Book picks similar to
My New York Diary by Julie Doucet
graphic-novels
comics
graphic-novel
memoir
March: Book One
John Lewis - 2013
Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1950s comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.(Back flap)
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.
The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch
Neil Gaiman - 1994
PUNCH tells the tale of a young boy's loss of innocence results from a horrific confrontation with his past. Spending a summer at his grandfather's seaside arcade, a troubled adolescent harmlessly becomes involved with a mysterious Punch and Judy Man and a mermaid-portraying woman. But when the violent puppet show triggers buried memories of the boy's family, the lives of all become feverishly intertwined. With disturbing mysteries and half-truths uncontrollably unraveling, the young boy is forced to deal with his family's dark secrets of violence, betrayal, and guilt.
This Woman's Work
Julie Delporte - 2017
Julie Delporte examines cultural artifacts and sometimes traumatic memories through the lens of the woman she is today—a feminist who understands the reality of the women around her, how experiencing rape culture and sexual abuse is almost synonymous with being a woman, and the struggle of reconciling one’s feminist beliefs with the desire to be loved. She sometimes resents being a woman and would rather be anything but.Told through beautifully evocative colored pencil drawings and sparse but compelling prose, This Woman’s Work documents Delporte’s memories and cultural consumption through journal-like entries that represent her struggles with femininity and womanhood. She structures these moments in a nonlinear fashion, presenting each one as a snapshot of a place and time—trips abroad, the moment you realize a relationship is over, and a traumatizing childhood event of sexual abuse that haunts her to this day. While This Woman’s Work is deeply personal, it is also a reflection of the conversations that women have with themselves when trying to carve out their feminist identity. Delporte’s search for answers in the turmoil created by gender assumptions is profoundly resonant in the era of #MeToo.
Nylon Road: A Graphic Memoir of Coming of Age in Iran
Parsua Bashi - 2009
In the tradition of graphic memoirs such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, comes the story of a young Iranian woman’s struggles with growing up under Shiite Law, her journey into adulthood, and the daughter whom she had to leave behind when she left Iran.
The Silence of Our Friends
Mark Long - 2012
With art from the brilliant Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) bringing the tale to heart-wrenching life, The Silence of Our Friends is a new and important entry in the body of civil rights literature.
I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir
Malaka Gharib - 2019
Malaka Gharib's illustrations come alive with teenage antics and earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised.Malaka's upbringing will look familiar to anyone who grew up in the pre-internet era, but her particular story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream.The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigates her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid.I Was Their American Dream is at once a journal of growing up and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children.
Flight, Vol. 1
Kazu KibuishiJoel Carroll - 2004
From the maiden voyage of a home-built plane to the adventures of a young courier and his flying whale to a handful of stories about coming of age and letting things go, this first volume of Flight is full of memorable tales that will both amaze and inspire.
Woman World
Aminder Dhaliwal - 2018
Dhaliwal’s infectiously funny instagram comic follows the rebuilding process, tracking a group of women who have rallied together under the flag of “Beyonce’s Thighs.” Only Grandma remembers the distant past, a civilization of segway-riding mall cops, Blockbuster movie rental shops, and “That’s What She Said” jokes. For the most part, Woman World’s residents are focused on their struggles with unrequited love and anxiety, not to mention that whole “survival of humanity” thing.
The Worrier's Guide to Life
Gemma Correll - 2015
For all you fellow agonizers, fretters, and nervous wrecks, this book is for you. Read it and weep...with laughter
In.
Will McPhail - 2021
He haunts lookalike fussy, silly, coffee shops, listens to old Joni Mitchell albums too loudly, and stares at his navel in the hope that he will find it in there. But it isn’t until he learns to speak from the heart that he begins to find authentic human connections and is let in—to the worlds of the people he meets. Nick’s journey occurs alongside the beginnings of a relationship with Wren, a wry, spirited oncologist at a nearby hospital, whose work and life becomes painfully tangled with Nick’s. Illustrated in both color and black-and-white in McPhail’s instantly recognizable style, In elevates the graphic novel genre; it captures his trademark humor and compassion with a semi-autobiographical tale that is equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching—uncannily appropriate for our isolated times.
Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout
Lauren Redniss - 2010
A brilliant visual storyteller, Redniss has hand-designed more than 100 color collages to tell Curie’s story, fascinating in its scientific significance and its sometimes whimsical, sometimes haunting mix of romance and intrigue. Bringing together archival photos, images, and clippings with dazzling line drawings and a compelling narrative, Radioactive is far more than just an art book or a graphic novel: It is a stunning visual biography and a true work of art.
Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned
Judd Winick - 2000
You get up in front of a thousand people--your classmates, your friends, basically the people who make up your entire existence--and announce, 'I'm HIV positive.'"Told entirely in sequential art, here is the story of the life-changing friendship between the author, a cartoonist from Long Island, and Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, which was filmed day by day on MTV's Real World San Francisco. As a speaker and educator, a guest on many talk shows (including Oprah), and when his tragic death received front-page coverage in the press, Pedro taught a generation that AIDS was not a punishment for moral defects or a mere killer that reduced humans to wraiths. Rather, he showed how those afflicted with the disease could live and love nobly with intelligence, humor and great humanity. Judd Winick's compelling memoir allows each of us to experience the vitally important message Pedro brought us.Inspiring, moving, informative, and instantly accessible, Pedro and Me could become one of the books that defines a generation.
Kusama: The Graphic Novel
Elisa Macellari - 2020
From rural Japan to international icon – Yayoi Kusama has spent her remarkable life immersed in her art.Follow her incredible journey in this vivid graphic biography which details her bold departure from Japan as a young artist, her embrace of the buzzing New York art scene in the 1960s, and her eventual return home and rise to twenty-first century super-fame.
Sailor Twain: Or: The Mermaid in the Hudson
Mark Siegel - 2011
On the foggy Hudson River, a riverboat captain rescues an injured mermaid from the waters of the busiest port in the United States. A wildly popular—and notoriously reclusive—author makes a public debut. A French nobleman seeks a remedy for a curse. As three lives twine together and race to an unexpected collision, the mystery of the Mermaid of the Hudson deepens.A mysterious and beguiling love story with elements of Poe, Twain, Hemingway, and Greek mythology, drawn in moody black-and-white charcoal, Sailor Twain is a study in romance, atmosphere, and suspense.