Tag: graphic memoir

Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ko Hyung-Ju, and Ryan Estrada

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“But you can learn a lot about history by figuring out what people wanted to hide.”
― Kim Hyun Sook, Banned Book Club

I read Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada and illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju right before Banned Book Week 2023 began. This week celebrates the freedom to read and the opposition to censorship. Banned Book Club couldn’t have been a more appropriate book to start off this year’s Banned Book Week. To boil it down, this book tells the story of a group of students who form a book club that reads banned books during the reign of South Korea’s Fifth Republic. They put their lives and the lives of their family and friends in danger in order to read censored and banned books, amongst other forms of protest.

In 1983, Kim Hyun Sook was finally able to convince her mother to let her go to college. She was beyond excited to start college, to expand her world, and to study Western Literature. Kim was ready for the break of working in her family’s restaurant. She couldn’t have known that her literature class would send her down a road that she never saw coming; it would be a massive turning point that would alter her life in a way she couldn’t imagine.

Kim’s decision to go to college happened in the midst of the South Korea’s Fifth Republic. This military regime found its way to power through torture, censorship, and the murder of protestors. When Kim started school, she was met with a wall of protestors hurling insults and molotov cocktails. Not interested in getting involved, she throws herself into her books. After meeting the editor of the school newspaper who invites her to join his book club, she is shocked to see that the group is actually an underground book club reading banned and illicit literature that the military regime has forbidden. Unsure of what to do, but wanting to read these books, Kim stays in the club and finds herself drawn into the dangerous activities that the other members are involved in. Soon she will be swept up in a torrent of fear and violence as the people of power close ranks on the protestors.

“Do they ban books because they see danger in their authors, or because they see themselves in their villains?”
― Kim Hyun Sook, Banned Book Club

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall

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“History written by the victors always erases the resistance. And those of us who live in the wake/ruins learn that we’re inferior and needed to be conquered and enslaved. This is the afterlife of slavery that the victors need us to inhabit. One in which we have always already lost and have accepted our fate a handed to us.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

Over the last couple months, I have been actively searching for information about hidden histories: the histories of people, places, objects hidden just below the surface that people don’t think about (or know about). These hidden histories can also be the histories of a people that weren’t deemed to be known by the winners of a conflict. During my latest deep dive, I found Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. Rebecca Hall has, with the help of illustrator Hugo Martínez and lettered by Sarula Bao, written about the lives of enslaved black women warriors. This is a mix between a graphic novel and memoir, as Rebecca acknowledges during her flashbacks that she doesn’t know the full truth, so she has taken some liberties in discussing what actually happened.

During this book, Rebecca is a scholar working on her dissertation to find the truth about the black women warriors involved in slave revolts. Her research takes her across the globe as she works to fill in the holes in their histories. She is the granddaughter of slaves and has forever been haunted by their history and legacy. Wanting to know more about enslaved women, Rebecca heads to archives, courts, businesses, museums, and libraries to dig up their histories. She finds deteriorating correspondence, slave ship captain’s logs, old court records, and forensic reports/evidence that lead her to the truth of these women warriors.

Wake is illustrated gorgeously/hauntingly in black and white, pushing the boundaries of the history of these black women, while showcasing what Rebecca finds in the historical records and then her reconstruction of the past when no records can be found. In addition to the look at the past, Rebecca also shows how her own life is impacted by her research into slavery through her work as an attorney and a historian.

“We reach the final stage of healing from trauma when we integrate the past into who we are. It becomes a part of us that we acknowledge and provides understanding of our world […] Our memories must be longer than our lifetimes.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

“When we go back and retrieve our past, our legacy of resistance through impossible odds, our way out of no way, we redress the void of origin that would erase us. We empower and bring joy to our present. This is ancestry in progress, and it is our superpower.”
― Rebecca Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth: an auto-bio-graphic-novel by Zoe Thorogood

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TW for this book: suicidal ideation

“that’s the problem with flirting with the idea of something, sometimes you fall in”
― Zoe Thorogood, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth

Zoe Thorogood’s 2022 graphic novel, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, destroyed me. It was messy and confusing and utterly desperate for help. Basically, it was perfect and fit what Zoe wrote it to be: an auto-bio-graphic-novel about her life as it falls apart.

