Did you know guidelines from the United Nations limit the use of solitary confinement to 14 days maximum, yet incarcerated people in the United Staes have spent years or even decades in isolation?
Created collaboratively by the Stanford Graphic Novel Project class of 2018-2019, Flying Kites tells the story of a fictional family caught up in the real events of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike. Balancing education with emotional impact, the book follows college student Luz Santiago and her incarcerated father, Rodrigo, as they begin to speak out against and challenge the human rights abuses of solitary confinement in California prisons.
Rodrigo has been incarcerated for most of Luz’s life. The book is vague on the details of his initial crime, though there are references to him having stabbed or possibly murdered someone. For the last ten years, Rodrigo has been confined to the SHU, or Secure Housing Unit, meaning he spends 23 hours a day in a very small space by himself. The single hour a day he is allowed out of his cell is spent alone in a slightly bigger enclosed space where he can “exercise.”
Luz, who is now in college, knows only a little about her father’s circumstances and mental state. She works hard to juggle a job, her classes, socializing with peers, and driving nine hours to visit her father on a regular basis. She diligently communicates with Rodrigo through hand-written letters, but he hesitates to share with her the raw details of how much he and the other inmates in solitary confinement truly suffer on a daily basis. When Luz and Rodrigo learn about a planned hunger strike to protest the use and abuse of the SHU, they each become involved in their own way: Luz attends protests, spreads the word, and speaks to the media, while Rodrigo participates by refusing food with his fellow inmates. Each hopes the strike will lead to lasting change that will help not only their family, but incarcerated people throughout California and the United States.
According to the notes and materials at the end of the book, the most of the specific named people in Flying Kites are composite characters, bringing together details of real people’s lives into fictionalized characters who can tell a story. The comic makes good use of these composites, allowing the story to have personal impact and a clear emotional narrative. As a result, the real information woven throughout doesn’t feel too heavy-handed and deliberately educational, and readers have an entry point to connect with events that might otherwise seem distant from their own lives.
The events and issues described by Flying Kites are extremely important and are still relevant today. The information isn’t popular knowledge, and there is still a lot of work to be done around prison reform and the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. The members of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project have clearly done their research, and provide a wealth of resources after the conclusion of the story in a number of appendices and notes, so it’s easy to take the book as a jumping off point for further exploration of the topic. I began reading the comic with only vague knowledge of the issue, and came away feeling much more informed and concerned about the widespread use of a practice that is considered torture by the United Nations.
I also found the creation process behind this comic very intriguing. The Stanford Graphic Novel Project is a two-semester undergraduate college course focused around the creation of a graphic novel. As a group, the students choose and research a topic, develop a story, then write and draw the entire comic. For the most part, the quality of the book is comparable to those by professional creators. Some of the notes in the back of the book provide more details about the course and the creation of the comic, and more information about the Stanford Graphic Novel project can be found on their website.
My only real complaint about Flying Kites was the variability of the artwork, likely due to the collaborative nature of the book. The style and quality of the art changes often, sometimes even from page to page, and there were some styles that I liked much more than others. Though the characters are still recognizable, and it didn’t affect my understanding of the story, I found it a little jarring at times, and was not a fan of some of the more simplistic, sketchy illustration work.
This book is an excellent choice for anyone interested in the topic, concerned with issues of social justice, and who enjoys comics about real historical events. It can also be used effectively in a classroom setting to begin or further a discussion of the issues of prison reform and human rights abuses. Nothing is graphically depicted, but readers should be aware there are mentions of death, suicide, self-harm, mental illness, and other disturbing effects of the psychological torture that is solitary confinement. Flying Kites is freely available on the Stanford Graphic Novel Project’s website for reading online or downloading as a high resolution PDF.
I hope this important book can receive the attention it deserves, and I look forward to reading more of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project’s work from both past and future years.
Browse for more like this title NFNT Age Recommendation: Older Teen (16-18), Adult (18+) Character Traits: Black, Latinx Creator Highlights: BIPOC Creator, LGBTQIA+ Creator
In his introduction to Your Black Friend and Other Strangers, author and illustrator Ben Passmore writes, “I know you picked this book up thinking you were gonna read a whole lot of wokeness from a mad inspired and inspiring melaninated revolutionary King” And I’ll admit, he was relatively spot on for me—I thought I would be reading a collection of comics that would educate me about my unintentional racism and about the lived experiences of Black people in America. Reflecting on that thought, it seems a rather stilted expectation; luckily the collection did that, but had even more to offer.
The original Your Black Friend by Passmore was published as a 12-page zine by Silver Sprocket in 2016. It was nominated for an Eisner, won an Ignatz Award, and made it on NPR’s 2017 list of 100 Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels. Your Black Friend and Other Strangers was republished in March 2018 as an anthology of Passmore’s previously published pieces, as well as some of his new work. In the title piece, which is summarized in this three-minute animated clip, Passmore narrates his experiences as “your Black friend,” navigating the constant spectrum of racial expectations White people have, regardless of whether they view themselves as allies.
