by Kevin Wolf Okchundang Candy by South Korean author Jung-soon Go (translated by Aerin Park) is a very gentle story of the authors’ remembrances of her grandparents (Mr. Go Jadong and Ms. Kim Soonim). Their medical concerns (lung cancer for her grandfather and dementia for her grandmother) are not as important as their loving relationship through Jung-soon’s eyes and colored pencil drawings that move from her childhood to adulthood renditions. Her grandparents were Korean War orphans with three children and their eldest son, Go Sangkwon, being the author’s father. This is a children’s picture book. You won’t learn anything… Read More
Spotlight: “In the Labyrinth of Dementia”
Our latest Spotlight on projects and people within the Graphic Medicine international community focuses on a new graphic novel by Albin Zauner. About The Author: My name is Albin Zauner. I am an artist and art therapist. Since studying art in Munich, I have been exploring the narrative potential of drawing with particular enthusiasm. I work in an art therapy studio in a psychiatric clinic, and the experiences and impressions of this work continually flow into my drawings. About this Work: In my graphic novel story “In the Labyrinth of Dementia,” I narrate the experiences of a writer afflicted with… Read More
Cassi and the House of Memories
awaiting review
Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir
by Soph Myers-Kelley Bishakh Som in Spellbound introduces the reader to a memoir experience about culture, immigration, queerness, transness, tantalizing foods, and crushing identity crises. It’s ideal for older teenagers and adults. One of the most interesting creative decisions Som makes in her book is the choice to use a stand-in cisgender Bengali American character named Anjali instead of depicting her own likeness as the protagonist. Som herself is a transgender Bengali American woman, who came out as an adult. She originally created this work as a diary comic before stringing together longer chapters. This book is a complex, note… Read More
New Podcast Episode: Keeper of the Clouds and Seattle Preview
In this new episode of the Graphic Medicine Podcast, we hear from the creative team behind the wonderful graphic medicine narrative “Keeper of the Clouds” – writer Liza Futerman and illustrator Evi Tampold. You can read a new review of Keeper of the Clouds here, and purchase a copy here. We’ll also hear from Seattle Conference chief organizer-on-the-ground Mita Mahato. She’ll tell us a few insider tips about Seattle and what we can expect. Support for this podcast provided by the Department of Medical Humanities, Penn State Hershey College of Medicine.
Dana Walrath: Cultural Spaces, Comics, and Contested Memories
This week on the Graphic Medicine Podcast: author, artist, and anthropologist Dana Walrath. Segment 1: Graphic Medicine News This week the Annals of Internal Medicine posted a wonderful new comic by Sharon Rosensweig and Aaron Freeman called “The Last Ride of Mo Rosensweig” which I highly recommend. Segment 2: Dana Walrath and Aliceheimer’s Dana Walrath is a medical anthropologist, author, and artist. Her first book, Aliceheimer’s, will be published in the US by Penn State University Press. In this talk, titled “Cultural Spaces, Comics, and Contested Memories” Dana desrcibes the ways medical anthropology and comic helped her to shape a new… Read More
Roses in December (And More)
guest review by Kevin Wolf Two books , Safe Return Home: An Inspirational Book for Caregivers of Alzheimer’s (Andrews McMeel publisher 1998) and Roses in December: a story of love and Alzheimer’s (The Kent State University Press 2015) by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers are the early and complete collections, respectively, of Crankshaft comic strips about elderly characters suffering from Alzheimer’s disease from diagnosis to death. The book Lisa’s Story: the other shoe (The Kent State University Press 2007) by Tom Batiuk is a collection of Funky Winkerbean comic strips about Lisa’s diagnosis of breast cancer, her treatment, remission, and recurrence. These stories sensitively and humorously show the effect of… Read More
“Mom’s Flock” by Sharon Rosenzweig
Through Riva Lehrer and Laydeez do Comics, we’ve learned of a project by Chicago artist Sharon Rosenzweig called “Mom’s Flock.” The comic panels can be seen here: http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2411852. As Sharon introduces the project, “This is my mother. I brought her the chicks. And then I listened and took notes of what happened.”
New Podcast: Comics & Caregiving
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. Our eleventh panel from Toronto and they just keep getting better and better! I, MK, had the honor of moderating this panel and am quite pleased to revisit and post it here. The first speaker is Michelle N. Huang, a Master’s Student and University Graduate Fellow at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include disability studies, war literature, and cultural studies in the twentieth century. She writes of her paper, The “Good Enough Daughter”… Read More
Wrinkles
This book has had a long (in Graphic Medicine terms) life thus far. It won the National Comic Prize in Spain in 2008, where it was published under the title Arrugas. It was also published in French under the name Rides. From the author’s website, describing the book (translated from Spanish via Google) “I considered doing this story for my parents. I wanted to talk about old age people. This is too big a subject so I focused on nursing homes. In addressing this issue was also impossible not to Alzheimer’s. Emilio, the protagonist, is inspired by the father of… Read More