Over a six month period, Zoe Thorogood tries to put her life back together even when the universe, and her own mind, conspires to destroy her. Zoe doesn’t have a choice about whether or not she wants to create. She must create something in order to survive.

This isn’t a light read. It’s destructive and heavy. Zoe writes about her depression and suicidal ideation, alongside other negative emotions. Her art is sharp and cuts you to the quick as she introduces readers to her other selves (animal-like and people-like). Zoe pulls in the people that she interacted with during those six months and how they impact her story and journey of survival. Her story takes place during the isolation of the pandemic, which in turn informs even more of her decisions. This graphic novel/memoir hit me right in the chest. Zoe is incredibly honest about her depression. She isn’t afraid to share how it affects her life and, in turn, her relationships with others. While her words pick you apart, the artwork isn’t idle, instead it intrigues you and pulls you in. She uses different drawing styles and colors depending on what the focus is. It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth may be messy, but it’s a relatable mess that I’m glad I stumbled on.

Hummingbird Heart by Travis Dandro

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Trigger warning: suicide, drug addiction, cancer, and death

Travis Dandro illustrates his teenage confusion during family tragedy in his graphic memoir, Hummingbird Heart. This graphic memoir was published in 2022 by Drawn and Quarterly. His first graphic novel,  King of King Court, was published in 2019 and won the Lynd Ward Prize for graphic novel of the year.

Hummingbird Heart chronicles Dandro’s life from right before he learned about his grandmother’s illness to when he moved away for college. This was a messy time in Dandro’s life. His drug-addicted father had just passed away by suicide. Still processing his death, Dandro is shocked to learn that his grandmother has cancer. While in high school, he moves in with his grandmother to be her caretaker. These changes takes place all while Dandro is a teenager. This doesn’t stop him from doing typical teenager things though: shoplifting, pranking, dating, and going on drives with his friends through town. After all, he’s a teenage boy trying to figure out his place.

One Halloween night, Dandro and two of his friends hatch a prank on one of their drives that backfires badly. Two of the boys bear the brunt of the punishment, while the other is left dealing with the fallout. This prank forces Dandro to realize that he needs to grow up. He can’t keep acting like a child. He needs to take responsibility and figure out his future. Dandro and his friends are sure to grow apart the older they get, especially when they move away. Throughout this memoir, Dandro examines the difficulties that teenagers go through as they fight for independence. His writing and drawings highlight the resiliency and his ability to find a way through all the traumas that were happening in his family.

This graphic memoir tugged at my heart through its incredibly detailed illustrations. His drawings switch from intricate drawings of random objects or animals to intensely emotional confrontations between characters. Pages of his work are densely drawn only to be abruptly interrupted by pages of minimal drawing. It keeps readers on the edge of their seats, similar to how Dandro felt during that difficult time in his life.

It Won’t Always Be Like This: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib

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Malaka Gharib has been on my radar ever since I saw her debut graphic memoir, I Was Their American Dream, on the shelves at the library. In that book, she discusses being first-generation Filipino Egyptian American. Three years later, she published It Won’t Always Be Like This, which talks about her summers in the Middle East visiting family.  Graphic memoirs are one of my favorite forms of nonfiction, specifically when authors write about their childhoods and their families growing up. Watching the authors come to realizations about their lives is riveting, yet also heartbreaking. I was excited to start It Won’t Always be Like This to see what Malaka Gharib had to say.

Malaka Gharib’s childhood was a bit rocky. Her mother is Filipino and her father Egyptian making Malaka Filipino Egyptian American, plus first generation! Her parents divorced when she was young. Her father eventually left the United States and moved back to Egypt. Sha always thought that her father would eventually come back to the States, but every time she visited, he seemed to have settled into his new life even more.

Her annual summer vacation trip to Egypt when she was nine changed everything. On this trip, her father announced that he had remarried. Malaka now has to navigate her space in her father’s new family. She spends the next fifteen years traveling back to Egypt to visit her father and his growing family. Those years are rough. She is navigating adolescence both in America and in a country where she doesn’t fully understand the religion, language, or culture. She is constantly reevaluating how she fits into her father’s new life. Malaka doesn’t look anything like her siblings (they are fair-haired) and she sticks out. The longer she spends with them, the more Malaka starts to adapt. She opens up to new experiences, new food, new music, and starts to see that Hala, her new stepmother, isn’t actually that different as she thought. She’s actually a bit like Malaka. Seeing Malaka’s childhood memories expressed through an adult lens shows how powerful our memories are in helping form ourselves and our relationships with other. It is all messy and complicated, yet necessary.