Because I can’t describe it better myself, I leave Silver Sprocket’s description of the comic to list the topics included in the anthology: “race, gentrification, the prison system, online dating, gross punks, bad street art, kung fu movie references, beating up God, and lots of other grown-up stuff with refreshing doses of humor and lived relatability.” Also notable is Passmore’s warning in the Introduction that “There are a bunch of comics in here that are supposed to turn you into Anarchists.” My favorite pieces, like “A Letter from Stone Mountain Jail” or “Whose Free Speech?”, were those that were more narrative- or politically based, telling stories of Passmore’s experiences in protests or his reflections on what political movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter versus Antifa) might actually have a chance of making long-term impact. My least favorite were the ones that were most abstract, such as “A Pantomime Horse I” or “Goodbye.” I found myself just confused at the end of several pieces, flipping back through to see what I had missed.
Passmore’s art aligns with the genre of the piece he’s writing. The pieces that are based on experience have a more literal style of cityscapes and corner stores, with large blocks of small text providing background information. However, pieces like “It’s Not About You” or “The Punklord” are vibrant with color and abstract creatures and imagined settings. I like the punk influence of his art—the characters with mohawks, piercings, gauges, and tattoos—as well as just more “realistic” characters with beards, dreads, hoodies, and suspenders. There is some violence and “gore,” but most of that is relegated to the more fantastical pieces of the book. (However, at one point two punks do end up biting, shooting, then beheading a police officer… but when the characters look like they belong in a punk adult version of the 90s Doug cartoon, it’s not as gory.)
Both the art and the writing ask for your attention in more than one sitting. I read the collection in one sitting, and it was a lot to take in. However, I will return to it in bits and pieces. There may be some parts that I never understand, as several other reviewers have mentioned similar feelings, but I know there is much in both the text and the art to appreciate repeatedly throughout the book.
I think this a comic worth investing in. It will be a good addition to a memoir collection, and it’s important to include memoirs by authors of color, especially about the experience of racism and activism in America. It’s likely best for readers who are 13 and up. Even younger teens (13-16) will benefit from reading about and gaining a better understanding of race and friendship, and the importance of activism and standing up against brutality and injustice. Many of the pieces have an elevated vocabulary and an expectation for a baseline understanding of anarchism and nihilism, which younger readers will likely lack, but as is evident throughout this review, the anthology is sort of a “mixed bag.” Anyone can find something of interest, but there will be pieces that some readers don’t understand or are just confused by. Ultimately, if everyone just reads at least the title comic, the world might be a better place.
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers By Ben Passmore ISBN: 9781945509209 Silver Sprocket, 2018 Publisher Age Rating: T (13+)
Browse for more like this title NFNT Age Recommendation: Teen (13-16), Older Teen (16-18), Adult (18+) Character Traits: Black Creator Highlights: Own Voices, BIPOC Creator
Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention focuses on the physicality of detention centers in Canada and how they impact the lives of the people held there. The book started life as a part of Chak’s master’s thesis in architecture at the University of Toronto, and broadly consists of three sections: the outside appearance and location of the detention centers, life inside the detention centers, and an interview with an immigrant activist. There is also an epilogue by activist and writer Syed Hussan which is composed of images, a narrative, and definitions for various key terms in the conversation, such as “displacement” and “institutional racism/sexism,” which are defined from an activist’s perspective. Along with statistics and cited sources, Chak presents the issues in visually compelling ways that illuminate the concept and process of detention, causing the reader to interrogate boundaries and borders, and forcing the reader to confront unjust practices that seek to fade into the background of everyday life.
In Undocumented we learn that in Canada, undocumented immigrants can be held indefinitely without charge or trial, with some individuals waiting up to seven years in detention. The idea of spending even a fraction of that time imprisoned without trial is abstract and difficult to conceive of for most readers. Chak uses an architectural perspective as well as her experience as an activist and the experiences of those she has worked with to make these concepts concrete.
The book opens with landscapes, as if you were walking a version of Google Maps Street View rendered in black and white outlines. The lines that make up the streets stretch and curve to connect to an upside down mirrored landscape, though not the same one. The effect is so disorienting that it takes quite some time to realize that the panels on the page depict a continuation of the same scene. The unnecessary gutters act as imposed, irrational borders that prevent the eyes from recognizing the page as a single scene. Without Chak’s notes, you would never know that each of these banal scenes contains a detention center. There are no public statistics on how many detainees are being held in nearly half of the ten detention centers listed. Chak effectively demonstrates that these issues are closer than we might think to our everyday lives. The somewhat shaky hand-drawn lines of these landscapes stand in sharp contrast to the drawings in the following section, creating a hard division between natural and unnatural, free flowing and restricted.
