Book picks similar to
Everything is Flammable by Gabrielle Bell
graphic-novels
graphic-novel
comics
memoir
Dancing After TEN
Vivian Chong - 2020
As she was losing her sight, she put down as many drawings on paper as she could to document the experience. In Dancing After TEN, Chong teams up with cartoonist Georgia Webber — whose graphic autobiography, Dumb, chronicled her own disability — to trace her journey out of the darkness and into the spotlight. Chong now expresses her art through singing, stand-up, drumming, running, and dancing. This graphic novel is an inspirational tale and a powerful work of graphic medicine.
Dumb: Living Without a Voice
Georgia Webber - 2018
Webber adroitly uses the comics medium to convey the practical hurdles she faced as well as the fear and dread that accompanied her increasingly lonely journey to regain her life. Her raw cartooning style, occasionally devolving into chaotic scribbles, splotches of ink, and overlapping montages, perfectly captures her frustration and anxiety. But her ordeal ultimately becomes a hopeful story. Throughout, she learns to lean on the support of her close friends, finds self-expression in creating comics, and comes to understand and appreciate how deeply her voice and identity are intertwined.
In the Shadow of No Towers
Art Spiegelman - 2004
As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, cartoonist Spiegelman presents a highly personalized, political, and confessional diary of his experience of September 11 and its aftermath. In 10 large-scale pages of original, hard-hitting material (composed from September 11, 2001 to August 31, 2003), two essays, and 10 old comic strip reproductions from the early 20th century, Spiegelman expresses his feelings of dislocation, grief, anxiety, and outrage over the horror of the attacks—and the subsequent "hijacking" of the event by the Bush administration to serve what he believes is a misguided and immoral political agenda. Readers who agree with Spiegelman's point of view will marvel at the brilliance of his images and the wit and accuracy of his commentary. Others, no doubt, will be jolted by his candor and, perhaps, be challenged to reexamine their position.The central image in the sequence of original broadsides, which returns as a leitmotif in each strip, is Spiegelman's Impressionistic "vision of disintegration," of the North Tower, its "glowing bones...just before it vaporized." (As downtown New Yorkers, Spiegelman and his family experienced the event firsthand.) But the images and styles in the book are as fragmentary and ever-shifting as Spiegelman's reflections and reactions. The author's closing comment that "The towers have come to loom far larger than life...but they seem to get smaller every day" reflects a larger and more chilling irony that permeates In the Shadow of No Towers. Despite the ephemeral nature of the comic strip form, the old comics at the back of the book have outlasted the seemingly indestructible towers. In the same way, Spiegelman's heartfelt impressions have immortalized the towers that, imponderably, have now vanished. —Silvana Tropea
I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You
Yumi Sakugawa - 2013
I think I am in friend-love with you. What’s friend-love? It’s that super-awesome bond you share with someone who makes you happy every time you text each other, or meet up for an epic outing. It’s not love-love. You don’t want to swap saliva; you want to swap favorite books. But it’s just as intense and just as amazing. And it’s this search for that connection that comic-book artist Yumi Sakugawa captures in I Think I Am in Friend-Love with You. It’s perfect if you've ever fallen in friend-love and want to show that person how much you love them...in a platonic way, of course.
The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television
Koren Shadmi - 2019
Before he became the revered master of science fiction, Rod Serling was a just a writer who had to fight to make his voice heard. He vehemently challenged the networks and viewership alike to expand their minds and standards―rejecting notions of censorship, racism and war. But it wasn’t until he began to write about real world enemies in the guise of aliens and monsters that people lent their ears. In doing so, he pushed the television industry to the edge of glory, and himself to the edge of sanity. Rod operated in a dimension beyond that of contemporary society, making him both a revolutionary and an outsider.
It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken: A Picture Novella
Seth - 1998
While trying to understand his dissatisfaction with the present, Seth discovers the life and work of Kalo, a forgotten New Yorker cartoonist from the 1940s. But his obsession blinds him to the needs of his lover and the quiet desperation of his family. Wry self-reflection and moody colours characterize Seth's style in this tale about learning lessons from nostalgia. His playful and sophisticated experiment with memoir provoked a furious debate among cartoon historians and archivists about the existence of Kalo, and prompted a Details feature about Seth's "hoax".
Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir
Bishakh Kumar Som - 2020
Framed with a candid autobiographical narrative, this book gives us the opportunity to enter into the author's daily life and explore her thoughts on themes of gender and sexuality, memory and urbanism, love and loss.
