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Present by Leslie Stein


graphic-novels
comics
graphic-novel
memoir

Susceptible


Geneviève Castrée - 2012
    After reading the last page I closed the book and wept a little bit about its simple, perfect ending."-MIRANDA JULY, author of It Chooses You and No One Belongs Here More Than YouGoglu is a daydreamer with a young working mother, a disengaged stepfather, and a father who lives five thousand miles away. Drawing, punk rock, and the promise of true independence guide Goglu to adulthood while her home's daily chaos inevitably shapes her identity. Susceptible is a devastating graphic novel debut by Geneviève Castrée; it's a testament to the heartbreaking loss of innocence when a child is forced to be the adult amongst grownups..

Imagine Wanting Only This


Kristen Radtke - 2017
    Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted cities in the American Midwest, an Icelandic town buried in volcanic ash, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart. Along the way, we learn about her family and a rare genetic heart disease that has been passed down through generations, and revisit tragic events in America's past.A narrative that is at once narrative and factual, historical and personal, Radtke's stunning illustrations and piercing text never shy away from the big questions: Why are we here, and what will we leave behind?(With black-and-white illustrations throughout; part of the Pantheon Graphic Novel series)

Epileptic


David B. - 2002
    has created a masterpiece in Epileptic, his stunning and emotionally resonant autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother. Epileptic gathers together and makes available in English for the first time all six volumes of the internationally acclaimed graphic work.David B. was born Pierre-François Beauchard in a small town near Orléans, France. He spent an idyllic early childhood playing with the neighborhood kids and, along with his older brother, Jean-Christophe, ganging up on his little sister, Florence. But their lives changed abruptly when Jean-Christophe was struck with epilepsy at age eleven. In search of a cure, their parents dragged the family to acupuncturists and magnetic therapists, to mediums and macrobiotic communes. But every new cure ended in disappointment as Jean-Christophe, after brief periods of remission, would only get worse.Angry at his brother for abandoning him and at all the quacks who offered them false hope, Pierre-François learned to cope by drawing fantastically elaborate battle scenes, creating images that provide a fascinating window into his interior life. An honest and horrifying portrait of the disease and of the pain and fear it sowed in the family, Epileptic is also a moving depiction of one family’s intricate history. Through flashbacks, we are introduced to the stories of Pierre-François’s grandparents and we relive his grandfathers’ experiences in both World Wars. We follow Pierre-François through his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, all the while charting his complicated relationship with his brother and Jean-Christophe”s losing battle with epilepsy. Illustrated with beautiful and striking black-and-white images, Epileptic is as astonishing, intimate, and heartbreaking as the best literary memoir.From the Hardcover edition.

My Begging Chart


Keiler Roberts - 2021
    Drawn in an unassuming yet charming staccato that mimics the awkward rhythm of life, no one’s foibles are left unspared, most often the author’s own.When Roberts considers whether to dust the ceiling fan, it’s effectively relevant. She can get lost in the rewarding melodrama of playing with Barbie dolls with her daughter and will momentarily snap out of her depression. Her harmless fibs to get through the moment are brought up by her daughter a year or two later, yet without hesitation Roberts will request that her daughter’s imaginary friend not visit when she is around. Her MS diagnosis lingers in the background, never taking center stage.In My Begging Chart, her most encompassing work yet, Roberts meditates on routine and stillness. The vignettes of her everyday life exude immense presence, making her comics thoroughly relatable and reflective of our all-too-human lives as they unfold with humour, sadness, and relieving joy. In transporting these stories onto paper, Roberts observes, and at times relishes, a fleeting present.

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.

Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home


Nora Krug - 2018
    For Nora, the simple fact of her German citizenship bound her to the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities and left her without a sense of cultural belonging. Yet Nora knew little about her own family’s involvement in the war: though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it.In her late thirties, after twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child and young adult. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier in Italy. Her quest, spanning continents and generations, pieces together her family’s troubling story and reflects on what it means to be a German of her generation.

Sunday In The Park With Boys


Jane Mai - 2012
    For $666.00 she will give you a bad date where you will get punched in the face; for $666.00 she will give you a good date where you might not. With Sunday in the Park with Boys she has given us a poetic account of self-discovery and self-loathing. In this comic as emotional cartography, persona and person collide as Mai contends with loneliness, heartache and herself.

One Hundred Demons


Lynda Barry - 2002
    Name that Demon!!! Freaky boyfriends! Shouting Moms! Innocence betrayed! These are some of the pickled demons you'll meet as Lynda Barry mixes the true and the un-true into something she calls "autobificitionalography." From her nattering and intolerant/loving Filipina grandmother to the ex-boyfriend from hell who had lice, Lynda Barry's demons jump out of these pages and double-dare you to speak their names. Called by Time magazine "a work of art as well as literature," One Hundred Demons has been hailed for its shimmering watercolor images and unforgettable stories about life's little monsters.

Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir


Amy Kurzweil - 2016
    Amy weaves her own coming-of-age as a young Jewish artist into the narrative of her mother, a psychologist, and Bubbe, her grandmother, a World War II survivor who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto by disguising herself as a gentile. Captivated by Bubbe’s story, Amy turns to her sketchbooks, teaching herself to draw as a way to cope with what she discovers. Entwining the voices and histories of these three wise, hilarious, and very different women, Amy creates a portrait not only of what it means to be part of a family, but also of how each generation bears the imprint of the past. Flying Couch uses Bubbe’s real testimony and her playful, idiosyncratic sensibility to investigate the legacy of trauma, the power of family stories, and the meaning of home. The result is this bold illustrated memoir, both an original story of self-discovery and an important entry into the literature of the Holocaust.“Flying Couch is perfect. It’s perceptive, emotionally on point, surprising and funny in its details, told in an intuitive way that’s completely direct, and about something that matters. This is an important book.” —Liana Finck, author of The Bintel Brief“Flying Couch is a moving, intricate story of identity and family history.”—Ariel Schrag, author of Likewise and Awkward and Definition“I read Flying Couch in one sitting, without moving, literally laughed and literally cried.” —Rachel Fershleiser, co-editor of the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning"Amy Kurzweil's moving debut is a story of trauma and survival, and a search for identity and belonging. Fluctuating, in words and images, from the bubbly to the intense, this graphic memoir exposes the complicated and powerful ways we are shaped by the histories and relationships that anchor us."—Tahneer Oksman, author of How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?

And Now I Spill the Family Secrets: An Illustrated Memoir


Margaret Kimball - 2021
    As she searches for answers nearly thirty years later, Kimball embarks on a journey into the secrets her family has kept for decades. Using old diary entries, hospital records, home videos, and other archives, Margaret pieces together a narrative map of her childhood—her mother's bipolar disorder, her grandmother's institutionalization, and her brother's increasing struggles—in an attempt to understand what no one likes to talk about: the fractures in her family.

The Infinite Wait and Other Stories


Julia Wertz - 2012
    1 and 2 (Atomic Books, 2007 and 2009) and Drinking at the Movies (Random House, 2010). In contrast to her last book, which was a full-length graphic memoir, The Infinite Wait is not a sustained narrative, but rather a collection of three short stories or graphic novellas. The stories in this collection contain Wertz’s signature acerbic wit, ribald humour and keen eye for the everyday, but they also find the cartoonist delving into the personal. “Industry” catalogues 25 years of alternately terrible and terrific jobs, from selling golf balls, feeding and failing to feed animals, waitressing, and finally to cartooning and the publication of her first book. “A Strange and Curious Place” is a love letter to Wertz’s hometown library; its mysteries and revelations, and its ability foster growth, rebellion and even artistic affirmation. The most sustained narrative in the collection, the eponymous “The Infinite Wait,” chronicles Wertz’s move from her small hometown to San Francisco, her diagnosis with an incurable, auto-immune disease and her subsequent discovery of comics and comic making.The collection’s title, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, intentionally and ironically recalls the vacuous and pretentious book titles of the literary elite, but these stories are the polar opposite of pretension. They are comics born out of illness, but not defined by it, and they are filled with the sometimes messy, heartbreaking and hilarious moments that make up a life.

Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed?


Liz Prince - 2005
    Described as a mix between Jeffrey Brown and James Kochalka, Liz's comic is made up of short vignettes that capture all the cute, gross, and endearing aspects of relationships.

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale


Belle Yang - 2010
    The history she’d ignored while growing up became a source of comfort and inspiration, and narrowed the gap separating her—an independent, Chinese-American woman—from her Old World Chinese parents.In Forget Sorrow, Yang makes her debut into the graphic form with the story of her father’s family, reunited under the House of Yang in Manchuria during the Second World War and struggling—both together and individually—to weather poverty, famine, and, later, Communist oppression. The parallels between Belle Yang’s journey of self-discovery and the lives and choices of her grandfather, his brothers, and their father (the Patriarch) speak powerfully of the conflicts between generations—and of possibilities for reconciliation.Forget Sorrow demonstrates the power of storytelling and remembrance, as Belle—in telling this story—finds the strength to honor both her father and herself.

Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody


Mike Dawson - 2008
    For Mike Dawson it's always been Queen and Freddie Mercury. Not unlike “Bohemian Rhapsody,†Freddie & Me takes readers on a rock-opera-like journey—from Mike’s childhood in the UK, through high school in New Jersey, and into the nineties, when grunge ruled the day and Queen was terminally uncool. As Mike works to navigate the trials and tribulations that accompany the road to adulthood (with Queen behind him every step of the way), he must grapple with the fears we all find ourselves facing: committing to one person for the rest of our lives, pursuing our dream job, coming to terms with our familial responsibilities, and even facing our own mortality. With humor, sensitivity, and some wonderfully imagined appearances by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, George Michael, and Andrew Ridgeley (among others), Freddie & Me is a touching reminder of how our favorite music is the soundtrack for so many of our most important memories and moments. And how one note can bring them all flooding back.

Hot Dog Taste Test


Lisa Hanawalt - 2016
    Her designs define the look of the wildly popular Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman. Her culinary-focused comics and illustrated essays in Lucky Peach magazine won her a James Beard Award.Now, Hot Dog Taste Test collects Hanawalt's devastatingly funny comics, gorgeous art, and screwball lists as she tucks into the pomposities of the foodie subculture. Hanawalt dismantles the notion of breakfast; says goodbye to New York through a street food smorgasbord; shadows chef Wylie Dufresne, samples all-you-can-eat buffets in Vegas; and crafts an eerie comic about being a horse lover yet an avid carnivore.Hot Dog Taste Test explodes with color, hilarity, charm, and, occasionally, reproductive organs. Lush full-spread paintings of birds getting their silly feet all over a kitchen, a fully imagined hot dog show (think Best in Show but with hot dogs), and a holiday feast gone awry are the creamy icing on this imaginative rainbow-colored cake. But Hanawalt's wit and heart extend far beyond gags--her insightful musings on popular culture, relationships, and the animal in all of us are as keen and funny as her watercolors are exquisite.