In the next section, Chak provides the experience of walking through a detention center with room by room of precise line drawings. No color or substance fills these pages; we are constantly monitored by security cameras, not able to see where we’re going beyond the next door. This tour is captioned by snippets of an interview with an architect who designed a detention center, who is more concerned about a job well done than the implications of that job. The anonymous architect insists, “Look, they come to me because they know I can turn X to Y in the shortest time possible. That’s the architect’s job.” In response, Chak interrogates the complacency of architects in designing these dehumanizing spaces, asking the reader “How does architecture inflict violence on human bodies and minds, onto our physical environment?” She is not content to let architects absolve themselves of guilt and consequence.
Deportation is violence. Detention is violence. Both are dehumanizing and inhumane. Neither are solutions; they do not address the problem, they only inspire fear. In her introduction, Chak notes that her portrayal of detention is incomplete, and an ongoing project. She does not claim to be able to fit the entire scope of the issue within the book. However, her approach is unique, innovative, and effective in order to communicate the issues at hand and the dehumanizing practices that are currently taking place across the country. The first person perspective, clean lines, and relatively straightforward visuals make it remarkably easy for readers to insert themselves into the narrative. Statistics are balanced with the experiences of real people, creating a much more effective approach than if Chak was to present a fictionalized narrative. This book is an incredibly necessary read, and a call for all citizens to question detention practices in their own countries, and to demand not better detention centers, but a fundamental shift in the way undocumented immigrants are treated.
Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention By Tings Chak ISBN: 9780994050762 Ad Astra Comix, 2017
In her book Why Comics? Hillary Chute states flatly that the foundation of comics is in disaster—Spiegelman’s Holocaust, Jimmy Corrigan’s family, the destruction of Krypton. In Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, disaster is foundational and unavoidable as well, but is also intensely personal. We can see that what the world sees as Disaster and History, individual families see as Life. An important addition to the graphic memoir genre, this book tells its story of birth, war, trauma, alienation, and love entirely in personal terms. It grounds the overwhelming in the relatable, making what could be an alien story universal, and salvaging a dark history with the insights that only close family can provide.
The Best We Could Do is a family memoir, describing how writer/artist Bui’s family came to the United States soon after the end of the Vietnam War. In the manner of Spiegelman’s Maus, this book tells Bui’s parents’ stories and intermingles their traumatic histories with Bui’s and her sisters’ life in America. Unlike Maus, this is not a sardonic and self-effacing graphic memoir. It is instead poetic, slow-moving, nuanced, and compassionate. There’s a sadness throughout, the kind of sorrow that comes from recognizing parents as human beings, and from hearing stories that we know we cannot fully understand.
Bui’s father, for example, starts out as an unsympathetic character—he could easily be dismissed as a man who accidentally terrorized his children and emotionally abandoned his wife. However, Bui understands her father as she explores his story, what he has survived and the damage it’s done to his thoughts and emotions. As Bui’s sympathy for and understanding of the man who raised her increases, so does our own. He is a man who faced betrayal throughout his childhood, had unlikely good fortune, but was surrounded by instability—his father was a con artist, his mother born into wealth. He got into politics and found himself on the losing side of a war, saw his mother thrown into the street to starve, and learned that his father—who thrived in the new Communist regime—would not stick his neck out to save his son or grandchild. After the crisis had passed, the traumas remained. By his own admission, even as an old man, Bui’s father will always be something of a wounded child. It’s a painful truth, one that allows Bui’s father to start to forgive himself for his shortcomings as a husband and father, and allows Bui to do the same.
Bui’s mother’s story unfolds with similar complexity and richness—a brilliant student, she attended a French language school and found her voice on the right side of history but the wrong side of political reality. Her life was changed by pregnancy and by war, and by the dissolution of the aristocratic reality she grew up in and learned to despise even as she relied on it. A quiet fighter, Bui’s mother has our sympathy from the start; it’s respect we gain for her rather than affection. Her own experiences left her afraid, unable to stay through her granddaughter’s delivery as it forces her to recall her own pregnancies, a child lost, a fear that lingers through the rest of her life.
2017 was a big year for Bui; she won the Caldecott Medal for her children’s book, A Different Pond, and released The Best We Could Do to critical acclaim. At 42 this is her first graphic novel, and like some other great graphic works—Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Spiegelman’s Maus—it has taken her more than a decade to complete, and the results are as polished as you might hope. Bui favors gorgeous inks, reminiscent of Chinese ink painting. Her characters are a blend of cartoonish realism, capable of creating the impression of an emotionally complex person—the joy in children’s faces, their parents’ haunted eyes—in just a few lines.
