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You and a Bike and a Road.
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I’ve written about family for years, first in poems and then in nonfiction. I was estranged from my father at the time of his death from alcoholic cirrhosis, and I wrote a memoir to think through this relationship and the way we use narrative to make sense of our families. Everyone has secret histories, and they’re endlessly fascinating. For 15 years, I taught at Stanford University, where I began a course called Family Stories. People came to write their own fundamental, funny, difficult stories in the company of others. I still love teaching this kind of writing at my new college and in my private classes.
Bechdel uses her narrator as a vehicle for thinking (in this case, for thinking through a narrator’s complex relationship with her mother), using a constellation of sources from Donald Winnicott to Virginia Woolf to The Sound of Music. She perfects the illusion/truth central to this genre: that we’re witnessing the writer’s process of discovery in real time.
When I’m inside the book, I feel as though I’m inside Bechdel’s brain. I know this feeling is a testament to her craft, but I still couldn’t help thinking, when I finished the book, that Bechdel was my friend. I wanted to call her up to continue our conversation about our parents—even though we’ve never met.
An expansive, moving and captivating graphic memoir from the author of Fun Home.
Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was a literary phenomenon. While Fun Home explored Bechdel's relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual, this memoir is about her mother - a voracious reader, a music lover, a passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood... and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter goodnight, for ever, when she was seven.
Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Not only have I been a comic book editor for sixteen years and obsessed with indie comics for much longer, I’m also an avid camper who co-created and co-wrote a comic book series that exalts in the unique feeling of sleeping under the stars. As such, excellent comics about outdoor adventures have a particularly tender spot in my heart.
I love the way Lisa Hanawalt draws nearly anything, but I especially love the way that Lisa draws animals, the desert, and the West. If you’re a Bojack Horseman fan, you’ve already fallen in love with her innovative cartooning style (she was a Bojack producer and its production designer). Her work here is all absurd movement, perfect timing, hilarious expressions, and, oh, yeah, a main character that’s a horseback-riding half-coyote, half-dog, full of messy humanity—a visceral, subversive Western, as delicious and satisfying as sleeping under a starry sky.
Coyote is a dreamer and a drama queen, brazen and brave, faithful yet fiercely independent. She beats her own drum and sews her own crop tops. A gifted equestrian, she s half dog, half coyote, and all power. With the help of her trusty steed, Red, there s not much that s too big for her to bite off, chew up, and spit out right into your face, if you deserve it. But when Coyote and Red find themselves on the run from a trio of vengeful bad dogs, get clobbered by arrows, and are tragically separated, our protagonist is…
Not only have I been a comic book editor for sixteen years and obsessed with indie comics for much longer, I’m also an avid camper who co-created and co-wrote a comic book series that exalts in the unique feeling of sleeping under the stars. As such, excellent comics about outdoor adventures have a particularly tender spot in my heart.
The immediacy of Whit Taylor’s work and its accessible, urgent symbology is especially poignant in this diary of her Montana road trip with her husband.
Diary comics are one of my favorite genres of graphic storytelling for reasons exemplified here: you are engaging with Whit’s experience with this sprawling, beautiful land and its brutal history alongside her. Big sky, to her pen, to your eyes. It’s an intimate experience, one that comics do best.
2021 Ignatz Award Nominee for Outstanding Minicomic 2021 PW Graphic Novel Critics Poll – Honorable Mention
Cartoonist Whit Taylor (The Nib, Fizzle) documents her road trip across Montana in this diary mini-comic, combining millennial humor with resonant observations about the state’s complicated history.
As she and her husband travel through semi-arid flatlands and sub-alpine mountains, Taylor reflects both on Montana’s breathtaking beauty and the enduring toll of Manifest Destiny on its land and people.
Balancing funny road trip anecdotes with thoughts on melting glaciers and the worrying prevalence of white nationalists, Montana Diary tells a slice of America’s story, knowing…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
Not only have I been a comic book editor for sixteen years and obsessed with indie comics for much longer, I’m also an avid camper who co-created and co-wrote a comic book series that exalts in the unique feeling of sleeping under the stars. As such, excellent comics about outdoor adventures have a particularly tender spot in my heart.
The iyashikei (literally ‘healing’) genre of manga and anime concerns itself mainly with deeply character-driven narratives where nothing much happens. Except, of course, the simple living of life is beautiful, often the sweet spot where everything happens, and the creators behind this work know it.
This book is a pinnacle of that genre, a gorgeously illustrated meditation on the beauty of camping, campfire cooking, and the landscapes of Japan, as seen through the eyes of a thoughtful, funny group of high school girls.
Rin enjoys camping by the lakeshore, Mt. Fuji in view. Nadeshiko rides her bike to see Mt. Fuji, too. As the two eat cup noodles together, what scenery will they behold? This series will make readers fall in love with camping!
Not only have I been a comic book editor for sixteen years and obsessed with indie comics for much longer, I’m also an avid camper who co-created and co-wrote a comic book series that exalts in the unique feeling of sleeping under the stars. As such, excellent comics about outdoor adventures have a particularly tender spot in my heart.
Luke Healey’s highly graphic, wonderfully expressive cartooning style is especially powerful in this memoir of his time hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. Through-hiking the PCH is an obvious physical feat in any circumstance, but it’s a deeply taxing mental one, and Luke’s reflection on his trip compels you forward.
