Dad’s not all there anymore Bird in a Cage Little Josephine: Memory in Pieces Heavy Snow: My Father’s Disappearance into Alzheimer’s At a Particular Age: Heavy Snow Revisited Sea Sirens: A Trot & Cap’n Bill Adventure Book Reviews by Kevin Wolf The graphic medicine works reviewed here are often—and rightly so—from the caretaker’s perspective and the outward manifestations of the patient, but not the patient’s thoughts or first-person accounts. Some artists of these works use surrealistic imagery to guess at the patients’ inner life. The primary medical topic covered in these graphic works is Alzheimer’s and other… Read More
Wrinkles
Guest review by Martha Cornog, Graphic Novel Columnist, Library Journal (this review has no connection with Library Journal and is solely the opinion of the reviewer) As the comics industry has been maturing in recent decades, so has its content. It’s been both sobering and fascinating to see excellent graphic novels coming out on aging, elder care, and the end of life. I’m thinking particularly of Joyce Farmer’s Special Exits, Roz Chast’s Why Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant, Aneurin Wright’s Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park…When You’re 29 and Unemployed, Lucy Knisley’s Displacement: A Travelogue, and… Read More
Tangles: Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me
guest review by Nathan Sethu Tangles, A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me is a graphic memoir created by Sarah Leavitt who writes both prose and comics. Her writing has appeared in Geist, The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Review, The Georgia Straight and Xtra West. Tangles is her first book and published by Skyhorse Publishing, Canada and printed in China. The Memoir published in 2012 was widely appreciated by media and Alzheimer associations of different countries. The New York Times has described the book as, “A poignant account…. Illustrations bring home the daughter’s pain as her once vibrant, protective… Read More
Comics & Representing Shared Experience
Panel 16 from the Toronto Comics & Medicine conference. This panel is moderated by Ian Williams. Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. Mita Mahato (These Frames Are Hiding Places) is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound where she teaches courses in contemporary Visual and Cultural Studies. Her scholarship explores the reception of illness stories across several narrative forms, including comics and blogs. She also makes comics and likes cutting things up. She writes of her presentation,… Read More
Tangles: A Story of Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me
guest review by Katie Delaney, MD/MA program in Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine “Sarah: What’s it like, Dad? Dad: I don’t know. I guess sometimes it turns out that everything you thought about how the future would be just isn’t true.” – Tangles, page 46 Tangles is a poignant and clever name for Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir about her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. First, there is the way Leavitt’s partner describes the mind of Sarah’s ailing mother: “Like the garden this summer… tangled, but with spots of brightness.” (114). Then, there is the fact that… Read More
Sarah Leavitt on Tangles: Documenting a family’s struggle with alzheimer’s disease through comics
Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. In a panel moderated by Maria Vacarella, Vancouver writer and cartoonist Sarah Leavitt delivers her talk, “Documenting a Family’s Struggles with Alzheimer’s Disease: Using Comics to Break Through Stigma and Silence.” Sarah discusses three areas of stigma explored through comics in her book Tangles – anger and bad behavior, bodily functions, and sexuality. Her talk is followed by excerpts from the panel Q&A .