Furthermore, these cartoons are recognizable as portraits of real people, matched to photographs within the book. The book is colored only with shaded oranges and blues, giving the entire work the feel of a sepia-toned photo album, most of its details realistic with a few outrageous features, like a framed picture of a human skull resting behind barbed wire adorning a suburban home’s wall. This all comes together as a cohesive whole, beautiful and fragile and sad. Bui conveys a family’s journey that was heroic and imperfect, truly the best they could do. A personal but universal story, well told and brilliantly illuminated. If it has any shortcomings, it’s only in its relatively sparse use of humor, even for a genre not known for jokes. Even so, this book is an extraordinary accomplishment and is essential reading for fans of literary comics.
The Best We Could Do is appropriate for high school, public, and academic library collections. There is some nudity and implied violence that will probably keep it out of younger school libraries. Its blending of literary and artistic achievement with the history of Vietnam—poorly understood in the U.S. despite its importance to our own recent history—marks this as a major work of personal nonfiction, and Bui’s accomplishments as an artist and storyteller distinguish her as a major talent. Also, as a story about refugees, this graphic adds a badly needed human perspective to an often impersonal—and growing—international crisis that U.S. policy has placed itself at the center of. If you are thinking about adding this book to your collection, your timing couldn’t be better.
The Best We Could Do By Thi Bui ISBN: 9781419718786 Harry N. Abrams, 2017 Publisher Age Rating: (16+)
Browse for more like this title Character Traits: Vietnamese, Creator Highlights: Own Voices, BIPOC Creator
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906. He had a great childhood with a big, wonderful family, a good education, and a strong faith. By 14, Dietrich declared himself a theologian, an aspiration that shaped the rest of his life.
By all accounts, Dietrich was a normal, decent, faithful man.
Then the Nazi party rose to power, his beloved Germany became unrecognizable, and everything changed. Dietrich remained a normal, decent, faithful man—even while planning the assassination of Adolf Hitler.
In John Hendrix’s The Faithful Spy, the life of this little known historical figure is explored with captivating prose and beautiful illustrations.
I had never heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer before picking up this graphic novel, which probably made the book even better. I didn’t know the fate of Dietrich and I was rooting for him the whole time. Even knowing that the assassination attempts fail didn’t take away from the suspense. I enjoyed following Dietrich through all the events in his life and seeing how one man played a big part in the German resistance during World War II. It shows how much one person can contribute, but also how resistance and revolution is the work of many people working together.
It is obvious that Hendrix did his research and this story is steeped in historical fact. He doesn’t over embellish or put his own opinions into the prose. Instead, Hendrix explains how Hitler came to power, breaking down the politics into an easy to follow and understand story. Everyone knows Hitler and knows about the Holocaust, but Hendrix was able to show what caused these terrible things to happen and how the normal, everyday Germans were blindsided by the atrocities.
Although filled with illustrations, The Faithful Spy is definitely wordier than the average graphic novel. It easily could have been a regular novel and still would have been enthralling. But Hendrix’s art adds so much to the story, even while only utilizing four colors—green, red, black, and white. It’s almost like the doodles on the side of your history class notes, but if you had enormous talent.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life story captured my attention from the start and I loved every page, often taking my time to really study Hendrix’s illustrations. This is a gorgeous book that made me seek out more of John Hendrix’s work (he has several children’s picture books about other historical figures).
The Faithful Spy would make a great addition to World War II lesson plans. We often wonder how someone like Hitler and the Nazis could come to power and do these awful things. We often wonder how the German people didn’t stop him. Well, this book shows how it happened and that there were people trying to do something.
I highly recommend The Faithful Spy. It would be a great addition to libraries for teens and adults.
The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix ISBN: 9781419728389 Abrams, 2018 Publisher Age Rating: 10-14
Alberto Ledesma had a secret that he hid from others for most of his life. A secret that his parents had kept from him for years—his parents brought him to America illegally when he was a small child. As a teen, Alberto worried that he would be found out and sent back to a country he couldn’t remember. So he worked hard and excelled, thinking that high achievement would make him worthy of staying. He eventually earned a PhD, became a university professor, and a legal resident. In Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer, Ledesma reminisces about this journey in diary form, accompanied by many drawings that he has done over the years.
While there are drawings and short comics in this memoir, this book is not, strictly speaking, a graphic novel or a graphic memoir. The artwork doesn’t tell a story; it is not sequential art. The pictures are snapshots of Ledesma’s life, much like you would find in a diary. The book is a thoughtful, moving memoir and rumination on what it means to be an undocumented child and adult in the United States. The shame and emotions on display are palpable and the book makes it easy to identify with Ledesma’s plight. Having to tell his daughter that he was once undocumented is a particularly riveting tale.This is a story that needs to be told and one that is relevant to our current situation in the US.
