-year-old daughter had been taken away in court because Bashi divorced her husband. Under Iranian law at the time, a woman who asked for divorce gave up all custody rights. A straight re-creation of the event might seem overwrought, but Bashi's technique makes even such heartbreaking scenes light enough not to drag the story down.

The drawing is similarly light and fluid, not weighed down by excessive detail but effective at telegraphing ideas that would be hard to express in words. Illustrating the difficulty of moving to a country where no one speaks your language, she draws a shivering girl standing in a snowstorm, holding a tiny umbrella labeled "my knowledge of foreign languages," between a sunny gazebo labeled "Farsi" and a locked-and-guarded brick fortress labeled "Deutsch." It's funny and inventive, and you know exactly what she's getting at. Bashi's style, in other words, takes a comlicated, difficult story and makes it improbably easy to relate to.

Becky Ohlsen writes from Portland, Oregon.

Like a blend of Persepolis and A Christmas Carol, Parsua Bashi's graphic memoir of growing up in Iran, Nylon Road, takes a playful tone but covers some seriously dark material along the way. Bashi was born in Tehran in 1966 and moved to Switzerland in 2004. Her memoir is narrated from Switzerland in the present […]
Graphic Memoirs

David Small

Interview by Becky Ohlsen

Reached at his home in Menden, in the southwest corner of the state, David Small says, “It’s a gray day in Michigan.” Gray seems appropriate for the conversation; somehow, discussing Stitches, Small’s grim, deeply affecting graphic memoir, in bright sunshine would feel wrong.

The book describes Small’s gothic-horror childhood, his weird, remote parents and deranged grandmother and the catastrophe that shaped his young life. As a boy, Small had sinus problems; his father, a radiologist, treated him with X-rays, state of the art at the time. When David developed a lump on his neck, no one seemed worried. A doctor friend diagnosed him with a cyst at age 11. At age 14, his parents finally took him to get the cyst removed. He underwent not one but two surgeries and woke up missing half his vocal cords, unable to speak. No one told him he had cancer— no one told him anything.

An acclaimed illustrator of children’s books, Small says his early attempts to write his memoir as prose got him nowhere. He’d been having bad dreams and knew he had to write something, but he couldn’t dredge up the memories.

“When I started making it a graphic [memoir], it started coming back,” he says. He worked “by identifying one object in the room and then, in my mind’s eye, making the camera pan around the room.” The first image that came back to him in this way is also the scariest scene in the book: six-year-old David wanders through hospital corridors at night, waiting for his father to finish work. He stumbles into the pathology department where, on an eye-level shelf, he sees a tiny, shriveled human form preserved in a jar, little hands cradling its enormous head. It looks furious and sad, just like him. Then it looks at him, and he flees, but the creature haunts him. “I think I identified with him somehow,” Small says, “that angry little face.”

Despite the difficulty of the material, he says, the memoir process was rewarding: “I feel like a new man, like a cinderblock’s been lifted off my neck.”

One thing he didn’t have to worry about was how his parents might react. “My mother and father are dead, so I don’t know what they would’ve thought,” he says. “I can only guess. My editor asked me, ‘What would your mother have thought about this book?’ And I said, well, she probably would never have spoken to me again. And there was a pause. And then he and I spoke at the same time and said, oh well, that wouldn’t have been anything new!”

About a year ago, he says, his editor called him in a panic. “Have you seen the New York Times today?” he asked. “Go online and read the front page and then call me back.” Small did, and immediately saw a story about Margaret Seltzer, whose sister had just denounced her gangland memoir as a fabrication. His editor said, “David, I know this has nothing to do with you, but is there anybody left who might remember these events and contradict what you’re saying?”

“I don’t think so,” Small replied. “I do have this brother . . . I don’t talk to him much.”

“You have to send him the book,” said the editor.

“I can’t, it’s not even done!” Small protested, but in the end he sent his brother the book. After a few days, he says, “I called him up with much heart-pounding and said, what did you think of the book?”

There was a long pause. “And then, in his sepulchral tones—he sounds like Richard Nixon—he said, ‘David, your book blew me away. It was like a snapshot of my youth.’ He asked me if he could show it to his therapist. It was just amazing.”

After that, his brother visited. “We laughed and cried and drank and talked and reminisced,” Small said. “After 30 years, I have my brother back. If nothing else happens with this book, it’ll be worth it just for that.”

Small’s drawing in Stitches is both roomy and precise, with lots of open space in and around the panels but an intensity of focus—especially on facial expressions—that feels almost claustrophobic. Often, panels zoom in on an angry frown, a narrowed eye, a kitchen cupboard slammed shut. One two-page spread shows a close-up of David seeing his stitches for the first time, opposite three dizzyingly abstract details of the gash. Turn the page and the cut is even more abstract, just a series of lines over shadow.

It’s also a loud book. David’s brother is constantly banging on drums, his mother bashes around in the kitchen, his father peels out in the car. (Meanwhile, of course, David is silent, first by choice and later against his will.) Small is deft with angle, as in the scenes drawn from a hospital-bed’s-eye-view that force the reader into David’s position, helpless and vulnerable. Small describes his drawing style as cinematic.

“I’m sort of glad I didn’t know anything about comics to begin with,” he says. “I took my own approach, which came straight out of cinema.”

In the acknowledgements, Small thanks “Dr. Harold Davidson for pulling me to my feet and placing me on the road to the examined life.” Davidson appears midway through the book as a therapist who looks like a rabbit with a pocketwatch, part Donnie Darko, part Alice in Wonderland.

“He was an unusual analyst,” Small says. “He let me stay at his family’s house, for example. I’d called him at 2:00 in the morning just terrified that my mother was going to come into my room and shoot my head off. So he let me spend the night on the couch in his home office.”

“I had no conception of how to be in the world,” Small continues. “It was like being raised by alcoholics. He really cared for me and took extra care with me.” Davidson’s philosophy was that “in order to really effect anything close to a cure you have to really love your patients,”

Small says. “If you’ve been raised by an unloving mother it leaves a hole in your heart, and you just learn to live with it. I can’t imagine what would’ve happened to me. . . . I’m so thankful to him. I feel really lucky. I’ve kept in touch with him all these years.”

Small illustrates children’s books written by his wife, Sarah Stewart, but they work in separate phases. “We like each other too much to collaborate,” he says. “We come at the world from two points of view. She’s a much more optimistic person than I am. My poetry is the poetry of slagheaps and ironworks.”

Small says if there are hints of his troubled childhood in the children’s books he has written and illustrated (Imogene’s Antlers, Hoover’s Bride, Paper John), they only appear in subtext. “It’s all very hidden,” he says. “When you’re working for children, you’ve got to put some restraints on. Doing the graphic memoir was a big relief, to just be able to say and draw whatever I wanted.”

Small is currently working on more children’s picture books. “I don’t know what the next graphic will be,” he says. “I hope there will be one. It was such a great experience— I guess it will take another story as compelling to me.”

Becky Ohlsen writes from Portland, Oregon.

Reached at his home in Menden, in the southwest corner of the state, David Small says, “It’s a gray day in Michigan.” Gray seems appropriate for the conversation; somehow, discussing Stitches, Small’s grim, deeply affecting graphic memoir, in bright sunshine would feel wrong. The book describes Small’s gothic-horror childhood, his weird, remote parents and deranged […]

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