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

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“Every time I struggled to fit into the world around me, I thought if I flew far away enough, like Chang’e, the perfect home would magically appear. But when your roots are tangled up across so many different places, that perfect world may not exist.”
― Laura Gao, Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American

On my graphic memoir quest, I found Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao, the child of Chinese immigrants and an immigrant herself. Messy Roots is her debut graphic memoir. She adds a level of hilarity and insightfulness to her story. Laura was born in Wuhan, China, a place that becomes prominent in the narrative about the Covid-19 pandemic. This graphic memoir is the story of her Wuhan, the one beyond Covid-19, the one that she knows.

Laura grew up in Wuhan in a land surrouded by rice paddies. She and her troublesome cousins rode water buffalo while being watching by her grandparents and managed to get into so much mischief. Her parents left Wuhan for the United States shortly after Laura was born. They moved to attend graduate school, hoping to build a better life for their family. Laura moved to be with her parents when she was four years old. Being thrust into a new and confusing world, Laura was lost. Her teachers and classmates had trouble pronouncing her Chinese name, Yuyang, so despite her mom’s protestations, she changed her name to Laura after seeing then-First Lafe Laura Bush on the news.

Laura moved around to different school frequently growing up, adding to her intense desire to fit in. This desire impacts her decisions regarding hobbies, after-school activities, her college choice, her career, and her contact with her family. When she goes to college, Laura starts to figure out her own identity. After college, she discussses her first job, her relationship with Wuhan today, and how the Covid-19 pandemic affected her as someone from Wuhan, China.

This graphic novel is a necessary read. She has a grounded and insightful take into Wuhan, Covid-19, and the perspective of someone who grew up in China, but is currently living in the United States. Laura also talks about her journey to figuring out her sexual identity, eventually coming out as queer. This coming-of-age story covers an incredible amount of topics. Seeing how all aspects of her life come together to inform her decisions was a delight, given how vulnerable Laura is in her storytelling.

We Are On Our Own: A Memoir by Miriam Katin

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Miriam Katin was born in Hungary during World War II. She doesn’t remember much about the war except that this war reminded people of other wars and that other wars were going to also come. War was expected, intruders to the land were a given, and upheaval was just how she lived. Her young childhood was a jumble.

In an attempt to gather all she remembers, she wrote We Are On Our Own, a memoir about a mother and her daughter’s survival in World War II. Miriam writes and illustrates the story of her and her mother’s escape from the Nazis in Budapest, Hungary from 1944-1945. It’s compiled from her memories, her parents’ memories, as well as whatever primary source material she could find.

Miriam’s father was off fighting for the Hungarian army when she and her mother were forced out of their home. Desperate to survive, the two faked their deaths and fled to the countryside on foot with few possessions. Miriam was understandably confused and distraught about what was happening: where is her beloved dog, Rexy, after all? He would never leave her. Disguising themselves as illegitimate child and peasant servant woman, the two manage to stay steps ahead of the German soldiers. Miriam’s mother managed to hold onto hope that her husband would survive and that they would one day all be reunited.

Miriam was only a toddler when her world dissolved. Her childhood memories were fragmented, full of chocolate, forests, snow, strange men, and the noise and brutality of war. This memoir is her way of gathering those fragments and forming something that makes sense. Besides their physical crises, Miriam and her family go through a crisis of faith. The two contemplate God, His decisions, and why He would allow devastation and destruction across the world. This is a constant crisis for the two and for many other survivors of the Shoah/Holocaust. Miriam merges her broken pieces into a beautifully told story of her childhood innocence amidst unbelievable violence.

In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee

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“I love you when you’re at your lowest just as much as at your best.” – In Limbo, Deb JJ Lee

TW for suicide and abuse.

Deb Lee’s powerful new memoir explores coming of age in New Jersey as a Korean-American teenager. Deb examines the Korean-American diaspora and mental illness as she mines her history for answers. Deb left Seoul to come to America with her family when she was only three years old.  Ever since she arrived in the United States, she has been excruciatingly aware of her otherness. Her teachers couldn’t, and still can’t very well, pronounce her Korean name. Her English wasn’t perfect, she spoke Korean, but after some time, she slowly lost her Korean and spoke more and more English. Adjusting to the United States was difficult as her face and her eyes pointed her out as different. She felt wrong.