Though the story is important, the book itself is strange and hard to categorize. The format is unusual in that it is slightly oversized, bigger than an average book, yet not quite the size of a typical coffee-table book. The font is unusual and somewhat difficult to read. Some of the drawings have different fonts in them which is distracting as well. The artwork is raw and inexpert, but the ideas conveyed are occasionally powerful and illuminating, like the Statue of Liberty dressed in Day of the Dead garb or migrant workers with mechanical limbs to indicate their true value as machines in the US. While not sequential, chapter 7 is entirely made up of drawings depicting different letters of the alphabet and the words that impact undocumented peoples like “Back Pay”, “Coyote” and “Deportation”. In general, I found it to be a powerful book.
However, as this site focuses on reviewing graphic novels, I would like to note that I did not put this book in my library’s graphic novel collection. I put in with young adult nonfiction, but it might find more of an audience in a public library’s adult nonfiction section. Ledesma seems to be writing for college students here, not high school students. There are many academic terms and I could see it being used in a college classroom. This book is a part of a new project out of Ohio State called Latinographix: the Latinx comics series. It is heartening to think that there might be more works about the Latinx experience coming. I look forward to a completely sequential story about the Latinx experience that I can add to our graphic novel collection.
Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life by Alberto Ledesma Art by Alberto Ledesma ISBN: 9780814254400 Latinographix – Mad Creek Books, 2017 Publisher Age Rating: ((OT 16+))
Marco Tabilio’s dreamy depiction of Marco Polo recording his famous narrative Il Milione, also referred to as The Travels of Marco Polo and The Book of the Marvels of the World, begins with Marco Polo relating his many adventures to fellow prisoner Rustichello while imprisoned in Genoa after the defeat of his fleet. Tabilio’s drawings transport the reader into this absorbing tale of world geography, politics, and the international trading culture of the 13th century. But Marco Polo: Dangers and Visions is not a straightforward travelogue; instead, it is a speculative and occasionally anachronistic illustration of a man and his coming-of-age.
Dangers and Visions doesn’t deviate from or challenge Marco Polo’s historical memoirs. He begins with Polo’s youth, during which he reunites with both his long-absent father and his uncle and joins their expedition to the court of Kublai Khan, and ends with his return to Venice and subsequent capture during a disastrous sea battle against the neighboring republic of Genoa. Marco is curious and tolerant, talented with languages, and favored by powerful rulers. Even so, it’s hard to take Marco at his word: it’s clear from the events depicted that he withholds elements of his story from Rustichello, and Il Milione has a historical reputation as a creative story, not a factual one.
The art is the supporting framework of the story. Many of Marco’s recollections are studded with dreams, nightmares, and bouts of illness, including a memorable episode where, in a transition from youth to adulthood, the skin of his face crumples and sloughs off, revealing an older version of himself. While dense with text in some pages, other sections of Marco’s memories are soundless and nearly blank. Each new destination on Marco’s journey is treated to a stunning and detailed map. These maps are reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts and copperplate engravings from Polo’s era (1254-1324). Monsters twine themselves through oceans and around the borders of the known world, a political map of the Holy Land depicts men at war, and the body of Genghis Khan demarks an almost anatomical division of his kingdom.
The more regimented panel art is also full of content, surprisingly so when you realize how much Tabilio makes use of negative space. Perhaps to offset these details, Marco and other human characters are gestural figures with wide, empty eyes, and unadorned clothing. Tabilio is capable of human depiction—Marco is recognizable no matter what the scale is—but for the most part, people are background noise. The result is a captivating story that requires re-reading to absorb its many layers.
Rustichello remarks that Marco’s tale “makes for a coming-of-age story.” It is, and it’s also a mid-life crisis. Marco is in his mid-40s at the time of this prison-imposed storytelling, and his thirst for travel and more youthful ambition have been quashed by a melancholy love affair, his father’s death, and his catastrophic losses at sea. During his year-long imprisonment, Dangers and Visions implies that Marco is on his last legs (“I can’t die before I finish,” he says, whereupon Rustichello begs the prison doctor to save his protagonist). Never mind that the historical Marco Polo lived another 25 years after his release; it was by all accounts a quiet life. For Tabilio’s Marco, that might have seemed like dying after all.
Graphic Universe recommends this title for readers in high school, though it’s appropriate for a younger audience, if that audience really enjoys fine print. The content is on par with Hergé’s Tintin.
Marco Polo: Dangers and Visions by Marco Tabilio ISBN: 9781512411829 Graphic Universe, 2017
Threadbare is a nonfiction graphic novel that follows work in the apparel industry at all stages, from production of garments to modeling and consumption, and tries to bring light to the ways in which injustices reign freely in this industry. The apparel industry is drawn parallel to the sex work industry, as these two industries are two of the largest employers of women across the world. Additionally, garment work on a smaller scale as overseen by an NGO (non-governmental organization) is often seen as the primary savior of sex trafficking victims. Moore argues that many actions from anti-trafficking NGOs may enforce rather than subvert poor working conditions and practices for the women they seek to serve.