You are next to him on the trail, begging the question repeatedly: how can we bear moving forward? How can we do this, day after day? You feel right there as Luke laces up his boots, takes a breath, and walks on.
The Pacific Crest Trail runs 2660 miles, from California's border with Mexico to Washington's border with Canada. To walk it is to undertake a grueling test of body and spirit... challenge accepted.
This intimate, engaging autobiographical work recounts the author's own attempt to walk the length of the USA's west coast. Healy's life-changing journey weaves in and out of reflections on his experiences in America and his development as an artist, navigating both the trail itself and the unique culture of the people who attempt to complete it.
I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles.
Keiler Roberts has a number of books featuring vignettes from her daily life. All are incredible. This is a personal favorite, cleverly balancing medical scenes about her MS treatment and diagnosis, her work as an art teacher, her life with her daughter and husband (and their family rats), and private moments with herself.
Pet deaths and parenting, embarrassing childhood memories and mental illness, Roberts documents her daily life’s minutiae, its up and downs, with the deftness of an observational comedian. Her comics demonstrate that sometimes life can deal you a punch to the gut, but it doesn’t have to be devoid of a punch line.
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles.
I owe so much to this book. Aline Kominsky-Crumb pulls her art and comics from multiple decades of her life into this huge collection, making an incredible mixed-media autobiography that captures so much of who she was. Her unfiltered honesty set the bar high for what autobiographical comics could be.
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, one of the earliest female cartoonists, presents a collection of her own highly inventive and daring artwork from over four decades, along with unusual photographs and memorabilia. The road to becoming an underground- comics legend begins with Komisky-Crumb as a nice jewish girl from Long Island, carries her to Greenwich Village in the 1960's, and to California, land of hippy cartoonists, and on to a more or less sedate life with hubby(equally legendary R. Crumb) and daughter, Sophie. Her funny/sad tales show a woman bewildered by her place in society and determined to find her own way. These…
I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles.
This slightly fictionalized but largely autobiographical book is adapted from the author’s childhood diary pages and reconfigured into a sharp, beautiful, and honest narrative about a fifteen-year-old’s coming of age.
Gloeckner treats her protagonist with the kind of respect and dignity that young women are rarely afforded, and the result is an incredible account of youth, sexuality, abuse, and growing up that honors teenage girls and all they are capable of.
First released in 2002, this provocative, critically acclaimed novel is now a major motion picture starring Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, and Alexander Skarsgård.
“I don't remember being born. I was a very ugly child. My appearance has not improved so I guess it was a lucky break when he was attracted by my youthfulness.” So begins the wrenching diary of Minnie Goetze, a fifteen-year-old girl longing for love and acceptance and struggling with her own precocious sexuality. After losing her virginity to her mother's boyfriend, Minnie pursues a string of sexual encounters (with both boys and girls) while experimenting…
I'm a fifth-generation Arizonan, a former staff writer for the Arizona Republic, and a lifelong student of the Grand Canyon State. One of my very favorite things to do is travel the backroads of this amazing state and talk with the astonishing people who live there. Along the way, I wrote eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award. My day job is at Chapman University, where I am an English professor.
Brian Jabas Smith lived a hard life on society’s margins and developed the ability to see people–the forgotten, the filthy, the addicted, and unattractive–that most of us simply look through on our way to someplace else.
In this wonderful book, Smith writes portraits of the invisible people of Tucson, Arizona, most of them down and out, and all of them with stories to tell. But he never slips into mawkishness and doesn’t expect the reader to “do anything” about society’s problems except pay attention to the human beings who take the worst of it.
His graceful and empathetic prose style makes that easy to ride along, and what’s left is a curious glow of hope. Smith is probably the best working journalist in the Southwest today, finding stories where others would never think to look.
Literary Nonfiction. Essays. This book is a chronicle of the overlooked and unsung, a collection of award-winning essays based on Brian Jabas Smith's popular column, "Tucson Salvage."
"A true champion of the dispossessed and forgotten. ... I can't recommend this book highly enough."—Willy Vlautin
"TUCSON SALVAGE is holy work, no doubt about it, but done by a fallen altar boy who truly knows what it's like to feel completely alone and abandoned, all bridges burned, no direction home."—Dan Stuart
"In TUCSON SALVAGE, Brian Jabas Smith deftly delivers us a nuanced collection of field reports from the modern human condition; keenly…
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
I'm a fifth-generation Arizonan, a former staff writer for the Arizona Republic, and a lifelong student of the Grand Canyon State. One of my very favorite things to do is travel the backroads of this amazing state and talk with the astonishing people who live there. Along the way, I wrote eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award. My day job is at Chapman University, where I am an English professor.
Cities all over the country were busy wrecking their own architectural heritage in the mid-20th century during the heyday of “slum clearance,” but Tucson experienced an especially painful loss: multiple blocks of irreplaceable colonial townhouses in Barro Viejo turned to dust for the sake of an ugly convention center.
Lydia Otero explains how and why this was allowed to happen with the exactitude of a scholar and the muted outrage of one who came from the community mourning the loss.
On March 1, 1966, the voters of Tucson approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project--Arizona's first major urban renewal project--which targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in the state. For close to one hundred years, tucsonenses had created their own spatial reality in the historical, predominantly Mexican American heart of the city, an area most called "la calle." Here, amid small retail and service shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues, they openly lived and celebrated their culture. To make way for the Pueblo Center's new buildings, city officials proceeded to displace la calle's residents and to demolish their ethnically diverse neighborhoods,…