When Deb started high school, her life became harder. She started to feel increasing pressure at home, while dealing with high school changes. Her classes were more difficult than she expected, plus her friendships changed and ended. Deb struggles with finding a safe place to be herself, but luckily she has orchestra (even though that doesn’t last forever either). Her home life becomes increasingly chaotic as fights with her mom become more frequent, violent, and emotionally abusive. Deb has no idea what to do, feeling like she is stuck in limbo with nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help. Her mental health crashes, which results in a suicide attempt. Her healing process after is slow and methodical, but she is resilient, courageous, and willing to start the process. Art, self-care, and therapy help her start to understand herself and her heritage.

The artwork in this graphic memoir is amazing. Deb has drawn pages of evocative, grayscale artwork that give you the feel of memory. Some of their drawings are sharp while others are hazy, fuzzing out and fading to black. If you’re a fan of Tillie Walden, you will enjoy this art style. Deb worked on this for years before she finally was at a place where it was ready for the world. Their desire to wait makes this memoir feel polished and rewarding. This is a realistic depiction of a teen working through mental health experiences. Add in that this is a memoir and this is sure to be helpful to others.

Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars written by Rick Louis and illustrated by Lara Antal

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Trigger warning for child loss.

It’s seldom that I read a book that leaves me in tears. Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars written by Rick Louis and illustrated by Lara Antal emotionally devastated me and tore out my heart. This graphic novel memoir tells the story of one parent’s journey caring for his son with a terminal diagnosis. Rick Louis beautifully wrote this story about his life, while Lara Antal illustrated his words with sensitivity. The pallet of blues, whites, and blacks is breathtaking and tenderly adds to the story of the before, during, and after his son’s life.

Rick and Emily were overjoyed when she became pregnant. After their son Ronan was born and as his development progressed, they noticed a slight issue with his vision that necessitated a trip to the doctor. That visit led them down a rabbit hole of other doctors and ended with a devastating diagnosis for Ronan. Ronan has Tay-Sachs, an incurable neurological disorder. Rick and Emily have to deal with the practical issues of raising their son, while also paired with the emotional hurdles of loving their son under the shadow of their inevitable loss and his inevitable death. They are trapped in an impossible situation with very little positives.

This book was heartbreaking, yet told beautifully by a father destroyed by the loss of his young son. I strongly recommend this book (though have the tissues ready). While this story is sad, Rick also lightens his telling with comedy paired with gorgeous artwork. It’s full of warmth and heartbreak, sorrow and joy, as Rick discusses the importance of finding joy no matter how your life is at the moment.

Murder Book: A Graphic Memoir of a True Crime Obsession by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

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I am a lover of true crime. This isn’t much of a surprise to my family and friends. For years, true crime has taken over the media I consume(podcasts, tv shows, movies, books, etc). When I stumbled upon Murder Book: A Graphic Memoir of a True Crime Obsession by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, I knew this was something I needed to read. I wasn’t disappointed.

Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell is obsessed with true crime. Ever since she can remember, true crime has been prevalent in her life. Hilary believes that she inherited her interest in crime from her mother, but has questions about the psychology surrounding why people find true crime to be so entertaining. In her quest to answer that question, Hilary examines her past, does research, and starts combining what she learns into this graphic memoir. Hilary talks about high profile cases(Zodiac, Ted Bundy, etc) that impacted her life and moves onto other not as high profile cases and the often overlooked victims that are also etched into her memory (Anne Marie Fahey for example). For those of us that enjoy true crime, Hilary also lists authors she loves, the crime shows she watches, and the podcasts she listens to. This graphic novel made me feel normal – she outlines her obsession of love and true crime, while also saying that outsiders may see some weirdness in people loving/enjoying true crime. This is definitely an unconventional book/topic, but there is an audience who will appreciate it.

While I enjoyed this graphic novel, it does jump around a lot (the author acknowledges this). It didn’t bother me much as it made sense to me and followed the jumpy way my own brain works. Reading about how the author tries to figure out why she loves true crime and why she started down this path made me think about why I too love true crime. Hilary highlighted some cases that I hadn’t heard about and some that I had already explored. It was validating to read something that talked about my own anxieties, love of true crime, etc.