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the writer of the book, and acts as editor to a series of distinct stories by six artists: Julia Gfrörer, Delia Jean, Melissa Mendes, Simon Häussle, Ellen Lindner, and Leela Corman. Several others are acknowledged in Moore’s introduction as being involved in the creation of this book, such as members of The Ladydrawers Comics Collective. The book has four chapters, each beginning with a textual introduction by Moore and followed by half a dozen separate stories in comic format. Moore’s introductions equally prime the reader as well as praise the artists.
The book is propelled by Moore’s interviews with folks from various parts of the industry and most of the dialogue in the comics is taken directly from these interviews. While this is useful for understanding the situations at hand, each comic feels like a concise summary of that interaction without much dramatization to flesh out the interviewee’s words. As a result, the flow of each chapter is somewhat disjointed within and across strips. A handful of comics feel cut short at only two or three pages long. This is frustrating as a reader, but effective if the creators’ desired result is, “I want to learn more.”
Each comic in the book uses only a single color in addition to black, with shades ranging from mustard yellow and blood orange to deep cranberry. Color thus acts to distinguish stories or tie them together. Three stories by Melissa Mendes opt to not use black ink at all, relying instead on varying shades of the focal color. The contrast in these segments becomes difficult to read—details become easily muddied and indistinguishable.
Most of the lettering appears to be done by hand, so it fits well with the art portrayed. Even the typeset lettering has the feeling of careful hand lettering. In some of the comics, the font is a bit small and strains the eyes. It appears that these segments could have benefitted from a larger scale of printing—the book is physically rather small at 8 by 6 inches.
Of the six artists, I was particularly taken with Lindner’s and Corman’s styles. With Lindner’s expert use of shade, you quickly forget about the limited color palette. Corman’s style is striking with strong lines and heavy use of black ink; her art ends the book, and is powerful in the delivery of the final lines.
The content of Threadbare was more palatable than I expected it to be, which surprised me. Perhaps my shock at the digestibility of this book was due to expecting a shock and fear motivated campaign as traditionally employed by some of the anti-trafficking NGOs Moore mentions. Moore demonstrates this to be generally ineffective at improving labor conditions or policy. Rather than acting as savior or seeking to educate in a condescending way, Moore creates an opportunity for conversation, making it clear that these are pervasive, global problems with global impact. Moore refuses to sensationalize the subjects, firmly choosing to approach them with journalistic integrity and respect.
The book ends with concrete suggestions for what readers can do: avoid fast fashion and mall shopping, advocate for garment workers’ right to a living wage and healthy working conditions, run for political office to make a direct impact on policy. Moore demonstrates that the threads of apparel work and sex work are woven so closely together that you cannot unravel one without being prepared to act on the other.
While the publication appears to be aimed at adult readers, Threadbare is appropriate for teens, perhaps most useful in order to encourage critical consumption of both political narratives and clothing. Librarians wishing to add this book to their collection may benefit from the following content notes: sexual harassment, drug use, and sex trafficking are discussed and briefly portrayed; an interview excerpt is uncensored in its use of a few swear words; realities of sex work are frankly and critically discussed. Difficult topics are addressed and discussed in this book in an accessible and respectful manner.
Threadbare: Clothes, Sex & Trafficking by Anne Elizabeth Moore Art by The Ladydrawers ISBN: 9781621067399 Microcosm Publishing, 2016
If I could buy the March trilogy for every human on this planet over age 13, I would. And while my dream may never play itself out fully, I’ve inched closer to this goal. I palmed the books into the hands of a close friend who loves politics much more than comic books. I insisted that any reader who is studying the tense race relations of the American South in To Kill A Mockingbird could use March to extend and add context to their inquiries. And when I ran into a high school history teacher while I was grocery shopping, I encouraged him to assign it to his American Studies classes.
The March series offers a view into the personal life of Georgia Congressman John Lewis and of the civil rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins in the late 1950s to the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. President Obama’s 2009 inauguration is used as a framing device throughout the series to add some optimism to what is otherwise a mostly difficult story and to remind us of the work we have left to do.
What started as some localized protests in Book 1 has grown to a national and international movement in Book 3, as Lewis grows from college student to chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. There are subtle moments in this story that reflect this change, such as Lewis’s return to the bus station in Jackson, Mississippi, a central location of Book 2, to see that the restroom signs are no longer marked “white” and “colored.”
However, the politics become more sinister. Externally, President Lyndon Johnson is making a calculated effort to save Democratic votes in the south. Internally, there are layers of disagreement as the movement grows to accommodate more individuals from more racial backgrounds and different views on nonviolence.