Good Eggs
Phoebe Potts - 2010
All her friends seem to get pregnant, but she can't conceive for all her trying. As Phoebe and her husband, Jeff, navigate the emotionally and physically fraught world of fertility experts, she takes stock of what matters in the rest of her life and reflects on the winding journey to her true calling as an artist. From her days as an amateur union organizer in Texas to her spiral into paralyzing depression in Mexico; from her soul-shrinking, all-for-the-benefits stint as an administrative assistant at a fancy university in Cambridge to her flirtation with rabbinical school, Phoebe illuminates the bumpy road to vocational and personal contentment. Her wonderful, hilarious, and utterly original drawings capture the truly good eggs—an unforgettably nutty mother; a devoted husband; a team of therapists, hairdressers, and landladies; friends; and a sidekick housecat—that together expand the definition of what really makes a family.
Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide
Isabel Quintero - 2018
When tragedy struck Iturbide as a young mother, she turned to photography for solace and understanding. From then on Iturbide embarked on a photographic journey that has taken her throughout her native México, from the Sonora Desert to Juchitán to Frida Kahlo’s bathroom, to the United States, India, and beyond. Photographic is a symbolic, poetic, and deeply personal graphic biography of this iconic photographer. Iturbide's journey will excite readers of all ages as well as budding photographers, who will be inspired by her resolve, talent, and curiosity.
Sabrina
Nick Drnaso - 2018
Rate your stress level from 1 to 5, 5 being severe. Are you experiencing depression or thoughts of suicide? Is there anything in your personal life that is affecting your duty?When Sabrina disappears, an airman in the U.S. Air Force is drawn into a web of suppositions, wild theories, and outright lies. He reports to work every night in a bare, sterile fortress that serves as no protection from a situation that threatens the sanity of Teddy, his childhood friend and the boyfriend of the missing woman. Sabrina’s grieving sister, Sandra, struggles to fill her days as she waits in purgatory. After a videotape surfaces, we see devastation shown through a cinematic lens, as true tragedy is distorted when fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret events to fit their own narratives.The follow-up to Nick Drnaso’s Beverly, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Sabrina depicts a modern world devoid of personal interaction and responsibility, where relationships are stripped of intimacy through glowing computer screens. Presenting an indictment of our modern state, Drnaso contemplates the dangers of a fake-news climate. Timely and articulate, Sabrina leaves you gutted, searching for meaning in the aftermath of disaster.
Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution
Julia Alekseyeva - 2017
She taught herself to read, and supported her extended family working as a secretary for the notorious NKVD (which became the KGB) and later as a lieutenant for the Red Army. Her family, including 4-year-old Yulia, moved to the U.S. in the wake of Chernobyl and forged a new life.
Soviet Daughter
united two generations of strong, independent women against a sweeping backdrop of the history of the USSR. Like Sarah Glidden in
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less
, or Marjane Satrapi in
Persepolis
, Alekseyeva deftly combines compelling stories of women finding their way in the world with an examination o the ties we all have with out families, ethnicities, and the still-fresh traumas of the 20th century.
The Pervert
Remy Boydell - 2018
With excerpts published in Eisner nominated anthology ISLAND, the full colour volume, drawn and painted by Remy Boydell is an unflinching debut graphic novel.
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Apostolos Doxiadis - 2009
This graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, he crosses paths with thinkers like Gottlob Frege, David Hilbert & Kurt Gödel, & finds a passionate student in Ludwig Wittgenstein. But his most ambitious goal—to establish unshakable logical foundations of mathematics—continues to loom before him. Thru love & hate, peace & war, he persists in the mission threatening to claim both his career & happiness, finally driving him to the brink of insanity. This story is at the same time a historical novel & an accessible explication of some of the biggest ideas of mathematics & modern philosophy. With rich characterizations & atmospheric artwork, it spins the pursuit of such ideas into a satisfying tale. Probing, layered, the book throws light on Russell’s inner struggles while setting them in the context of the timeless questions he tried to answer. At its heart, Logicomix is a story about the conflict between ideal rationality & the flawed fabric of reality.
Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg
Kate Evans - 2015
The story follows Rosa from her family life in Jewish Poland—where she became the leader of a general strike at age fifteen and was exiled from her homeland at eighteen—to her immersion into the then largest radical party in the world, the German Social Democratic Party, to her founding of the German Communist Party and leadership of the German revolution of 1919.This beautifully drawn graphic life gives “Red Rosa” her due as an iconic radical, but also portrays a fascinating woman with a rich love life, struggles with physical disability and an abiding love of literature and theater. Rosa will contribute to the growing understanding of one of the twentieth century’s greatest revolutionaries.
Andre the Giant: Life and Legend
Box Brown - 2014
He was a normal guy who'd been dealt an extraordinary hand in life. At his peak, he weighed 500 pounds and stood nearly seven and a half feet tall. But the huge stature that made his fame also signed his death warrant.Box Brown brings his great talents as a cartoonist and biographer to this phenomenal new graphic novel. Drawing from historical records about Andre's life as well as a wealth of anecdotes from his colleagues in the wrestling world, including Hulk Hogan, and his film co-stars (Billy Crystal, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, etc), Brown has created in Andre the Giant, the first substantive biography of one of the twentieth century's most recognizable figures.