Graphic Medicine
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Not My Shame

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“There’s something really empowering about telling your own story” So begins this powerful, mixed-media graphic tale. It is a phrase that encapsulates one of the principles of narrative medicine, and so graphic medicine, too. Many graphic stories deal with trauma; the ones I find most powerful tend to come from first hand experience, told in raw, unfiltered words and images. This is one such work. Hats off to Singing Dragon, purveyors of some excellent comics, for publishing this book, which challenges the misogyny and rape culture that seem to permeate our popular media and society. Part visual diary, part interior monologue, the narrative is not… Read More

The Ride Together

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I really, really like this book. It is only half a graphic novel: chapters alternate between text and comics, Judy taking care of the prose, Paul the strips. I am an old, world weary cynic, but this book tugs at my corroded heart strings. Warm and happy and sad and gentle, it is the story of Paul and Judy’s elder brother Dave, who has autism. Dave is loved by his family  but can be a handful, violent at times and the book follows the families attempts to find Dave an appropiate caring community in which he can live, be himself… Read More

Daddy’s Girl

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Originally published in 1996, reprinted in 2008, Daddy’s Girl neatly illustrates the reason I think it is pointless to try to divide graphic memoirs from graphic fiction. It is a “quasi” memoir, based on Drechsler’s childhood experiences but narrated by two adolescent girls who both suffer abuse at the hands of older males. The naive style and heavy monochrome brushwork complement the teenage language. Most of the book is concerned with Lily, who, among her 3 sisters, is singled out for sexual abuse by her father, a working man who, in his spare time likes to do charitable work distributing goods… Read More

I Never Liked You

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To include this great little book in a list of  “medically themed” graphic novels may be stretching the point somewhat, or tending towards the medicalisation of normal life (doctors are good at that, but maybe not as good as Big Pharma). I include it because of the thread narrative that concerns Chester Brown’s relationship with his mentally ill mother. The main theme of this memoir is Brown’s somewhat troubled adolescence, growing up in the 1970’s in a Montreal suburb. Chester is the slightly geeky teenager whose quiet, thoughtful manner and skinny, longhaired good looks get him plenty of (seemingly unwanted)… Read More

The Minotaur’s Tale

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Following on from The Spiral Cage,  this is a fictional novella concerning a deformed man, known as Banshee, who is saved from the misery of sleeping rough by kindly people who have suffered their own fair share of hardship. A black lesbian couple, Etty and Jenny, take him in and, ultimately, he goes on to find love and happiness with a doctor who is stigmatised by a large port wine birthmark that covers half her body. The story is shot through with incidents of cruelty and violence towards the “ugly” and the unfortunate. The main narrative is counterpointed with an alternative… Read More

The Spiral Cage

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Originally published in 1990, this is a bit of a gem. Al Davison was born with spina bifida. his parents were told he wouldn’t live. Then, when he did, they were told that he would never walk. He taught himself to walk aged five and attended a “normal” school, where he was called “spaka” by his classmates. Al became an artist and illustrator. Although he can walk on his “scarecrow” legs, he still suffers considerably. He endured countless operations as a child and bouts of ME as an adult. He took up karate, which came in handy on several occasions… Read More