This volume is also more tragic than the first two. We see the assassinations of leaders like JFK and Malcolm X, and we also bear witness to the tragic deaths of relatively unknown African-American teens, like Virgil Lamar, Johnny Robinson, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair. We see the murders of civil rights activists—both black and white—who traveled to the south for protests, like Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James, Chaney, and Viola Liuzzo. Due to the number of lives lost, not to mention the numerous incidents of police violence, librarians would be wise to inform younger readers in advance about its deeply upsetting content.
Nate Powell uses black ink and greytone watercolors to make what would otherwise be faded historical memory come back to life. The artwork is mostly grim, and Powell occasionally emphasizes the grimness by fraying the borders of panel and speech bubbles to show agitation. Powell also borrows some motifs from superhero comics in police brutality scenes by drawing high-motion panels along with onomatopoeic WHAPs of fists and ZZZZZZTTTs of police batons.
At other times, Powell uses his tools to pause poetically and capture a character against a completely black background with minimalistic white text. In this way, he is able to capture brief yet compelling portraits of individuals like Fannie Lou Hamer, whose story might be absent from most history textbooks.
March is an essential supplement to, but not a replacement for, a traditional study of the civil rights movement in a high school or upper middle school history or government class. There is so much information here that it can be disorienting or overwhelming to the reader who isn’t already familiar with the basics about Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson, and nonviolent protest philosophy. Then there are details that might escape some readers, such as Nelson Rockefeller’s reception at the ‘64 Republican National Convention, the rifts between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the complex relationship between federal laws and on-the-ground practice. And like any good book, I left it asking more questions than I had before I started.
I urge you to join my mission to get this book into more hands of more readers. If you are in a library that doesn’t have the series, order it now. If you have the series, move it to the display. If your boss wonders why you are investing your budget in graphic novels, buy him or her a personal copy of the series and then buy him or her a cup of coffee and a slice of banana bread and offer to sit down and talk. Too many people died in order for us to be able to tell this story, and the least we can do is tell it to others.
March, Book Three by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin Art by Nate Powell ISBN: 9781603094023 Top Shelf Productions, 2016 Publisher Age Rating: (12+)
Years ago—before ISIS, before 9/11, before Oklahoma City—an undergraduate history professor said something I’ve never forgotten: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” The man he was discussing that day was Gavrilo Princip, the young Serb whose bullets felled the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and launched Europe into the first world war. An often enigmatic figure, Princip is often mentioned but rarely studied, his actions acknowledged as a catalyst for the fighting, but his history and motivations unexplored.
In this dark and powerful graphic novel, Henrik Rehr attempts to shift our focus from those fateful shots and onto the ideas and life of the man who fired them. Rehr explores the life of Gravilo Princip, from his childhood in Obljaj, a tiny Serbian village, to the day he entered infamy with those shots into the car of the Archduke on a Sarajevo street, asking the reader to consider an important question: How did the poor son a Serbian sharecropper become a radical nationalist driven to assassination? The focus of the graphic novel is on Princip, his life, his relationships, and his turmoils. But Rehr intersperses the events of Princip’s life with scenes occurring in the same time period in the life of the doomed Archduke. Family, politics, hunting, and romance in the royal court contrast sharply with the life of the poor and tuberculosis-suffering Princip; one man thrives in privilege while the other grows angry at his circumstance. Together, their lives set the stage for a global conflict that would last for five years and take the lives of more than 16 million people.
Based on what is known about Princip, Terrorist is brilliant historical fiction that subtly argues that we as readers have something to gain from understanding how or why seemingly ordinary people are driven to terrorist organizations or actions. Historical details taken from trial transcripts and other primary sources help to capture the essence of these men and women as they act on the historical stage, but as Rehr explains in his afterward, “there is nothing in the book I know to be historically false, but there is a lot which came from my imagination.” The ideas here are more important than strict historical accuracy as Rehr places Princip in a cultural and historical context, one in which conquest and national identity clash as a native population rages against its oppressors. It is this context which both drives Princip to action and leads him to become a tool in the hands of others seeking their own ends from the struggle between the Serbs and the Austria-Hungary Empire.
Terrorist is a dark book, deeply political and philosophical, one that forces the reader to consider assumptions, not only about Princip but about how terror functions as a political tool for radical change. That darkness is true not only of the story, but it is equally evident in the art as well. The stark, woodcut-like drawings brilliantly compliment the text, capturing the hopelessness and rage of the Serbian partisans against their foreign masters. The black and white harshness of the pages helps to draw the reader into the dark times of Europe in the early twentieth century, a time when tangled alliances and nationalist fervor conspired to turn the continent into a powder keg waiting for the right spark to explode.
Graphic Universe rates Terrorist as appropriate for ages 13-18, and it seems well suited for use in history or social studies classrooms to offer new insights into the era of the Great War. It might also do well in adult collections; history buffs are likely to appreciate Rehr’s approach to exploring Princip’s life and times. It should be noted that the higher age rating is more reflective of the complexity of the narrative than to any objectionable content. While there are violent scenes, including the death of the Archduke and Archduchess, these moments are rarely graphic. There is some strong language and there are brief sexual scenes, including a moment when Princip gropes his girlfriend’s clothed breast against her wishes (though he immediately stops his actions when she protests). While it is unlikely to attract casual readers, for students of the history of modern Europe or those interested in the sociology of terroristic violence, Terrorist is a superb graphic work.
Terrorist: Gavrilo Princip, The Assassin Who Ignited World War I by Henrik Rehr ISBN: 9781467772846 Graphic Universe, 2015 Publisher Age Rating: 13-18
Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention focuses on the physicality of detention centers in Canada and how they impact the lives of the people held there. The book started life as a part of Chak’s master’s thesis in architecture at the University of Toronto, and broadly consists of three sections: the outside appearance and location of the detention centers, life inside the detention centers, and an interview with an immigrant activist. There is also an epilogue by activist and writer Syed Hussan which is composed of images, a narrative, and definitions for various key terms in the conversation, such as “displacement” and “institutional racism/sexism,” which are defined from an activist’s perspective. Along with statistics and cited sources, Chak presents the issues in visually compelling ways that illuminate the concept and process of detention, causing the reader to interrogate boundaries and borders, and forcing the reader to confront unjust practices that seek to fade into the background of everyday life.
In her book Why Comics? Hillary Chute states flatly that the foundation of comics is in disaster—Spiegelman’s Holocaust, Jimmy Corrigan’s family, the destruction of Krypton. In Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, disaster is foundational and unavoidable as well, but is also intensely personal. We can see that what the world sees as Disaster and History, individual families see as Life. An important addition to the graphic memoir genre, this book tells its story of birth, war, trauma, alienation, and love entirely in personal terms. It grounds the overwhelming in the relatable, making what could be an alien story universal, and salvaging a dark history with the insights that only close family can provide.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906. He had a great childhood with a big, wonderful family, a good education, and a strong faith. By 14, Dietrich declared himself a theologian, an aspiration that shaped the rest of his life.
Alberto Ledesma had a secret that he hid from others for most of his life. A secret that his parents had kept from him for years—his parents brought him to America illegally when he was a small child. As a teen, Alberto worried that he would be found out and sent back to a country he couldn’t remember. So he worked hard and excelled, thinking that high achievement would make him worthy of staying. He eventually earned a PhD, became a university professor, and a legal resident. In Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer, Ledesma reminisces about this journey in diary form, accompanied by many drawings that he has done over the years.
Marco Tabilio’s dreamy depiction of Marco Polo recording his famous narrative Il Milione, also referred to as The Travels of Marco Polo and The Book of the Marvels of the World, begins with Marco Polo relating his many adventures to fellow prisoner Rustichello while imprisoned in Genoa after the defeat of his fleet. Tabilio’s drawings transport the reader into this absorbing tale of world geography, politics, and the international trading culture of the 13th century. But Marco Polo: Dangers and Visions is not a straightforward travelogue; instead, it is a speculative and occasionally anachronistic illustration of a man and his coming-of-age.
Threadbare is a nonfiction graphic novel that follows work in the apparel industry at all stages, from production of garments to modeling and consumption, and tries to bring light to the ways in which injustices reign freely in this industry. The apparel industry is drawn parallel to the sex work industry, as these two industries are two of the largest employers of women across the world. Additionally, garment work on a smaller scale as overseen by an NGO (non-governmental organization) is often seen as the primary savior of sex trafficking victims. Moore argues that many actions from anti-trafficking NGOs may enforce rather than subvert poor working conditions and practices for the women they seek to serve.
If I could buy the March trilogy for every human on this planet over age 13, I would. And while my dream may never play itself out fully, I’ve inched closer to this goal. I palmed the books into the hands of a close friend who loves politics much more than comic books. I insisted that any reader who is studying the tense race relations of the American South in To Kill A Mockingbird could use March to extend and add context to their inquiries. And when I ran into a high school history teacher while I was grocery shopping, I encouraged him to assign it to his American Studies classes.
Years ago—before ISIS, before 9/11, before Oklahoma City—an undergraduate history professor said something I’ve never forgotten: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” The man he was discussing that day was Gavrilo Princip, the young Serb whose bullets felled the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and launched Europe into the first world war. An often enigmatic figure, Princip is often mentioned but rarely studied, his actions acknowledged as a catalyst for the fighting, but his history and motivations unexplored.
